Simplicity, minimalism, geometric shapes, references to natural materials and carefully selected plants and trees are the quickest recipe for the perfect modern garden. We’ll give you some tips on how to design it.
The heart of a modern garden is undoubtedly the terrace, as this is where social life and most of our activities in spring and summer take place. It serves as an extension of the living room into the garden, and it is from here that paths lead to its various corners. Paths usually form a continuous surface or are laid using the step-by-step method. This involves placing slabs at a distance of one human step and filling the space between them with fine gravel or grass. In addition to paths, low walls, edging and palisades are also important components of garden design. With their help, we can divide the space into functional zones and create unique planters. Meanwhile, concrete edging, planters and fences add further essential elements to the composition. However, to create the garden of your dreams, you also need the right plants that harmonise with the modern style of your property.
The heart of the garden and its arteries
Before planting, we must create the right space for the plants, which means designing our ideal garden. Its heart will be the terrace, whose surface we will lay with geometrically shaped slabs in shades of grey. This year, hexagonal slabs, or honeycomb-shaped ones, are very much in vogue, such as those found at Polbruk Exa. Laying slabs in a herringbone pattern is gaining popularity – a design known since ancient times – and pavers are ideal for this style: Polbruk Metrik. Large-format slabs are also still very much in vogue (Polbruk Magna).
What adds character
A modern garden is also a space for many plants, such as ornamental grasses or compositions of perennials creating dry rain gardens, as well as vegetation arranged in clusters, for example, dwarf trees with a symmetrical habit. Vegetation is the true jewel in the crown of a modern garden, requiring a suitable, elegant yet minimalist setting. Concrete low walls and palisades provide the answer to this need. Using these products, we can create borders for flowerbeds and planters. One example of such functional solutions is the Albero low wall. It is a modern variation on the well-known boundary walls that stretch for miles across the fields of southern and western Europe. It comes in shades of grey, such as nerino (a blend of black and grey) and brenta (sand, white and graphite). Albero is a very fashionable solution designed for modern arrangements. It works perfectly as a planter filled with decorative green grass or barberry. For better contrast, white stones can be scattered around the plants. Albero also allows for the construction of small architectural features, such as cascades or fountain basin surrounds. In this way, you can introduce flowing water into your garden, which soothes the nerves after a hard day’s work.
The Tumbled, Zen, or Hestra palisades are ideal as planters, but they can also be used to build a garden wall. Their advantage lies in the varied heights of the elements and a colour scheme in shades of grey and brown. This allows you to create planters of varying heights (Zen – 30, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120 cm; Tumbled – 30 and 50 cm; Hestra – 60, 80 and 100 cm), adapting them to changes in ground level. In the spaces created in this way, we can plant dwarf trees, such as the palm maple, the warty birch or the noble laurel, or flowering shrubs, such as hydrangeas. Of course, it all depends on the amount of space we have available. If we have more space, we might be tempted to create a dry rain garden, framed by these palisades. This is a trendy solution that allows for water retention whilst also providing a setting for interesting plants such as winter horsetail, Siberian iris, water mint or creeping loosestrife.
The finishing touch
In turn, the perfect finishing touch for a modern garden design is the Murro fencing system. It consists of smooth-textured concrete blocks in a fairly large format (20x50.4 cm, 20 cm high). It allows you to erect an openwork or solid fence, to which you can additionally attach steel cables for climbing plants, such as green ivy, common ivy or the magnificently flowering wisteria. The green foliage will look particularly striking against a wall built from graphite or steel-coloured Murro blocks. We hope that the ideas above will inspire you to design the modern garden of your dreams – a space that you can enjoy sharing with your loved ones and friends during the summer months.
