Homes + Decor

How to Design a Minimalist Garden

New York–based landscape designer Julie Farris shares tips for creating the ultimate streamlined green space

June 29, 2016

When it comes to gardens, ornate displays with manicured hedges have been the gold standard throughout history. (One word: Versailles.) But more recently, minimalist designs have made the jump from interiors and taken root outside. “Looking at your garden should not make you think of your to-do list,” says Julie Farris, a New York–based landscape designer who has made a name for herself with her understated plans. “It should actually be the opposite. A minimalist garden can be powerful and beautiful without demanding too much of you in the way of upkeep and money.” We couldn’t agree more. So AD asked Farris to share tips on how to maintain a streamlined aesthetic in your outdoor space, whether you’ve got a small urban terrace or a more sprawling tract. Here, everything you need to create a calming minimalist garden of your own.

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Decide if it’s right for you. “The choice of whether to have a minimalist garden really does depend on personal style, as well as the architectural style of your home. The flow from inside to outside should feel seamless, so if you have a modern aesthetic, a minimalist garden can be a natural outdoor extension of your interior look. You also need to consider your actual lifestyle rather than your idealized version of it. If your life involves kids, dogs, or both, designing to accommodate things like storage, irrigation, a barbecue, a place to sit, and shade are important. It should be beautiful, of course, but it should also be inviting and comfortable.”
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Plot out the space. “Urban backyards are great canvases for minimalist gardens because they can become quiet and enclosed mini-natural escapes within the busy city context. Plus, I think it’s easier to create a minimalist garden in a small space. I like to borrow from the Japanese tradition of visualizing gardens as miniaturized nature, because they do it best: the balance they achieve by pairing plants in twos, threes, fives, and sevens; an understanding of scale; the use of stone, moss, and evergreens—all can make a space feel timeless.”

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Choose your materials. “I generally choose enduring materials that can hold their own in a balanced composition. For example, in the garden shown, I used limestone for the patio, steel for the planter, and gravel, bamboo, and boxwood in an asymmetrical composition. Each material is extremely hardy and weather-resistant, and has a distinct and compelling color and texture that can stand on its own. Believe it or not, I use synthetic lawn quite often in urban gardens because it is green all the time, requires practically no maintenance since it’s recycled plastic—so it’s sustainable—and, if edged well, can look quite modern. It’s also dog- and child-friendly, and mosquitos don’t like it as much as a real lawn, either.”
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Create boundaries. “Edging and the definition of form is an important characteristic in a garden. I like using steel edging that has a substantial thickness (one-fourth inch) to separate materials and specifically define planting beds. With that thickness, they don’t warp or bend over time. I personally like more muted natural hardscape materials like wood, granite, limestone, and bluestone so that the plants can be in relief against this kind of quiet backdrop.”

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Plant the seeds. “An obvious benefit of a minimalist garden is that you have fewer plants to worry about, but this can be a double-edged sword, because the plants you do choose need to provide structure and perform throughout the year, so the pressure is on. I love deciduous trees with unusual branching and bark like the crepe myrtle, stewartia, and the birch; ornamental grasses like Nasella, Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster,’ Pennisetum, and Deschampsia; and perennial flowers like echinacea, with large seed heads, have a presence even when they go dormant. Some people don’t like plants that look ‘dead’ in winter, but I believe that one reason to live in a climate with four distinct seasons is that you actually get to see plants express this very seasonality. For those who prefer an all-season greenness, evergreens like boxwood, bamboo, laurels, and pines are some of my favorite go-to plants.”