It may surprise you, but many designers are fond of landscapes with hills and valleys. “It’s an enjoyable challenge to take a landscape’s topography and carve into it or accentuate it with new bed lines, strategically placed boulders or small walls that are more for accentuating the undulations in the landscape than actually holding up the soil,” confides Landscape Designer Kevin McQuade.

When the landscape under consideration is flat, a decision needs to be made: do we accentuate the flat landscape with clean, crisp, straight lines or do we incorporate curves and twists in the landscape with new bed-lines, paths and patio shapes? For the best option, we look at the style of the home, the neighborhood setting and the client’s design preferences. It’s easier to create dramatic effects with curves, it takes a bit more thought to create drama in a flat landscape with straight lines. When the second is called for, exaggerated borders accentuated with flagstone or crushed gravel work well. Creating vignettes in the landscape is a smart option. Trellis, art, specimen plants, even a bench can be used to anchor part of the landscape to create visual focal points

“The key is to have everything in the garden look intentional. We want to emphasize the lines in the garden be it curved or angular,” shares Kevin.