Landscape gardening provides an artistic outlet for gardeners that other types of gardening do not. Landscape gardening allows the gardener to plan the flow of the yard so that every piece of it accents the others and work together to create a beautiful painting of live color and texture through the plants and gardening accents used. In addition, the landscape gardens change in form during the different seasons of the year so that new annuals can be added during the different times of year to create a new look to the yard throughout the year.

Planning

Landscape gardening takes a lot of planning and research in order to produce the desired effect. The great thing in working with plants is that they grow and change and have to be replaced, so a mistake at one point is quickly forgotten in a new season of the year. In addition, nature's palette of colors really goes together in surprising combinations that would not typically be used in other design situations, such as fashion or interior design. However, it nature, somehow the colors blend perfectly into a beautiful garden that is magnificent to behold.

The first thing to think about when planning landscape gardening is what the flow and pattern of the garden is going to be, which is normally called creating the 'bones' of the garden. Many gardeners take the layout of the house and yard and draw in the concept of the landscape gardens before actually laying it out with the various materials, such as path work. Other landscape gardeners are able to picture the design in their heads so that they do not have to lay it out on paper before creating the garden bones through paths and trees that form the outlines of the different parts of the landscape garden.

The next step is to decide on the focal points of the landscape garden; in other words, where does the gardener want a viewer's eyes drawn when he is looking at the garden. This can be done in a variety of ways through the use of color, texture and size of the various plants that will be used. Larger and bolder types of plants and flowers are usually used as focal points in landscape gardens since they naturally lend themselves to that task. Once the focal points are decided on, then the accent or filler plants can be chosen so that they accent the focal points through the textures and colors that they add to the landscape garden.