9 general gardening tips for designing a beautiful outdoor space

Some basic considerations can add real dimension, style and functionality to your garden. Keep these tips in mind at the outset when you're designing your home's garden.

If your land is flat, you can vary the terrain by building berms, or mounds of soil.

• Either raise the whole bed on one berm or make several to highlight various plant groupings.

Another way to add height to a flower bed is to accent the bed with climbers.

• You will get quick coverage on a trellis with fast-growing annual vines, such as morning glory, sweet pea or scarlet runner bean.

Before planting shrubs in a new bed, do a dry run to see how you like their colours and textures when they're placed in a group.

• Simply place them — still in their pots — in the desired locations, then stand back and take a critical look.
• If the arrangement doesn't appeal to you, it's very easy to change your plan before you plant the shrubs.

Besides beautifying the yard, flower beds can serve many purposes.

• Accent your front door by flanking it with beds of bright flowers, or hide the base of a chain-link fence with them.
• You can also use strategically placed beds to direct foot traffic or dramatize a turn in a walkway.
• Long-blooming annuals are often the most dependable sources of colour in flowerbeds, and they are invaluable for tying together the intermittent bloom times of perennials and shrubs.

Plants come in unlimited shapes and sizes, which you can use to great advantage. Think of your garden as an architect would a building — as a three-dimensional structure with line, scale and texture — and then use plants as the building blocks.

• For the framework, you can choose from a vast array of "architectural plants" — hardy specimens with well-defined silhouettes that lend durable and dramatic form to the landscape in all seasons.

Good architectural plants include trees, shrubs and ornamental grasses, which come in myriad shapes depending on the growth habit of the stems and foliage.

Whether alone or in a group, distinctly sculptural plants can establish a boundary, minimize a defect or provide an accent.

Architectural plants can also set a tone: a symmetrical evergreen hedge, for example, lends a formal look, while a well-placed weeping cherry sets a more relaxed mood.

Plant shapes can be used to achieve a variety of effects, too.

• In general, vertical forms, such as pyramids, columns and upright ovals, are eye-catchers, drawing the design of the garden skyward.
• Horizontal forms, including spreading and umbrella shapes, act as anchors, linking the garden to ground level.

Designing a garden from scratch can be an overwhelming task.

• When you take it one step at a time, one part of the garden at a time, you'll see that you too can design a stylish, functional and radiant outdoor space.