Garden Design

Our garden design for a private home in Bandung Indonesia

Grass is the most practical of ground covers. It is versatile and an ideal surface for sunning towels, running toddlers, practising golf and it provides a verdant outdoor carpet as a respite from tropical bushies. Coconut groves, front lawns and golf courses are three great cultural icons of the garden world.

Small areas of grass forced onto a landscape design can, however, look marginalized. Make sure when deciding on grass that you are choosing the right type - whether cow grass, manila grass, tufty japanese grass or couch - for the particular soil and sunlight conditions.

If you should decide to go with a ground cover plant in a courtyard, instead of grass, make sure that you know its growth cycle. The main purpose of ground covers is to hide the soil. Balding and patchy growth is unsightly. Many of the more attractive ground covers - like coleus, wedelia, creeping fern and portulaca - need seasonal planting or cutting back.

In large gardens, one can create great blocks of instant color with the clever use of colorful ground covers; for example, white cacti golden scindapsus, plum-coloured rhoeo, smokey silver bromeliads or glossy lime-green wedelia. In smaller courtyard spaces one can add mixes of ground covers, creating charming miniature gardens in the corners of the courtyards space, or at the "ankle" of shade trees and shrubs.

Our garden design using waterfall and pottery

With ground covers, choosing the right "bits and pieces", or carpets of colour, is the penultimate touch in a garden's design. It should be executed after the placement of the hardscape elements, the artworks and the lighting, and before the draping of softscape orchids and vines. 

Our garden design using stone waterfall and pottery