Our Garden Design Inspiration & Mood Board

I could honestly spend hours upon hours gathering inspiration in the form of Pinterest perusing, book reading, magazine clipping – you name it. I LOVE the gathering process so much. Our garden design inspiration revealed to me how much I really love this balance of structure and wildness. I like there to be big pieces that create some formality alongside some wild and free elements.

You can see below in the mood board that there are a few elements we were really influenced by. The boxwood hedges, the fountain, the arch trellis – those things are happening in our space for sure. Some of the other items, like espalier apple trees, are total dreams that we will try to incorporate, but may not be able to.

How to Organize Your Inspiration

The whole process for gathering inspiration should be free and easy. Then, you need to start editing. I typically create a huge Pinterest board and then refine things into a new board called “finals” or something like that. I have a great Vegetable Garden Design board on Pinterest right now that is full of ideas. Once you get an edited idea, then you can see patterns and find your style easier.

Take my fun Garden Design Style quiz here if you want to dig in that way!

Overall, the inspiration-gathering process is really going to help inform you of choices and make the building of your project much easier.

How to Unpack What Inspires You

So, once you have all these pictures, how do we even unpack what about it inspires us? Other than the overall vibe, you need to unpack each picture to decide on what about it really thrills you.

With the below picture, there is an overall gorgeous feeling, but let’s dive into it.

My advice: go bottom-up. Check out the pathways, then the beds, and what material they’re made out of. Next, examine the trellises, fences, and any structures, buildings, or arches. Then you can dig into the actual plants they have and how those are arranged. You’ll begin to see even more detail than before, as well as more patterns. Follow the patterns to reveal what you really want.

As evidenced here, what I typically find is that the materials can be humble, with a beautiful finish when the garden begins to be planted and really lived in.

Our Overall Vibe

The overall vibe for our space is very much informed by a french potager meets cottage garden aesthetic. There will be pots layered in after the fact, pea gravel for walkways, and colorful borders (the cottage vibe). We love a layered look that has character and interest, so when you’re building something from scratch, you have to add that in.

We will try to mix stone and metal with the wood and create a lot of natural texture that gives the garden a lot of dimension. We don’t want a one-note space that is just flat and uniform. The key is to really solidify some of the structures and statements, then go from there.

Our Statement Pieces

As mentioned, below are the statement pieces that we will have. Adding the plants in will make it all come to life, but these big pieces will be necessary first.

• Boxwood hedges
• Arch trellis entryway
• Pots at the entryway with dwarf citrus
• Stone fountains
• Wooden raised beds (18″ tall)
• Wooden and metal obelisk trellises

Kitchen gardens around the world all look different. We of course could just plop down some fresh soil and grow in-ground if we wanted to, but love having something more formal to really invite guests and the children into. We want the space to have some polish, but also do want some major function out of it. Also a part of the raised bed choice.

Form and function at it’s finest!

For more raised bed inspo,see our roundup HERE.