Creating Focal Points in the Garden

Creating Focal Points in the Garden – In this video we talk about using using plants and other things to create focal points in the garden.

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Welcome to Hort tube my name is Jim putam in this video we’re going to talk about focal points in the garden uh these are things that kind of lead the eye uh maybe on a corner of a path the corner of a house the corner of something we’re going to talk through

How to think about having focal points in your garden this uh gold weeping Red Bud happens to be a focal point you know when it leavs out in the spring it has these big beautiful gold uh gold leaves a little bit of uh little bit of pink in

The new growth as well the the stems on it uh in the new growth during the season are colorful and even in the winter time here we are with this upright structure here in the garden and it was placed here uh in this particular spot for a reason and that’s what we’re

Going to talk through in this video one of the big values of having focal points in the garden and we’ll talk about other things that can be focal points than trees as well in this video uh is that they can sit at the end of paths

Uh like the again like this weeping Red Bud okay so you got this path that runs you know straight to me from a you know from a gate uh that’s behind the camera right now and as uh stuff progresses with the camera uh you know again this

Is this is I mean it’s not quite at the end of the path it’s slightly offset from it but you get to this point where you have you can go right or you can go left uh and then then you know over here to the right we made the shed one of the

Focal points at the end of the path so you take one path lead you to a focal point okay and then when you get to there then you have a decision to make and hopefully you look left and right and at the end of those lines you also

Have some sort of focal point uh that’s a you know big impact item in the garden the scale of your focal points really matters uh I talk about this in consultations quite a bit where somebody’s in a really large Suburban House on a very large lot you do need to

Find spaces in a landscape like that to put things in that you know have some size to them uh to to fit the scale of the Gard you know to fit the scale of the size of the lot and the size of the house we’re on 0.19 acres here in Riley

North Carolina it would make no sense to put something in that’s going to get 75 ft tall it’s just going to be so out of scale uh in this Garden or a giant Fountain you know with a lady holding an ear you know above her head or you know

Whatever it is a giant Fountain uh just wouldn’t work you know in the scale of this so picking your garden art your you know any again Fountain any kind even if you were putting in some some sort of other water feature you know wouldn’t if

I did half of this front garden with a giant waterfall that’s 6 feet tall it just is not going to fit this space I can do that I just need to scale it to the size this um Evergreen Dogwood is one of our main focal points out here

Steph is standing on the front garden steps out here and so we have you know this and a line of sight from the front and it’s going to have seasonal changes on it uh it’s pretty big uh the house is so this is not a plant we could probably

Put up against the house over here in order to have something of this size we need to move it out a bit uh and it needs to have a have a point where it’s you know 15 ft or something like that it’s probably about the the tallest

Thing we would want out here to fit the scale of the property and fit the scale of the house we just recently in a video moved this contorted ukama Japanese maple uh to this to this spot and so we have a screen porch back here and just

Looking out of it realized first of all this was in a terrible spot to be able to see the fact that I’ve contorted the trunk over the years so we wanted to get it out to where it was in a spot that we would consider a focal point and this

One just kind of lines up with the uh back door on the screen porch uh one of the uh one of the things about focal points is the seasonal changes that can occur in them so this obviously right now it just has this contorted trunk uh

And is not as interesting uh as it might be other times of the year whereas we’re here in December we’re going to have conifers uh in the garden it could be interesting you know something like a blue spruce you know would be an example of that or some sort of weeping Atlas

Cedar uh something that’s contorted uh that doesn’t change you know Season to season this uh gold Holly back here would be an example of that it just kind of you don’t really pay any attention to it until things started to you know go to sleep and then

All of a sudden the uh the golden Oakland Holly became becomes a bit of a star out here through the through the winter months the uh the Weeping Red Bud that we started the conversation with here happens to look great as it leavs out it has again that

Beautiful gold foliage and then when it’s dormant you know it has that weeping habit so it still has some interest so you may have seasonal change where a focal point actually changes during the se you know during during the growing season maybe it’s something leafing out with fresh new foliage that

Draws the eye in uh and then later something that’s close by it comes into flower and it flowers for some period of time and that creates the focal point it may be fall color it might be again conifers and and ver and gold and uh chartreuse Evergreen plants that really

Really show off during the winter months uh and so those those changes can happen during the year and actually kind of change your focal points uh in the garden so reiterating focal points can be flowers foliage color fall color you know the the shape or the structure of

The plant the you know but as plant collectors sometimes we can take this a little too far and I think we have an example of that right here I have this fantastic interesting contorted shape of this Japanese maple with great spring color and then great fall color uh then

Why not throw in a butterfly bush that blooms during the summertime that has this kind of blue green foliage and the Holly that I had pointed out with the chartreuse color on it uh the white wedding hydrangeas back here which come into flower you know mid summer and

Bloom until fall all of them individually are probably great focal point pieces uh but we’ve overdone it a bit and we’re in the process of redesigning some spaces out here cuz again we’re just you know plant collectors and we’re buying all these plants and a lot of them would fit the

Bill for being focal points individually uh but we’ve we we’ve got a little bit of rearranging to do here uh maybe a couple things actually have to go because I’m surrounded by what amounts to six focal points in this one space right now or it could be individually uh

Focal points and that’s okay you may have a two you know a couple things together again that could reiterate you know that they’re you or they doing different things at different times right and that’s okay but I think once you get to a certain point though um you

Know we need to let one or two things that are in this section really shine on their own so we’re in the process of figuring that out in our own garden all kinds of things can be focal points in the garden it’s not just a plant or you

Know an interesting weeping plant or you know something that shows off because of you know flower color or whatever it can also be garden art it can be Arbors we actually when the new point the new porch went on the house uh there’s some metal work that was part of the old

Porch PCH that we have over here on the side of the house that’s actually going to become an arbor entrance here so we’ll have um you know literally taken a part off the house and made this entry way a little more a little more formal uh entryway to the Garden it can be

Fountains it can be a large container you know a big beautiful container that you love uh waterfalls there’s all kinds of things we it can also be a destination in the garden this front Turf area at some point here is going to go and we’re going to have a bench

Seating area out in the front garden that will be you know basically a destination uh we’ll have you know some you know some sort of pathway that will lead your eye to it um in the garden uh sometimes sometimes it’s also texture which is this one’s really really

Interesting this is a Shasta viburnum that we’ve been tree forming I’ve been limming it up over time it has this beautiful textured leaves on it it flowers but more importantly the the texture T of the of the foliage is just incredible it was just a big open shrub

And we’ve kind of turned it into a focal point by limming it up we’ve allowed us to to put some things up under it and now it really draws the eye into the end of this lawn area another chaos spot we have uh this tree formed Indian

Hawthorne which is definitely here as a focal point and it will absolutely stay here one of our favorite plants in the garden we have two other items right beside it that would also be focal points on their own uh in the garden but right now they’ve just kind of created a

Little bit of chaos uh this viburnum over here was always going to move uh but I also have another uh limed up cestrum back here behind it and we again we’re in the process of redesigning this and thinking through it and thinking about well we have these really amazing

Interesting pieces here that lead your eye and can lead you through the garden but a couple of them are just a bit of chaos around them and I think once we move a couple things these individual things are really really going to stand out in the garden and lead you through

It I’d highly recommend that you make some sort of really you know basic drawing and think about where you come out of your house windows that you look out of if you have a you know living room window that happens to have a view of your back Garden or your front garden

Or you know again a rear you know whatever exit you’re taking out of the back of the house and think about lining those focal points up with that so this being our front steps here we have this straightaway little Stone path that I did here we’re going to put that Arbor

Uh over over that entryway there uh the Dogwood is is already here you know when you take this right I just showed you the viburnum and the uh and the tree formed Indian Hawthorne over here to this side but then we have negative focal points we have you know our cars

Are over here in the driveway uh you know we have cars parked on the street in front of us here we’re just in an urban space and there’s a lot of you know a lot of people parking on the roads you can probably see up you know

Up the road now so you know we’re in the process of kind of thinking out you know when we come out the door here how can you basically take your eye away from those negative focal points and so there’s probably some other thing that we’d like to do over here on this front

Corner that would be something that you would look at first but before you look at the more negative things that are parked around you or in the back Garden we have the screen porch which I you know was already talking about and when we started the video here you’re on the

End of this path coming in from the side of the house and that red bud is the focal point you know the shed uh back over here to the right uh you know is one of the focal points we just moved the Japanese maple that we pointed out over here which of

Course is asleep right now but then again we have another negative focal point back here which is the neighbor shed has got you know Green um mold on the back of it we have a couple plants that we’ve planted over there that are um we’ve got a screenplay Holly that’s

Growing very quickly uh but it’s just still going to be a minute before that you know before that thing is covered up we’ve planted a small Japanese maple over there that will eventually become the focal point of that corner for sure there’s a little time in between so

Again another negative focal point that we’ve been sitting here figuring you know trying to trying to take care of uh over some period of time because when I come out here I really don’t that’s not the thing that I want to see you know every time I walk out of the back porch

A couple of other focal points we have in the garden one is the Stellar Ruby Magnolia and it was placed out on a in a curve of a of of of pathway here to draw your eye to it and uh it just absolute perect you know it it grows like this on

Its own and is is a beautiful focal point have a a windmill Palm uh planted near the house on the corner over here again it’s it’s you know when you come out the door you know it’s the first thing you’re going to see to the right

And it’s where two the patio and a path kind of collide there so it’s placed it’s placed there with intent I say that and then you know I look around this garden and know that we have changes that we have to make I’m much better at

This I was much better at this as a landscaper installing other people’s Landscapes you know but as a plant collector in my own garden it is definitely a much harder thing to do to decide on just a few things that are going to be the focal points the end of

Paths the places would make you turn or you know you instead we’ve gone and we’ve you know lots and lots of plants have been planted out here and it just became an obvious thing that we needed to uh to move a few things around here and create real focal points and then

Have the other things be understory plants around those focal points to really allow them allow them to St and out so that’s the thing we’re working on uh this spring as we go forward designing our front Foundation area and uh other spaces in this Garden is reorganizing a bit we have great pieces

In place we have great pieces in place and you may decide that in your own garden that you have some sort of Great Piece that’s there that should be a focal point but you don’t have a path to it you don’t have a way to it you don’t

Have a thing that kind of draws them you know draws the eye to that space you may want to think about that too as you’re standing out there you know how can I how can I kind of make that you know the center of a bed you know maybe maybe

You’re expanding a bed redesigning your lawn in some way that puts that plant that you really love as kind of the centerpiece uh you know of of a garden space so there you go those are the things we’re working on this year um and uh uh focal points I think they’re one

Of the main you know one of the main things that leads people through a garden and uh really you know draws the eye in and hopefully to you know to positive focal points and not a couple of the negative focal points that everybody’s going to have right in any

Kind of garden space you’re going to have something that you’re trying not to look at uh and uh be careful this is another thing to be careful with if you plant something in the line of sight of something that is negative uh it may draw their eye in you know for some

Period of time before it become you know before it blocks it so you know that can happen as well thank you guys very much for following along with the channel