Harmonise your garden: Create balance and improve your garden pleasure.

TEASER: What is the secret of an appealing garden? Carolynn Home looks at the importance of developing balance in your garden.

CAPTIONS:

PIC1. Complementary colours. Colours are a great way to achieve a balanced look. These iceberg roses would be ideal next to a plant such as Japanese anemone.

PIC2. Mix ‘n match. Planting colour haphazardly may make your garden look unbalanced, so try to plant according to colour and height. For example, a purple groundcover such as viola would look balanced next to low-growing purple petunias.

PIC3. balance3.jpg OR balance4.jpg. Open space. A lawn is a good way to achieve a balanced garden as it keeps the centre of your garden open.

Balance in a garden is the basic idea that one part of the garden should not overpower the other. It means avoiding a lopsided layout, but it does not mean regularity or similarity of left and right sides of the garden.

Formal gardens are the easiest to balance, as they usually form a mirror image down a central plane so that what you plant on the one side you, will plant on the other. Informal gardens are harder to balance. If, for example, you have tall trees on one boundary and only low growing shrubs and groundcovers on the other, your garden will appear unbalanced or tilted to one side.

To avoid having your garden looking unbalanced, try the following tips:

• Draw up a plan of your garden with your house situated approximately in the correct position. Draw in all the large trees, small trees, shrubs and grass areas.
• Keep the center of your garden open. This is usually a lawn area but if there is more than one lawn, keep the principle lawn which adjoins the house open. Cluttering this area makes a confusing and distracting view and can make the space appear smaller.
• The volume of the trees in your garden can be balanced by your house or a lapa depending on where they are situated.
• When looking for balance, keep volume in mind. A long narrow tree can be balanced by a number of smaller shrubs on the other side of the garden, so long as the volumes balance each other.
• Balance can also be achieved by using colour. Colour spread throughout the garden should be done in a planned way rather than haphazardly. You can use different kinds of plants to balance a colour for example: iceberg roses balance well against a flowering Japanese anemone, or purple petunias balance purple violas. To ensure maximum effect, bunch your plantings together so that a sea of colour meets the eye.
• Balance is a concept in garden design that brings either disruption or harmony to your garden. Getting it right means putting in a lot of thought and perhaps some reshuffling of plants, but when you see the result it is well worth the effort.