Garden Design: the luxury of tranquillity
Quietness is not a luxury exclusive to country gardens: with careful planning, even a narrow city balcony can be transformed into the ideal space for recreating truly impressive roof gardens. In fact, by carefully choosing materials, especially in tight spaces, and by balancing green elements and furnishings in the right way, an area for rest and contemplation can be created even on long, narrow balconies or with little sunlight.
This is the new frontier of garden design, a professional discipline specialising in the design, arrangement and management of ornamental greenery, which is increasingly being applied in roof gardens and urban gardens, green roofs and garden terraces.
In the city as in the country, the relaxing pleasure of nature
Even a confined area with little light can lend itself to original and impressive solutions, as long as the plants and materials are chosen with great care: a combination of dense, well-tended plants will give even a terrace in the middle of the city centre a wild look, and by alternating spaces with different plantings, you will have flowering and evergreen plants in rotation even during the winter months.
For the flooring, a wooden parquet floor will immediately give even a very small space a feeling of warmth and cosiness. It is best to choose a durable, outdoor-treated wood, laid with the planks lengthwise, so that the space is ideally expanded.
Furnishings sized for small spaces, with transparent or textured surfaces, will be visually less cluttered, and plants, placed in containers and pots custom-made against the outlook, will create a curtain of different textures, emphasising the quality of the materials chosen.
The secret is to create continuous, rather high containers that allow the plants to be at eye level: when you sit down, the plants will create a pleasant visual barrier and give the idea of being immersed in a country garden.
Outdoor lanterns with a dominant yellow light will finally provide a comfortable and restful atmosphere and contribute to perspective effects.
Roof gardens: a private oasis
Living in the city or in an apartment building without having a garden does not necessarily mean having to give up having your own private green space.
All it takes is a few well-chosen and well-tended plants to feel like a small oasis, a private roof garden: no worries for those who suffer from pollen allergies, just turn to plants such as horsetail (which resembles grasses), or entomophilous pollinating plants such as myrtle, maples, lilacs.
Some solutions that can guide the choice of vegetation are certainly exoticism and suppleness: a light breeze is enough to fill the air with the delicate rustle of bamboo or tree ferns, giving a wild and primitive look to the terrace.
Here and there a few flower bright colours, as if winking at the surrounding quietness.
If space permits, a corner of the terrace to wellness, recreating a sort of small spa surrounded by greenery, by including a whirlpool bath, with clean, flowing lines, equipped with a rain showerhead to complete a restful and gratifying bath.
Wisely placed spotlights among the vegetation are indispensable, which will emphasise the unusual shapes of the leaves, creating striking effects even during daylight hours, but above all will make the terrace usable during the evening hours, to share a dinner with friends or simply relax after a long day at work.
Quietness will also be ensured by the choice of colours of the furniture materials and lights. Warm, soft colours, such as earthy colours, should be preferred: too strong lights that could somehow disturb the overall atmosphere of the terrace should be avoided.
Finally, to give a touch high-tech to your private oasis, if you love music, you will find a wall- or ceiling-mounted loudspeaker system - with water-proof remote control, of course!
Between home and sky, the green design of Cristina Mazzucchelli
The study Green Design by Cristina Mazzucchelli, has been designing and converting anonymous spaces into green terraces in Milan; the 'Between Earth and Sky' project involved the creation of a large green room, divided into various functional rooms and in visual continuity with the dining room and kitchen, which unites the home with the landscape in a riot of fluffy foliage and light, cloud-like blooms.
Do you also want to design green spaces? Choose the master's degree in Garden Design by Italian Design Institute.
