3D Virtual Garden Design: The Hourglass Garden

As I read more garden blogs, seed catalogs, and visit other gardens, I feel compelled to collect and admire more perennials. The trouble is, where would I put more plants? I need a new flower bed, which is plainly obvious to me (if only resident-lawnmower-man had the same divine vision). I had an idea for a flower bed in the center of the lawn earlier this year, but it didn't appeal to RLM.

Thanks to a landscaping computer program, I have a 3D model of our house and yard to play with. Recently, I came up with a series of designs and consulted with RLM about them. He settled on this final design, while mocking my enthusiasm for virtual mulch-spreading and digital hosta-planting. I call the design the "Hourglass Garden".

So in the manner of HGTV, here is the yard "before" the proposed new flowerbed. There are four "Carmine Jewel" tart cherries in the lawn, and the flowerbed will incorporate the two nearest the back of the yard.

Here is the yard "after" the new flower bed. I hope the new flowerbed matches the scale of the other beds in the yard. It would be nice to put a flowerbed close to the front of the yard, where it is more visible from the road. However, it would be destroyed by snowplow's heaved gravel or the temporary spring pond created by the mountain of melting snow.

A top-down view of the yard with the new hourglass flowerbed. We built the two stone-wall raised beds two years ago. The center of the lawn features an established blue spruce, a crabapple, 3 sandcherries, and 4 young tart cherries.

A view from the front of the new flowerbed. It would be edged with stones, to match the stonework in the rest of the yard. I would surround the plants with cedar bark mulch.

Another front view. I think this bed would create a "garden room" in the back area of lawn. I hope it doesn't look silly to separate the lawn like this.

Do you like the random person in my virtual yard? I just thought it was fun to use this feature of the program. The area beyond the road is not really a vast grassland, but a lake with hundreds of little islands. It was just too difficult to add to the computer model.

Left side of the hourglass. I have always wanted a bench to sit and ponder the flowers, so I've put one under the mature willow tree. I will probably use dry-tolerant plants in this bed to accommodate the tart cherries, which need to be dry in late summer and fall. Of course, without the lawn around them, they might soak up more moisture.

Arbour at the center of the hourglass. RLM figures this flowerbed design would work well because we could create it in steps, making the right side first.

The view down the left side of the yard.

You can click on any of the photos to see a larger image. So what do you think? Is anybody else doing virtual landscaping?

Gardening Goes High-Tech

Resident-lawnmower-man (RLM) could only sigh about this one...no I do not have a Playstation or Wii or Xbox or even a fancy new iPod. No, I've been playing with landscaping software. I previously had bought a similar type of (cheaper) software that you could use to design homes for fun, but it had some terrible programming and the bugs precluded its successful use. Recently, I've been thinking about replacing more lawn with a large bed containing the trees and shrubs in the center of the lawn, but I'm hesitant to go out there and actually do it.

Here you can see the existing yard and the new digital design - from the front of the yard:

Currently RLM has to mow and trim around the trees and I've noticed damage on the base of the crabapple. Okay, so it's more than an issue of saving the trees and reducing lawn-mowing, and I have been envisioning more flowers, more shrubs, and perhaps an artful arrangement of rocks on the center of the yard. I have no idea what kind of style you would call it, but it would have to reflect the flowing curves of the current rock walls. RLM wanted a "dry creek bed" design, I'm suggesting more "stones strewn around by twirling glaciers". I figure that this bed can have bark mulch as groundcover around all the plants and I'd use only hardy, low-maintenance shrubs and perennials in the bed. It would be edged with black plastic edging for ease of maintenance.

From the deck on the second floor:

Maybe I was inspired by those reality TV shows that use computers to virtually landscape yards and put new shutters on the houses (or at least I know that RLM is a sucker for these shows and maybe he'll like my digital design). I made a 3D model of my house, the terrain, and existing landscaping of my lot and then plunked down my new flowerbed. The program is amazing, I must say. It is powerful in that they have thousands of plants, trees, shrubs and all the miscellaneous features (gnomes, edging, lights, mulch, benches, BBQs) you might want. You can customize the 3D model to accurately match your yard and house, but the terrain landscaping (elevations at various points in the yard) is a bit difficult to set up. This isn't so much the program's fault but the fact that I don't have a topographical map of my uneven and hilly yard, so I had to make some guesses and I think I got it "good enough".

From the back yard:

Potential plants in my new bed:

• Echinacea
• Stonecrop
• Alpine Currants
• "Silvermound" Artemisia
• Bergenia cordifolia
• Bird's Nest spruce
• Potentilla fruticosa
• maybe Solomon's Seal
• The area already contains: 1 Colorado blue spruce, 3 sandcherries, 3 Carmine Jewel tart cherries, and a pink Japanese flowering crabapple.

Feedback anyone? You know, this is the ultimate answer to a rainy day in the garden - virtual indoor gardening! I bought the program from this site, if anyone should want to check it out (I'm not advertising here). You'd probably want to be pretty comfortable with your computer and have a 3D video card to be able to use this program. My computer is 3 yrs old but I've installed more RAM and a new 3D video card.

Smokey the Garden Bear

dThe before and after pictures: We got crushed rock and spread it over the driveway last weekend. Much improved I say, because it makes my plants along the driveway look even better!

The Sask Environment website lists 26 new fires in the La Ronge Fire Center area today and the smoke is quite heavy. It has caused the moon to be an eerie shade of orange.
It sounds like the fires are just north of town but not threatening the town of La Ronge directly. Regardless, the resident-lawnmower-man decided not to go plant shopping with me at the nearest garden center (2hrs 20 min away) in Prince Albert.
[Incidentally, would you believe Superstore is selling apricots for $2.48 per lb!! Another excellent reason to move to B.C.]
I'm believing that lawnmower-man planned to heroically guard the garden with a hose in case of disaster (or maybe he just wanted to be home with the ice cream).