Finding focus
With the bones of the garden laid bare, this season is the ideal time to decide on the placement of focal points to add interest and draw the eye
Winter is the perfect opportunity to examine the structure and design of your garden. In a quiet moment, take time to stand and stare and see where your eye falls. Focal points are an important element in any outdoor space, acting as visual punctuation marks, bringing focus and commanding attention – yet they should not dominate the landscape.
Even the best planned gardens have a few dead corners, but look at these instead as opportunities to add decorative impact. This may be with an eye-catching urn, sculpture, birdbath, container, water feature, seating, sundial, architectural plant or painted trompe l’oeil.
Our eyes seek out variations in size, form, colour and texture when viewing our surroundings. When we study a garden we look for objects that will help us to assess distance and depth. Your eye can quickly sweep along swathes of planting, so placing an intentional focal point, or points, prompts you to pause and slowly take in each element individually. It in effect encourages you look around and notice the planting before the rest of the garden reveals itself to you.
DIRECTING THE EYE
It is the placement of focal points that lends a garden distinction. Identify the blank spaces to which the eye naturally travels and they could become star points. Study your landscape from both inside and out: where are the dark spots or the green zones with too much repetitive foliage where it would be useful to break up the monotony? You may need an injection of colour or ornamental detailing. These are especially valued through winter when plants are not flowering.
Taking pictures may help to assess the vignettes and vistas, allowing you to adjust placement or colour schemes, and highlighting empty spaces or where you need to camouflage unattractive spots.
Place focal points where you would like people to look, simultaneously disguising less appealing scenes, or to lure explorers onwards to other rooms or areas of the garden. The concept of a garden axis helps guide placement. Linear structures and elements that attract and then direct the eye, such as allées, avenues, borders and pathways, are ideal for punctuating with a focal point. Placed at the end of the space as a visual full stop, they keep the eye moving forward, while on the sides they create a sense of greater width and an illusion of space.
As a general rule, excess is the enemy of quality when it comes to garden ornamentation. Try to restrict yourself to a single focal point in a garden space or view to avoid a cluttered look where the eye can’t rest effectively. Select items in scale with both the whole garden as well as the particular location they are placed.
Focal points aren’t only for grand landscapes with long vistas – they belong equally in small cottage gardens, or tiny courtyards, where having something beautiful to look at will expand rather than diminish the sense of space. To increase the effect, use as large a piece as possible for a strong focal point, while keeping it in scale for the setting.
SELECTING THE PIECE
Choosing statuary and sculpture is a matter of personal taste, but figurative statuary tends to suit a formal garden, whereas natural materials look at home in cottage gardens. Sculpture can be serious or fun, whimsical or dramatic to reflect your personality; you can even create your own with objects you’ve found or recycled items. Often older pieces are more intrinsically interesting, with a lovely patina or lichen-clad charm that works well with the characteristics of period architecture.
Recycling and upcycling offers a plethora of choices – from planting up an old bicycle or wheelbarrow with annuals, placing a mirror on a garden wall, potting flowers in old china, to creating a unique masterpiece with items such as fallen branches, woven stems, tiny terracotta pots, broken china mosaics or painted birdhouses.
Be creative and add your finishing touches to your garden. No matter what the discipline, ornamentation is the difference between design and function.
Tips for focal points
● Keep in mind the response you want a piece to elicit – a sense of calm, humour, mystery, surprise or simply admiration of beauty.
● Elevating sculpture or placing an urn on a plinth gives it greater prominence. The plinth should match or be complementary so that the focus is on the urn or sculpture.
● Plants gently cascading down the sides of an urn will help to accentuate its elegant lines. Or a glazed urn converted into a bubbling water feature will offer twice the impact.
● Soft, feathery groundcover plants, such as erigeron or a hazy border of silver-grey lavender, are a delightful foil for the strong, vertical lines of a plinth.
● Box or hedging plants give a more formal setting around a piece.
● Birdbaths are an ideal quick-fix focal point. Placed in the middle of a garden bed, they can highlight your favourite plants while also attracting passing feathered friends.
● A vine-covered pergola acts as an arcade to a decorative feature.
● Seats and benches can be used as focal points, placed in an arbour or between matching pots.
● Look for weathered classical sculpture rather than clean, stark white pieces that may jar with the natural surroundings.
● Sculptures made of natural materials work well in a naturalistic-style garden.
● If you have an impressive tree that is already ➤
a focal point, consider enhancing it with vines and a pretty birdhouse.
● When using an architectural plant as a focal point, ensure it will remain healthy and has a long season of interest, or you will be drawing the eye to a negative feature.
● Think much the same as you would when styling home interiors: when you draw the eye to such objects as a fireplace or a painting, the surrounding furnishings of planting or features are used to balance and accent the effect.
Where to source
The sculpture Website: a comprehensive listing, from figurative to abstract, including where to buy and exhibitions (thesculpturewebsite.co.uk)
garden site: find garden ornaments, urns, fountains and sculpture (gardensite.co.uk)
Architectural heritage: good quality antique and reproduction ornaments and statuary (architectural-heritage.co.uk)
haddonstone: an extensive collection of stonework ornaments and water features, also with a display garden (haddonstone.com)
garden ART And sculpture: outdoor sculptural pieces and art with a rusty patina (gardenartandsculpture.co.uk)
Gardens and sculpture parks to visit
hannah peschar sculpture garden, Black and
White Cottage, Ockley, Surrey RH5 5QR. A changing collection of sculpture, both traditional and contemporary. Open March to October, Thursday to Sunday. Admission adult, £10; child (ages 4-16) £7. Tel: 01306 627269; hannahpescharsculpture.com pashley Manor gardens, Ticehurst, East Sussex
TN5 7HE. Sculpture for sale displayed in the gardens, plus annual Sculpture in Particular event in summer. Open 2 April to 28 September 2019, Tuesday to Saturday. Admission £11. Tel: 01580 200888; pashleymanorgardens.co.uk yorkshire sculpture park, West Bretton, Wakefield WF4 4JX. Britain’s first and greatest sculpture park. On a grand scale but inspiring. Open daily (10am5pm). Free entry. Tel: 01924 832631; ysp.org.uk Chilstone, Langton Green, Kent TN3 0RD. Creators of reproduction ornaments and stonework based in the Kent countryside, with a show garden and sculpture walks. Open Mon-sat (9am-5pm).
Tel: 01892 740866; chilstone.com