Lesley's Garden

Botanical Miniatures in 1 inch and 1/2 inch scale for dollhouses and collectors.

Garden Design Tips

Basic design concepts   Designing gardens of any size can be an enormous challenge.  The advantage of designing gardens using scale plants is that you don’t need to incorporate seasonal change and growth! If you are trying to use your collection of one or one half inch miniature plants to design a scene, or add to an existing scene or a dollhouse garden , here are the main things to consider.

Depth  How can you effectively create a garden foreground, middle ground and background in the space you have?  Can you use a vine on a wall, a tall narrow plant, a hedge, a photo as a background? Or do you want to do a proper garden with larger perennials or shrubs in back, medium size in the middle and small in front.

Color   Limit your colours initially to two (plus green) in order to give the garden a sense of focus. You can add in accent colours to pull attention if you want later. Common combinations are blue and pink, blue and pale yellow, red and white, blue and white. 

If you are going to photograph your garden or view it in limited light, stick to light colours, avoid dark blue and red which will blend with the green hues of the leaves.

Historical color schemes were very different from modern ones.  Victorians went in for very bold and often distracting color schemes.  Loud color was the order of the day.

Shape Vary the way your eye views the planting by using some medium height plants at the front, not always low plants, use the variation in height to lead your eye back through your garden to focus attention on some special detail, an animal or bird, something special on the house, a particularly interesting flower.

Use plants to draw attention to repeated shapes in your landscape.  Use plant shapes which echo or compliment architectural features, round plants to accentuate arched doors and windows.  Remove attention from odd transitions, take the eye away from them with a colourful shrub, or by using dense plants to hide problems.

Use groups of containers (set planted pots on top of upturned empty ones or shelves) to create a better collection from many small plants. Use containers which blend together (all terracotta, or all pottery). Only use a different finish or color if you want to draw attention especially to that pot (and the details around it).

Problems  If your scope is limited by a design feature (my personal pet peeve in scale and full size houses are front door landings which are too small!) use the space you have effectively. Use small pots of climbers and twine them around the door, use wall pockets with trailing plants, use narrow modern containers or a group of containers mounted on the wall.

Plant one large container full to overflowing, rather than trying to make a group of several the same size.

Aim for the same level of accuracy and scale with your garden as you do with your house collection to avoid things that jump out.  (For example historical flower arrangements which are copied from old masters.  Many of these paintings were designed to show the wealth of the owner, not an arrangement of plants which were ever in bloom at the same time.) 

We found our business on ensuring accuracy of representation and scale.