Old-School Design: Frame Your Own Garden View

When designing your gardens and outside spaces, think about the frames you are creating with your own trees, perennials and garden structures. By carefully considering the positioning of your frames you’ll be able to direct views to maximize the best characteristics of your space. It is often as simple as pruning attentively and including a flowering vine, or as complex as adding a series of outside structures. Join me now as we check out a few gardens which are using natural and manmade framing to make beautiful parts of landscape art.

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This rock structure in Edith Wharton’s gardens in The Mount gracefully frames a view from both sides. Plantings have been inserted to soften the thick walls.

Amy Renea

Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, is arguably one of the most gorgeous gardens in the world, and it is a masterpiece in framing. Everywhere you look are beautiful framed vignettes and vistas. My favorite place for framing in Longwood nevertheless, is the arboretum. The arboretum is full of stunning, historical specimens of various trees gathered by the Pearces and also abuts directly on the meadow. Total of bright sun and wildflowers, the meadow is a grand comparison to the deep shade of this arboretum. The trees have been pruned into graceful, natural appearing arcs that framework the areas beautifully.

Amy Renea

The arcs are so well positioned that lots of these directly framework trees in the distance. Notice how this shrub using a wide, squat custom is styled with a subtle curve.

Slater Associates Landscape Architects

Using trees is a great way to produce frames, but you can make literal frames in your garden with constructions. This gorgeous rock wall has included two cutout windows which frame views and the garden in both directions for people on each side.

Kathleen Shaeffer Design, Exterior Spaces

If your home is much more modern in its design, you can frame your views using streamlined, geometric patterns in stucco, concrete and other materials. This door and window supply beautiful frames for flat lines of plantings.

Notice the colour blocking of grey and brown concrete which reflect the gold and green color blocking of this planting outside.

Kathleen Shaeffer Design, Exterior Spaces

Here is another framed view in precisely the exact same garden. A secondary door frames horizontals of green and deep aubergine from the meadow. This garden also offers framed views from the seating area through wooden gridwork panels.

Amy Renea

In this traditional garden, the framing is made using a large iron trellis. Open on either side, the trellis generates framed views of various areas of the garden. This particular segment frames a small vignette centered upon the potting bench and leading to the white trellis and pathway outside.

Mark Dodge Design

The design of your garden does not need to always be outside framing. Framing starts inside, together with the positioning of your windows and doors. Notice how this door perfectly frames the trail with a tiny ceiling of green thanks to its neighboring tree. Added views are styled throughout the small-paned windows.

Amy Renea

Do you have beautiful views that may benefit from a little framing? Do you have a wide open space out of your garden that would look beautiful framed within the bounds of a rustic trellis? Maybe you are able to sew several trees to perfectly framework plantings from the distance.

Take a little time to look around your own gardens carefully and be aware of the natural farming that already exists, or produce a couple frames of your own.

More: Browse the latest landscape and garden photos on Houzz

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