Transport Yourself to Asia With These Garden Design Tips

If you’ve ever wandered among the rocks and streams of a Zen garden, then you understand the power of landscape design. A well-planned garden isn’t just something you look at when you walk past it once or twice a week. The best gardens are both functional and magical. They take you out of your regular life and make you feel like you’ve stepped into another world. Use these garden design tips to transform your outdoor space into one that transports you to Asia.

Embrace Rocks and Water

When you travel in Asia, you’ll often see outdoor spaces that look like rock gardens with streams and ponds. Rocks should exist in their natural state where cracks and crags are visible, even desirable, and water features play a prominent part in the design. You can add floral touches by using water lilies or lotuses like the kind you’ll see if you book one of the enchanting Asia cruises that take you to Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and many more destinations.

Add Just a Touch of Color

You’ll notice that Asian-inspired gardens don’t go overboard when it comes to color. While certain garden elements such as bridges are often brightly colored in red or orange to act as a focal point for the space, the majority of an Asian garden should remain natural and weathered. Lush evergreen shrubs and the subtle hues of ornamental grasses, rock formations, and pastel flowers take precedence.

If you want to add color, choose one or two flowering plants that can pop in the space. But avoid using white flowers, as many cultures in Asia associate white with mourning.

Include Plants for All Seasons

One of the most beautiful things about an Asian-inspired garden is that it looks beautiful throughout the year because it includes plants that thrive in different seasons. While many Western-style gardens die off and go brown in the late fall and winter, Asian gardens often use evergreen shrubs and hardy plants that keep some of their greenery even in cold weather. You can also take guidance from Japanese gardens that embrace the changing fall foliage of maple trees, which add a gorgeous burst of color for a short period every year.

Let Nature Take Its Course

A strong distinction between Western and Asian gardens is the way that you have to maintain these spaces differently. You’ll notice in Western gardens that people prune shrubs and flower beds into unnatural and blocky shapes, and hard edges such as squares and rectangles dominate the landscape.

Asian gardens are not manicured in this way. To keep a different sensibility going in your garden, avoid pruning evergreens and shrubs into perfect shapes. When you have to, cut only what’s necessary for healthy growth, and don’t focus on a single shape.

For an Asian garden, it’s vital that Nature gets to take its course in your backyard. Keep things in flowing shapes with rounded garden beds and curving pathways, and get rid of all the cute law ornaments passed down from your parents. Those garden gnomes have no place in an Asian garden.

Avoid High-Maintenance Grass

One benefit of designing an Asian-inspired garden is that you don’t have to use high-maintenance grass. The kind of grass that most American yards use requires a huge amount of water and regular mowing.

Asian gardens don’t utilize grass as ground cover. Instead, you will use natural gravel and stones in areas meant for walking, and you might even put in a few wooden benches, decks, and pavilions in places you want to relax and sit down. If you need ground cover, moss should be your number one choice. When you can’t acquire moss, use more hardy ground cover plants that work well with your region’s climate. You might even want to use plants that are indigenous to your area.

For many centuries, people in Asia have viewed gardens as places where you can meditate and reflect on the natural progression of life in nature. Having an Asian-inspired garden in your backyard is a great way to add a tranquil space to your home.

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