Hard-scaping

We all appreciate the beauty and usefulness that plants bring to our gardens.  They create warm spaces in otherwise barren stretches of land.  They nourish us with vegetable, herb and fruit offerings--and even those that don't, utilize the carbon dioxide we aspirate, miraculously exchanging it for life-giving oxygen.  No one (except perhaps those with severe plant allergies) can really make a case against greenery, AKA "soft-scaping."

But equally enticing is the creative use of hard-scaping in our garden beds: the fences, stones, brick, sand, shells, trellises, arbors, gazebos, and other non-living additions to our landscapes that give them depth, texture and the ability to enhance and complement all the growing going on around them.  After all, what plant can't benefit from a well-placed pergola or pot?

Part of designing a garden space that's attractive as well as functional is the ability to make clever use of non-living materials.  In the photos below, I explore different ways that hard-scaping will help create artful outdoor spaces--and a soft spot in your heart for every one:

Pair perennials with a perimeter of picket fencing, and you've got yourself an old-fashioned love story, worthy of the ages.  Time and place fall away with this affair to remember, which seems modern, but could just as easily have been found in your grandmother's garden beds.

Window boxes and decorative hangers provide twice the impact when used in tandem.  This dynamic duo softens the very linear lines of boxy windows, clapboard and the rectangular patio bricks.

 
Plant stands are great for a garden on the go, or to lessen the effect of less-than-desirable features on a building (like the gutter leader in the photo here).  The best thing about these decorative dynamos?  You can pick 'em up and plop them down wherever you like--whenever you want to.