Second in the series article
Beautiful and Enjoyable Garden Design is More than a Collection of Good Plants
This issue we're looking at value, color and form as the elements of design and dominance and alignment as the ways of achieving compositional unity.
If you would like to read the first in this series of garden design articles, please click here.
In review, good design is the organization of the elements of design into a compositionally unified whole.
Why does unity matter? It's simple. If your garden design doesn't have compositional unity, then your design just doesn't work. It would be like running outside and planting your new flowers wherever you spotted a space in your yard that day. Soon you would have a hodgepodge of plantings with no unifying design. Your eye would hop from spot to spot in your yard without a clue where to look first. If your garden were large or small, you would look at your garden and it would feel like it was several gardens working at odds with each other rather than working together in a unified design. That's the difference between a design that works and one that doesn't work.
Shape and Form
When you look at the world, you usually don't see simple shapes like the circle at right. Rather you see forms. The difference is three dimensionality.
When we layout your garden designs, we draw out simple shapes on paper or break out the garden hoses to "draw" the idea directly on the yard. This gives us a clear idea of where everything goes in relationship to one another. However, it's when we give the shapes form with the fullness of raised beds and dimensionality of plantings that the design really takes off.
Value and Color
One of the ways that this depth is defined is through value and color applied to the shape. Think of a circle. Now think of a sphere. You have just imagined value applied to the shape.
Think of value as degrees of darkness or lightness on a scale of one to five or white to light gray, to mid gray, to dark gray and finally to black. To better see a light flower, contrast it next to a dark flower. And try to cover the complete range of value in your garden. How dull the scene would be if the entire garden view fell into the mid range of values. The sparkle of bright areas contrasted against the depth of the darkest leaves increases the interest of your garden layout.
Whenever you can add dimensionality to your garden design, you involve the viewer in the design. Shape is important but form literally rounds out the composition.
Primary and Secondary Color, Complementary Color and Analogous Color
When you plan your flower plantings and their relationships one to another, how they relate in terms of color is important. Looking at the color chart to the right, your primary colors are red, yellow and blue. When you blend these you get the secondary colors of orange, green and violet.
If you look across the chart to the opposite colors, you have complementary colors and if you look at colors beside one another you have the analogous colors. To plant a red clump beside an orange clump minimizes the colors just like planting a blue bloom next to a violet bloom would. This can be soothing to the eye in the commonality of the colors. However to make the plants pop out of the composition you're planning, plant a yellow clump next to a violet color. The complementary colors intensify one another and you have a color scheme that engages you like a Matisse painting.
How many times have you seen someone's garden layout with their daylily collection grouped by color? When you see several yellow daylilies all together, that is all you see - the group. There is little distinctive difference in the flowers among the plantings but instead a mass of similar flowers. In this case there is no contrast in value or color. How much more a clump of red flowers stand out when they are placed next to white blooms. And how boring a bed can seem when all the blooms are various degrees of red. The eye is lost in the similarity.
Dominance
While you use the above elements of design in your garden landscape, they alone to not unify your yard. One of the most common and instinctive methods of doing this is with dominance. Whether it's a major feature such as a water garden or a unique flowering tree, a dominant attraction in your design gives the eye a place to start its examination of the view and a place to finish.
When you look at the illustration here, the red triangle provides the dominance to the composition. Even though there are linear and circular shapes to complete the design, the triangle holds it all together with its dominant presence.
Alignment
People also use alignment to instinctively hold the composition together -- to stitch together the scene from left to right. Most photographers incorporate a horizon line into their photo composition. This line ties the different parts of the design together with a continuity of line. However, a more interesting use of this unity device is coincidence of edge where the line is suggested in parts and the eye links the pieces together.
Adding to the above illustration are the alignment devices of continuity and coincidence of edge which further unify the composition. These are easily differentiated when you look at the two lines in the composition. The solid line across the design helps hold everything together like a bed of flowers stretching along the back side of the yard would do. However, we find a coincidence of edge to be much more interesting because this involves the view who must complete the line as in the broken line above. With this concept, you would have a more engaging garden if you broke up that long garden bed along you back boundary into two or three gardens interspersed with lawn or something else. As your visitors stood back to view the length of the yard, they would see the whole expanse, however, their eye would become involved in connecting the edges together into a unified composition.
A coincidence of edge can be incorporated into your garden with curves as well as straight lines. Look at the circles above which work together now to form a curved line from lower right to mid design when your eye connects the dots. 
Pictured here is the stunning garden of Gary and Carol Osborne of Daleville, VA and photographed by Julie Covington of Roanoke, VA. This and other photographs by Julie are featured in the 2001 Eureka Daylily Reference Guide.
Next month we will look at pattern and texture as our elements of design and repetition and grouping as our means of achieving compositional unity..