Creating Rhythm in Your Landscape

Creating rhythm in outdoor spaces, gardens, and landscapes is all about repetition, patterns, and movement.  Dancing to the beat of a drum is one way to describe the experience of landscape rhythm.  In design, it is not necessarily the choices in materials or features, but rather how they relate to one another in a rhythmic pattern.   
 
Rhythm affects how fast you move both physically and visually.  You may meander from side to side along a pathway, stop to pause, or be visually taken to a focal point far in the distance.  Repetition is the most effective way to create rhythm in a landscape.  It may be as simple as lining a driveway with evenly spaced trees or using the same colors, materials, or textures.  Repeating similar elements helps to create a visual rhythm that leads you through a garden from one element to the next.    
 
One favorite way to create rhythm is with large boulders and rock columns.  Placing repeating clusters within the landscape or along a pathway creates a familiar rhythm and beat.  Patterns also generate a sense of rhythm.  The most pleasing patterns are found naturally in landscapes such as curves, circles, and spirals.  Repeating the same patterns throughout a garden or landscape provides a common thread and rhythmic unity. 
 
Keeping a beat, whether fast, slow, or intermittent pause can have a profound influence on the success of your outdoor space, garden, or overall landscape.  When creating your design just remember to dance to the beat of your own drum!
 
About Our Firm
BauerCombs Landscape Architects serves the greater Puget Sound, Seattle, and Eastside areas.  We specialize in luxury landscapes for private residences, resorts, and senior living campuses.  As a Northwest leader in sensory landscape design, our captivating landscapes bring refreshing life to outdoor spaces through the artistic balance of sight, color, scent, touch, taste, and sound.

We are excited to say that our landscape work has been published in several magazines and continues to grow in reputation for creating healthy outdoor living environments for people and communities.
 
Author: Susan Combs Bauer, Landscape Architect, Copyright © 2018 BauerCombs & Associates, Inc. www.bauercombs.com (425) 496-7772