On Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Lyon Arboretum, landscape designer Janet Thebaud Gillmar will offer a workshop on the basics of landscape design. Gillmar does not intend to chat in generalities, and is asking each participant to bring snapshots of his or her garden, including a view from the street. She will work on the specifics.
"Visually, make sure that the whole ensemble of house, plants, walls and walks, the houses on either side of yours and whatever your view is - becomes a good composition. It should be balanced, with a clear sense of unity and entrance. You need that entrance," she said.
Gillmar suggests that if you aren't sure about your total look, work with a colored snapshot of whichever part of the property seems wrong. From the snapshot, draw a simple sketch of the house and the surrounding planting, and then reduce the sketch to lines and circles.
In the accompanying drawings made by Gillmar of a landscape she recently redesigned, the vertical elements are the palm tree at the far left and the three tall, skinny Italian cypresses at the front of the house.
"The house is too close to the street and the cypress trees are too tall," Gillmar said. Short of removing the trees, neither element can be changed. A cypress tree when topped, like a Norfolk Island pine, sprouts two new tops and destroys the symmetry of the tree.
"There is also no sense of entry. The front door needs emphasis so we put in additional plants to frame the entrance and provide a strong horizontal line. We added a clump of MacArthur palms and two plumeria trees to frame the entrance.
"Then we put in a low, clipped mock orange hedge, about 3 feet high, along the street, with a taller planting behind it. Now you can see only the tops of the cypress which makes you less aware of their height."
In flat areas like Waialae-Kahala or Kapolei, where the houses often have flat roofs, you need the vertical rather than the horizontal accent, she added.
In planning a garden, the basic elements are balance, scale and color. Balance, as explained above, creates a composition, a unity, but with some contrast or the design is boring.
Balance also means the right plant in the right place. Banyan trees are weeds where Gillmar lives at the back of Palolo Valley, "but the banyans at Thomas Square are treasures."
The cypress trees in the graphic at left, are wrong, but along a driveway in Nuuanu Valley they are appropriate.
Gillmar will explain all of this in further detail Saturday, and will work with participants on improvements to their own gardens. She will provide drawing materials as well as advice. The cost of the workshop is $35. To register, call 988-7378.