Organizing your Gardens for a Piece of Paradise in your own Home During a Pandemic

By Amy U. Catalan

 

This is for all the plantitos and plantitas who love collecting plants, especially while we’re enduring this health crisis! Here are some ideas for your plants and gardens. May these inspire all of you to create wonderful spaces where you and your family can enjoy.  Please read on and start building that garden.

Beautiful plants and gardens evoke memories for the times when the world was greener, the air fresher, and the countries COVID-free. They bring to mind the happy days when life was easy and filled with familial affairs. As essential as they may seem in the hustle and bustle of today’s life, especially when COVID-19 has been ravaging our city these days, creating these gardens can add a relaxed and luxurious atmosphere that everyone longs for.

Gardens provide different moods through the creation of appealing designs that provide greenery within our reach, can make quarantine periods tolerable, and create refreshing surroundings.  These garden designs are reminiscent of the classical and modern gardens that the world has seen over the centuries. Furthermore, these garden designs also feature art and architecture that highlight the Ilonggos’ love for the finer things in life.

To recreate these classical gardens, landscapes as well as species of plants and flowers found in that era are featured. Floral lay-outs, furniture pieces and garden elements that evoke the sentiments of the classical period are included here. These gardens are patterned after nature with lakes, bridges and lawns, sloped and surrounded by groves of trees. Evergreen shrubs, climbers, roses, herbs, flowers, and bulbs are planted around the garden. Structural elements like gazebos, statues, fountains and temples are set-up to a backdrop of lush floral beds and walls of hedges that bring back the feel of the countryside in one’s own backyard in the city.

In gardens that feature many structures like vases, fountains and statues, the modern garden design takes centerstage. However, the shapes and structures of the garden are influenced by modern art characterized by abstract or cubism, a design that does not follow historical and literary influences of the classical design. The modern garden design follows abstract geometrical patterns with overlapping random arrangements of flowers, herbs and shrubs to a background of marble walls.

Cylindrical, spherical and conical shapes are dotted by a central theme. Although the spaces are warm, friendly and utilitarian, the modern garden design makes use of artistic spaces that provide foregrounding where formal geometry and ornamental planting is done. The middle ground is similar to a parkland, while the background maintains a wild and natural character.

Terraces, balustrades, trellises and flower beds are decorated around the house. Plant species that decorate a modern garden come from all parts of the world like yucca, canna, alocasia, red-hot poker, succulents, sedum, carex, Swiss cheese plant, lily turf and fatsia, just to name a few.

From the countryside landscape of the classical garden and the geometric design of a modern garden come the contemporary garden design that is characterized by white and green colors that provide an element of texture to the surroundings. Limestones or gravels and painted bricks are used to create spaces for foot walks and patios, the contemporary garden’s elegant centerpiece.

This garden design emphasizes repeated patterns that provide oneness and familiarity, having intervals of small trees, shrubs, bushes and ornamental flowers arranged in rows. There are plants at every corner that glue the scenery and provide borders around the space. Furniture pieces from driftwood are made into benches, tables and chairs to contrast the green and white theme. Contemporary gardens contain elegant blooms, grasses and sedge, bold foliage, shrubs and trees. Wooden fences are also installed as well as spotlights for lighting.

With these exquisite garden designs and ideas, idle spaces in the backyards can be transformed into beautiful and luxurious areas where one can relax and enjoy the comforts that nature can bring, and with a touch of art and elegant furniture, one’s day is capitulated with serenity and loveliness. Such garden spaces can neutralize the stress and anxieties that each one of us feels during these critical times. They can also help in maintaining our most favorable mental health throughout this quarantine period.