Landscape Designing

LANDSCAPE DESIGNING FRMT 325 Cr. Hr. 3(1+2)

Lesson 06:Landscape Styles

Informal garden style

• The informal style of gardening is aimed to imitate nature and strives to produce a natural effect in a closed area.
• In the informal gardens, geometrical designs are employed without insisting on symmetry.
• The garden plan is made to fit the land




• The early Hindu and Buddhist gardens laid no emphasis on formalism.
• In Chinese and Japanese gardens, the art of asymmetrical balance was amply demonstrated.
• After the Industrial Revolution in England, cities and towns missed the flavour of nature. To come closer to nature, garden planting was restored by organizing gardens in a natural style.
• A completely informal style provides a natural appearance but such gardens are not usually suited to very small sites.
• Planting is often of a mixed nature and there is a complete absence of set lines.
• An informal garden should have just as much design as a formal garden, except that balance is secured by an asymmetrical plan instead of a symmetrical one.
• Smooth, curvaceous outlines are more appropriate in this design rather than rigid lines.
• Informal gardens are laid out with open large lawns, bordered by clumps of shady trees or shrubs.
• The shape of the garden may not be square, rectangular or circular.
• Straight paths are avoided and irregular beds are introduced instead.
• Shrubbery and herbaceous borders are so designed as to fit the periphery of the lawn.
• Sometimes, these designs contain scenes depicting lakes and islands, sinuous streams and their embankments, cascades, rocks, etc.
• In this gardening design style, nature is preserved in an artificial way

Important features of informal garden

• The most typical features are more flowing shapes, less regulated and controlled planting and soft curved patterns.
• Main aim is to capture natural scenery.
• Land is not leveled.
• Asymmetrical design is adopted with non-geometrical beds and borders.
• The paths are irregular in shape and placement is without any garden ornaments.
• The plant material includes mostly the local or native plant species predominant in the region and landscaped in such a way as to merge with the surrounding nature.
• Individual plants are not selected as feature.

On the whole an informal garden design is extrovert type. It has asymmetrical balance even though the objects are not arranged around a central axis unlike the formal designs. However on either side of the vertical axis the dissimilar objects are placed without any similarity but equated to give the occult appearance of balance.