Garden Trends
By Juan Pedro Sacedon
Summer is the time to look at our outer world, the best season to enjoy our gardens, courtyards and terraces. The sun provides energy, and the shade freshness, so let’s explore the best open areas around the house.
In southern Spain, and especially so in the coastal areas, modern elements meld with Mediterranean and Arabic traditions. The latter is defined by clean areas with straight lines or basic curves, like circles, in order from architecture towards landscape. The minimalist garden has embraced this rooted style in an intimate dialogue between the outer and the inner home areas.
Water elements such as fountains, waterfalls, basins and rivulets embody the soul of a patio. Terracotta pots in Andalucian style were formerly white-washed, but now they are painted in modern shades: silver, greens, greys, violet.
Non-traditional shapes are enriched by the use of modern materials such as galvanised steel and red-iron. Even these days soil such as yellow sand (“albero”), rolling stones and gravel are bordered by hand-made bricks, but new materials are also used, including Corten steel and specially treated timber.
Architectural plants with soft, hard, curly, lineal textures and silver-green leaves fulfil the common guidelines for a southern Spanish patio, complemented by Hispano-Arabic plantations such as bitter-orange trees (Citrus aurantium), mirths (Mirtus comunis) and False senecios (Centaurea pulcherrima), and merging with exotic spices including South African lilies (Crinum sp.), ginger lilies (Hedichium sp.) and New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax).
For indoor purposes and façade treatments, a fashionable new trend is making strong inroads. Green walls, with vertical gardens, are an attractively luxurious option for a patio or building wall – as well as an indoor garden.
Vertigo Gardens is a company that develops fully integrated projects, both design and construction, with a team comprising an architect, two flowering designers and a landscape designer. They carefully study each area and provide a design solution, featuring a modern combination of plantation and garden elements (stones, fountains, wood, etc.) to create a minimalist ambience.
Juan Pedro Sacedon is a garden and landscape designer at the Arte y Paisaje landscape studio and Vertigo vertical gardens studio: www.facebook.com/ippaisajismo
