Designing gardens that defy bad weather

Year-round flowers, shrubs and ornamental grass can change the face of your garden, saving you the pain of replanting and spending extra money on new plants for your small patch, office landscapes or botanical gardens.

Such plants are the surest way that your home is surrounded by colour all year round.

While planting a garden is not a hard chore, designing one that sprouts all year round, defying harsh weather conditions calls for a little more thinking and organizing.

Brenda Kamande, a landscape architect says if you’re looking to cut costs, it is cheaper to do a garden that accommodates all kinds of weather since all you will be left with is its maintenance.

‘‘The trick is in choosing appropriate plants, especially ones with coloured foliage to ensure the yard maintains its beauty throughout the year,’’ she says.

There are endless design options one can incorporate in the garden to ensure it survives the test of seasons. They include:

Raised beds

If your garden has a combination of poor drainage and bad soil, raising the flower beds ensures your plants sprout year-round. The beds can be built a foot or two off the ground and can either be permanent or temporary.

During the rainy season, raised beds help control runoff water from sweeping off plants meaning that they help in tackling the drainage issues.

When the sun is out and the weather hot, the raised beds help add variety to the landscape by making a flat yard interesting.

Another way of creating variety is installing different designs of beds at different spots in the yard and having numerous plant colours in them.

Rain chains

These create a magnificent cascading water feature as rainwater playfully dances and flows through the handcrafted channels.

Aside from the rain chains being a decorative alternative to the cheerless gutter downspout, they are functional alternative.

During the heavy downpour, these accessories help direct rain water to water tank or to the ground, hence averting erosion. They basically help in mitigating the effects of water run-off.

When the wind blows, the rain chains which resemble a mini water fall, give out beautiful music chimes that are something to delight.

During the dry season, rain chains are aesthetically functional as the work by adding to the visual interest of the garden.

Depending on your taste and preference, the design of the chains can differ from the link designs, styled cup designs to the floral ones.

The cup designs have a hollow bottom enabling water to cascade from cup to cup as it is guided beautifully down to the ground. You can also have the cascades from small, shaped flower pots.

Water channels

These are otherwise known as swales and they are both functional and aesthetic depending on the prevailing weather conditions.

They run along the contour of the land, usually on sloping ground where water would otherwise rush off, leaving the land dry and eroded.

“If the intention is to make the compound soft, then swales are the simplest way of installing a water feature in the landscape,” says Pius Mwambingu, a landscape architect at Landtek Studios, a an urban design consultancy in Nairobi.

To make the swales more captivating, he says one can grow plants in them such as damp loving reeds, ground covers like grass or simply put gravel in them.

This not only adds variety to the landscape, but also reduces the pressure flow of runoff water.

To add life on the landscape, you can have ducks enjoy existence of the swale when it rains.

Underground tanks

Instead of letting rain water splash and mess paint on walls, install gutters that direct the water to an underground tank.

Install a trench along the foundation of the house and just inside the outer wall to direct the rain water from the gutter to the water tank. 

This water can come in handy during the dry season to water plants and for household chores.

Permeable paving

This kind of paving allows the movement of storm water through the surface which works at reducing runoff.

These non-porous materials in the garden direct water to storm drains through open spaces between them.

They come in different designs including open porous block cells, open porous cross cells.

Mr Mwambingu says that the permeable paving blocks are gaining popularity owing to their functionality and aesthetic use.

“They help drain the garden of storm water and when grass grows on them, they are a sight to delight during the dry season,” says Mr Mwambingu.

Gravel is the most affordable permeable landscaping option.

Other options include brick pavers, grass reinforcement and matrix pavers.

Glazed pots

These will make any garden sparkle. Aside from the coating ensuring of this, there are a variety of options from which a person can choose to keep the garden colourful.

Besides the colours, there are a number of designs one can pick from to ensure that regardless of the plants grown, the garden is captivating.

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