Contemporary garden design came about as land areas for gardening became less and less for house owners in the urban areas. With the small land areas, many landowners who are urbanites will prefer a modern look to their garden, just to match their personality and lifestyle. Cultivating plants for eating is not in their minds. They rather spend their time maintaining their cool-looking garden. So that would mean a fresh, modern and energetic landscaping.
But how do you classify a contemporary design? Well for one, you will know once you see it. The most important characteristics for a modern design is the use of modern elements such as cement and marble slabs.
The use of cement especially as retaining container for some part of the garden immediately gives the garden a modern face. Those with big budget can have an artificial waterfall oozing out of the vertical marble slab.
Many of the new designs highlights the space, no matter how little there is available. Plants are pushed to the edge and the middle area is filled with flat green grass, with stone or wood walkways across the space. The walkways can be covered with large stones with the flat side up or small pebbles of stones mixed with cement. Plank of woods being piled together and being placed on the same level as the ground is another good example.
For small areas, not that many variety of plants are used. Even the number of colors present are minimised to avoid a messy range of colors.
Garden walkway lighting is another common element and majority used are the small ones to light the ground. Not many are needed though.
Shapes also play a part, rectangles and/or squares are used for stone slabs for walkways and for the vase for small high plants. A hard-edge design is commonly used for the walkway paths.
So do you want to convert your small vegetable garden to a modern garden?
If you think you cannot come up with any good contemporary design for your garden, many young and fresh landscape professionals can give you good idea after checking out your garden space and also some input from you. Be prepared to have a generous budget though.
Of course, you can also do a Google search and just look at what other people are doing with their gardens. That should give you some inspiration and ideas to start off with. The most important thing to remember is not to do too much and just keep it simple.
You can also check out our website to have a look at different samples of garden design, contemporary and not.