WHAT’S YOUR STYLE?
Everyone has a style that they use to express, either consciously or unconsciously, to the world and by doing so they say, “this is me, this is who I am”. They do it through the cloths they wear, their hair style, their jewelry, the watches they wear or choose not to wear, the vehicle they drive, coupled with other forms of personal expression.
Expressing your personal style is not just about decoration or how you compare yourself with others. It’s simply the understanding and expression of what makes you feel your best self, and by extension it includes the style of your condo home, and the adjacent outdoor spaces.
Your garden style is expressed by the sum of the parts including the plantings, hardscape materials, furnishings, decorative elements, and lighting to create the mood, all come together as a conscious expression of your style.
There are several different garden styles that have evolved over hundreds – if not thousands of years, referencing tropical, woodland, prairie, desert landscape types, and expressed in national styles such as English, Japanese, Italianate, French, Spanish and so on – styles you like in other areas of your life, and see if you can create a balcony or terrace garden version of these.
With so many styles to draw on it can be overwhelming for the nonprofessional to grasp. So, we have found that it’s always best to keep it as simple as possible when identifying your garden style, especially for the smallish spaces found on the sides or rooftops of low to high-rise residential buildings.
We’ve distilled design style selection down to four types: classic, contemporary, contemplative and nature style. By doing so really helps to eliminate confusion and helps owners focus first on a choice between creating a formal or informal space, before deciding on the design structural aof line, shape, form, texture, rhythm, balance and proportion and last but not least, colour. By understanding those elements, it’s so much easier to identify and bring the parts together to create and express your style through the plantscape, decking and building materials, furniture and accessories. By doing so, our clients find it a fun and rewarding experience to create visual harmony between the outside and the inside spaces of their home.
Outlined below are our definitions of the four styles, and as in other things in life, it’s not about absolutes, and so it goes with selecting your style, it’s often about the combination of two of the four styles is when magic happens.
THE FOUR STYLES
CLASSIC STYLE
Classic style is associated with orderliness and structure. For gardens it is expressed as an illusion of ‘nature’ controlled. They are characterized by straight lines, symmetrical shapes, forms and geometric borders. They have been linked with wealth and status because they are associated with grand homes and palaces. What some people find attractive about the classic formal design style is the simplicity of their forms and evergreen planting are ideally suited to year-round interest to fit small spaces. Balconies and terraces can be designed to be highly structured with formal topiary shaped plants or have a loose formality interspersed with loose drifts of flowers. They can be relatively easy to maintain hence suitable for today’s demanding lifestyle when treasuring our precious time is so important to us.
CONTEMPORARY STYLE
Contemporary design style reflects the world of our time to reflect current lifestyles. People are wanting to spend more time enjoying the outdoors spaces near their condo homes as an extension of their kitchens, living and dining rooms or bedrooms rather than simply a place for plants. The lines between inside and outside the home have become blurred. We often overlook that we live in livable winter cities and thus try to mimic the conditions found in warmer climes. Climate change is extending our shoulder seasons hence our relationship with our outdoor spaces is being repurposed to function as “outdoor rooms” and extensions of the interior spaces. The appearance of contemporary gardens has simple geometric forms, straight lines combined with clean, minimal plantings of ornamental grasses, horsetails, various shades of green to create an appearance clean looking garden. They have a variety of stylish accessories such as lighting, shade and heating systems and an array of furniture collections to match the taste, desired mood, feelings and aspirations of just about any condo homeowner. This style can appeal to families with young children as a space that both entertains and informs children. Key requirements include places to sunbathe, a place to the barbecue grill if permitted, a place to entertain family and friends, to grow plants in containers, and storage a variety of stuff. The contemporary style garden is ideally suited to balconies and terraces in low-rise, mid-rise and high-rise condominium communities.
CONTEMPLATIVE STYLE
The Contemplative style is symbolic of Japanese and Chinese gardens represented in miniature form of mountains, rivers and the oceans complete with symbolic shorelines, rivers, forests and trees providing a source of emotional stimulant and insight. With this style the balcony or terrace is designed as a contemplative place.
The natural elements are a combination of stone, and wood. Gravel is raked into meandering or curvilinear lines to represent “water and streams”. Boulders, natural or synthetic, represent mountain-scapes. Boxwood and tealeaf plant species are combined with clipped flowering shrubs including azaleas, ornamental Japanese maples, mosses, ferns, bamboo and ornamental grasses to create a contemplative mood and feeling. Feature objects, simple and restrained can be included as focal points for meditation.
Maintaining visual harmony is at the core of the comfortable minimal style garden and is ideal for small outdoor spaces like balconies and terraces where the structural elements of the ‘garden’ can be balanced and contained for a wonderful experience from inside and our side the glass.
NATURAL STYLE
The natural style emphasizes nature and an escape crazy pace of life in which we live. It is primarily a plantscape wonderland featuring informal planting, lawns, meandering narrow pathways, swaths of plants with an emphasis on flowering herbaceous plant species. It has rustic elements such as old pots, wood or stone benches. Focal points are included such as spires and treillage with climbing plants. It may have a chaotic, handcrafted appearance and be easy to look at but believe me when I say it requires skill, knowledge of plants to create the desired visual effect within the confined space and meeting rigorous constraints of a balcony or even a large terrace. It is best left to professionals to create.
Discover Your Unique Balcony or Terrace Style!
Ready to bring your personal style to life on your balcony or terrace? Find out what style best suits your space and personality with our Style Selector Quiz! Take this quick, fun quiz to get personalized recommendations that reflect who you are, and start transforming your outdoor space into your ideal retreat.