Most of us are familiar with the different colors in our landscape design, but what we often overlook is the consideration of form and texture. Using innovative textures and surfaces combined with carefully chosen shapes and colors will create a garden or landscape of lasting beauty and elegance. Identifying your own style through the use of texture places your own signature to a new and exciting garden art form. I have created ten rules that I utilize as a guide for choosing various textures in the landscape:

1. Start with simplicity. Use a common theme throughout the landscape. Let the landscape be relaxing to the eye and peaceful to the soul. Frank Lloyd Wright said it best: “Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art."

2. Be bold with the use of texture. One large artistic piece is much more impressive than several small or medium pieces. This applies to flower pots, boulders and/or plant specimens.

3. Create a connection between the garden and the home through the use of texture. If the home is a Southwest stucco style, in most cases, using earthy materials such as flagstone, boulders and a more Southwest scheme provides a synergist appeal. For more traditional stucco or brick houses, you might use brick as the basic theme to build raised planters, borders and patios.

4. Locate the focal point. Most often, you will want the focal point to highlight the front door of the house. We use heavier and taller plants toward the back and sides of the front door so the eye migrates to the center focal point.

5. Determine where you want to spend your relaxation time. A well-textured landscape requires some homework. Take the time to discover where you feel the most centered. When you locate this spot, plan for texture to include shade trees and comfortable seating.

6. Don’t waste your time and money. Do not try to buy plants at the local retail store that do not belong in the landscape scheme. You will ultimately be dissatisfied and will need to replace these plants as the design begins to take shape. For example, buying beautiful rhododendrons or camellias in the spring can be tempting, but they don’t grow well in the dry, hot climate of the Southwest.

7. Use water as texture. Water is a wonderful addition to the texture of a garden. Water features provide audio and visual relaxation as well as the capability to enhance your environment with animal life. Most water features can be built in a weekend and with proper planning and instruction, can be very easy to maintain.

8. The Nighttime Garden. Night lighting on heavily textured elements create a very rich garden. For example: Lights in a water feature show the movement of the water at night and also illuminate koi and any other animal life that you may have growing in your pond. This is extremely exciting and now presents an entirely different feeling to the senses. We also use lighting against boulders and stonework, which creates an impressive artistic appeal to the night garden.

9. Color. Using color and texture symbiotically can create a look and feel of a professionally designed garden. Start with large bands of the same plant and the same color. For example, one of my favorite combinations is spiky textures of Victoria blue salvias and then 30 or 40 purple lantana. Purple and blue are complimentary colors and both are perennials, so they will return every year. Also, don’t forget green is a color. Using variations of light green in front of a dark green backdrop in most cases is showier than most flower gardens. My favorite combination is a light green sweet potato plant in front of little mic japonica.

10. Choose rock for texture. Living in the Southwest, most likely you have some rock in your existing landscape. I am not a huge fan of mixing colors of rock, but I am a fan of mixing sizes of rock. Use 3/8 or 3/4 -inch rock for flat areas, then graduate to a larger size rock for slopes and contours using the same color. Finally, use rock fines or screenings for higher traffic areas walking to the garden or to the house. The eye will pick up on all three of those textures, but using different colors just creates a sense of chaos instead of simplicity.

As you can see, the use of texture can add additional artistic appeal to your landscape that is timeless as well as easy to maintain. I hope these guidelines will help you chose new and exciting materials when designing your next landscape project.