7 Popular Garden Decoration Tips That Everyone Is Tired Of

Every year, as the spring-summer season arrives, owners of garden plots begin competing for the 'best garden decor'. Ready-made decorations from hypermarkets, handmade items, and even secondary materials are used. Together with landscape designer Maria Shumskaya, we previously told about garden decor that's better left in the past. Today is a continuation of the 'must-avoid list'.

Maria ShumskayaLandscape DesignerMaria Shumskaya graduated from RGAU. She creates individual project designs and educational programs for landscape designers.
1. The 'Grandmother's' Overgrown Garden

The first in my stop list are still chaotic plantings. The key mistake is the desire to 'stick something somewhere'. In times of scarcity, such an approach was justified: thanks to it, the plot had something other than village 'golden balls' and mallows. Today, the main thing is space architecture and lines. Now gardens are created for people, not plants.

Alternative: use one type of plant as a constructor. Few people can compose a mixed border without professional help, calculating flowering times and decorativeness so that it looks beautiful throughout the entire growing season. Groups of one plant type are more predictable – in addition, they look neat and cohesive.

2. Flower Beds with Stone Edging

Many cover flower beds with stones or, worse yet, with bricks placed diagonally. Apparently, to emphasize the special significance of the flower composition? Sometimes it's just to indicate their presence: if something herbaceous is fenced with boards – it's a garden, and if with stones – it's a flower bed. Such an unwritten code of the dacha gardener.

Alternative: here, too, planning sophistication helps. When flowers are just one element in the overall picture of the garden space, they don't need to be specially marked. Let's leave stones for rockeries – we've already told about them.

3. Decorative Vegetable Garden 'Wonderland'

These are my favorites. Usually, they are decorated with low plastic 'fences' and represent the pride of the plot owner. Indeed, it's better than stacked garden beds made from crumbling boards, but still...

Alternative: take the principle of decorating so-called 'apothecary gardens', where neat rectangles filled with soil are included in the planting. If you have a very small plot, like townhouses, a neat multi-level bed will do. But only from sturdy new boards!

4. 'Shell-like' Paving

Some gardeners lay various patterns with tiles or stones: they rise like foamy waves, cover paths with a wavy ripple, or spread out 'circles on water'. In my opinion, the surface should be stable – both visually and in function.

Alternative here is obvious – 'remove this immediately!' Unless you're a mosaic mason and the dacha is your business card.

5. Plastic Vases

Another favorite dacha trick is plastic vases. And of course, petunias in them. As a big fan of terraces and patios, I welcome container planting, but these plastic 'flower beds' look really tacky.

Alternative: real terracotta pots look really great. Placed on a patio, they give the garden corner an atmosphere of the Mediterranean. For planting in them, aromatic herbs work well. If you have a very modern garden, concrete planters can be used.

6. Decor From Bottles and Tires

It's hard to believe, but there are still craftsmen who use old tires and plastic bottles for garden decoration. Have you ever seen a swan made from automotive rubber or a palm tree made from beer plastic bottles? I won't even mention flower beds in tires. In the name of saving the planet, secondary materials are better recycled than experimented with in this way.

Alternative: if your soul craves creativity, make a beautiful birdbath.

7. 'Iron Curtain'

My stop list is completed by solid fences made of corrugated sheet metal. They always make a double impression: either as temporary fencing at a construction site (as if the last preparatory work behind the 'iron curtain' is about to end), or as a warning fence for dangerous areas ('don't enter', 'completely secret', 'Area 51'). Another obvious drawback of metal is that it heats up in the heat. This is harmful to both plants and you.

Alternative: climbing plants, neatly trimmed hedges, dense linen curtains on the terrace. These let air into the space while protecting you from nosy neighbors' glances.