Speaking strictly as an amateur who has a similar-sized property with a double slope (not only front to back, but side to side), my cottage-style beds look best from any angle when attention is paid to foliage: not just color, but shape, size and texture. Width gives impact; differing heights tend to flatten out when viewed from above. Here's examples of 2 different beds.

This narrow, south-facing bed gets visual impact from foliage color and texture when viewed from above:
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Considerably different when the bed is viewed at eye-level (angle is a little longer in this shot and it's 3 months later so bloom is different):
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The next set of pictures, 6 in all, show an interesting progression as I installed an east-facing shaded bed and "tweaked" the plantings, especially in the middle. This bed is viewed regularly from five different angles: high above (looking down from the back of the house), slightly above (at the back porch stairs), approaching from the north, approaching from the south, and approaching from below.

Looking straight down from the kitchen window Feb 2003 - the newly installed hardscape and plantings:
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June 2003:
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By Aug 2003 I replaced the boring green-leaved cestrum in the middle with a colorful Persian Shield, and added a variegated pelargonium with rounded scalloped leaves:
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The PS was lovely but it didn't love our cold wet winters. By May 2004 it was clear I needed to replace it.
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In Aug 2004 I tried a beautiful 'Aureum', or Full Moon, Japanese maple to hold the center:
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The shot above actually cuts off one of the most beautiful plants in the bed, a Tibouchina heteromalla I picked specifically for its foliage. Here's a lower-level shot that shows the Tibouchina, which is equally beautiful when viewed from above:
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Obviously our plants won't all work in your zone. But I thought you might find the comparison photos from year to year helpful as a starting point, to think about how foliage can create pleasing combinations even from a distance. Good luck!

I guess I'd use the situation as an opportunity to play with them ground plane patterns :)

A garden designed primarily to be viewed rather than to be walked in can be laid out more like a picture. As timbu hints patterns on the ground plane become more evident if the view is from above. The summum of this style is of course the parterre.

I have a similar situation - we look at our garden out the back window (1 floor up) as often as we are out in it.

It does make planning the beds more complicated, as you have to think of different view angles, but it's always a multi-faceted task anyway so I don't find plant planning the hardest. Certainly foliage contrast is a valuable tool, as JKom shows. Tree placement also gets complicated, as I try to balance getting shade where I want it with preserving the view into and through the yard.

I think what is of primary importance is the quality of surfaces and their shape. For example the shape of a patch of lawn, patio, or walkway matters when you look from above; something you might not notice when you're sitting on it. We've done all our surfaces with brick, pavers, or flagstone and have chosen patterns that we liked. In fact, we planned our surfaces and pathways almost more for their looks from above than for their functionality. Amost. They work both ways.

What does become important from a plant planning perspective is winter bones and winter appearance, as you probably look out more in winter. I plan my beds so that the framework of evergreen stuff will be pleasing in winter. In Zone 8 the semi-evergreen stuff can be an annoyance, and as I like to leave flower stalks and such for the birds things can look a proper mess in winter. But I like the placement of the evergreen things to have a basic integrity. In fact I'm moving more toward conifer and broadleaved evergreen use overall, and am just contemplating whether a whole conifer bed would look better than mixed plantings.

KarinL

You wouldn't want to use a lot of flowers that hang down, or anything else that needed to be viewed from below. This might come up more often than expected, for instance Japanese snowdrop tree is frequently planted here in all manner of situations (including parking strips) yet its flowers face the ground. Another example: most weeping Japanese cherries (even more commonly planted) seen here are lopped to look like cocktail umbrellas because their cascading branches do not look "right" except where there is a space or the illusion of a space (as with a pond) for them to spill into.

I hadn't thought of the importance of the flattening effect, even towering trees in a forest look squashed viewed from above.

Our garden is most often viewed from above as well - not as high above as in your case since our house is a bungalow - but the lot slopes away from the house. The biggest garden is in the backyard. The living room window also faces the backyard. So we view the garden from above daily but only walk in it in the warmer months. In the warmer months we spend a reasonable amount of time sitting on either the front or back porch, which also gives a raised view of the gardens. The overhead view could almost be considered the most important one.

As others said above, the shape of spaces such as paths, beds, lawns and patios are very important. I find the 'pattern on the ground' from all of those has to look pleasing when seen from above. I have spent a fair bit of time this winter mulling over changes to the shape of the lawn and beds in the backyard because they don't please me as much as I'd like. They look fine to me when I'm walking around in them in the summer but the pattern in the barer months is not quite right.

I'm less concerned with the finer details of evergreen winter bones than those of you in warmer areas since most of the garden vanishes under a white blanket for long periods in the winter!

For summer color I prefer green as the basic one. I'm not so keen on colored foliage, particularly yellow, which always just looks like sick plants to me :-) Green and white look soothing, cool and elegant to me so I scatter a lot of white blooming plants around and variegated plants I use tend to be green and white. The plant shape, height or width, to me, when seen from above is usually rather unimportant - what I focus on is the patterns on the ground and the colors (cool tones in my case)floating against the green base.

Like most things in the garden, you need to figure out what pleases you and that can take a bit of time and experimenting. Asking the question, like you have here, is a good start because once you start thinking about an issue, you start really seeing what you're looking at when you look at other people's gardens or pictures of gardens. And the experimenting you do in your own garden is likely to be more productive quicker.

I never thought that would be a design problem because when I first made the design for my flat lot I relied too much on a 2 dimensional site plan. So now sometimes I go up to the attic to look out the back window to see how fine it looks from that angle. Unfortunately, I think it looks better from up there than at ground level. Oh, well, always a work in progress.

I view one part of my yard from second-story bedroom window.
I am finding that larger bolder items of course work better than tiny vignettes amd leaf forms I might use up close. Also hardscape as above and arranging furniture. I am planning for a bench or 2 chairs or similar in a spot that is not specifically the best place to view the garden when you are sitting in them, though they are nonetheless useful as a resting place, but the spot is the right spot in which you would expect to see such items when viewed from above, so they become part of a pleasing arrangement for that purpose.

I also find is is easy to experiment with container plants and furniture in trying out such arrangemens. The item can sub in for itself or something of similar shape or impact and you can run up and look down on it and move it at will before "installing" it.

I had a similar thought, which is answered by this thread... I think.

If a 2-D plan view landscape drawing looks "good" or artistic, will it also be a "good" 3-D walk-through landscape? My feelings or impressions about my backyard are different when I view it from my walkout basement compared to my 2nd story window. From my second story I see the large shapes and the large foliage drifts that are not as evident close-up.

Viewed from afar, the eye takes in the larger patterns formed by paths and bedshapes can be seen, and these shapes must be made cohesive by materials or plantings.

Hey! What do you guys (and gals) think this is....the Landscape Design forum or something? Oh...I guess it is...carry on with the interesting discussion. ;-)

- Brent

Last time we talked about patterns on the ground plane I mentioned Piet Mondrian. There was also a link to a site where you can play with his colours and shapes, limited as they are. Even if not inspired you might have fun.

Here is a link that might be useful: coloured squares

The common denominator is that these gardens are well filled in without leaving big open areas of mulch.

Another observation is that this view point does not seem to need us to fight for unity as much as the horizontal views typically make us do.

Lots of color and contrast makes for lots of fun.

Infill, infill, infill.

It seems like a few of the threads of the past few days are coming together... I agree about infill being much preferable to open areas of mulch. There are no open areas of mulch in my garden but an abundance of infill!

Infill planting does not seem to be popular in my area of the country. People seem to like a sea of mulch and new little plants. Just when it starts to look lush and full, they yank it all out and replant. I think it is because they equate it with "in style" and "Landscaped" All the new expensive houses have that kind of landscaping (because it is new).

Thank you for all your thoughts and comments. I have been pondering and, for my situation, can see that we have made some functional design decisions that didnÂt take into account the resulting form. I will work applying your other suggestions to remedy this situation this summer.

PS: jkom51 Â thank you for posting your pictures, they are very helpful.

Hi
Go for one of those very geometric gardens such as you see in European palaces lol. They MUST be viewed from above
otherwise you don't know there's a pattern.lol
Of course you'll never get to see it because you'll always be pruning and replacing.lol
Can't imagine how they even lay them out let alone actually keep them up lol
gary

There are some interesting notes here that will one day apply to my own property. I'll have to remember them when I shift from an emphasis on horticulture to to an overall landscape look.

I still have a lot of hardscape to complete and I'm not as fast as I once was. Currently I use the areas above the walls and the micro climates of shade, part shade, and sun to grow the plants I want, regardless of the overall look.

The principle view from the house is from the DIY sunroom addition that I have near completion. The elevations are shown below.

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The lawn area will be confined to the flat areas created by the walls. The remaining sloped areas where the mature oaks are will get under-story trees and azaleas. The walls will be finished with a stone veneer.

Here is a shot from the sunroom down to the lower terrace where I am completing the soil amendment and grading.

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And from the lower level back across the grass patio.

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Colebug, I'm glad the photos were helpful.

Isabelle's comment "From my second story I see the large shapes and the large foliage drifts that are not as evident close-up" is something we amateur gardeners often forget.

Detail gets lost as distances increase. Tiny flowering plants, like Coleonema 'Breath of Heaven', for instance, make a sizable impact only when they get large enough. In the last photo with the Tibouchina heteromalla, for instance, you can hardly notice the 2' tall coleonema in front of it, at the base of the solar lamppost.

Two years later, now it's big enough to have an impact, both straight-on and from above - it has sufficient width to overcome the tiny flowers:
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Warning now follows: those who object to variegated plants being mixed together, shouldn't look. I love 'em, and mix them all the time.

Last year one of my weekly emails of garden photos to my friends was titled "Close...Closer...Closest". It speaks to laag's posting of how infill (plants) are being used instead of mulch. Normally I compose my photos very tightly and pick the best one to send around. In this case, I liked all three, and realized they showed a progressive look at emerging details as one got closer to the bed.

This bed is the same one shown in the photos above, but the 'Aureum' Japanese maple has been replaced by a variegated euonymous - the 'Aureum' couldn't take even the modest amount of sun this bed receives, and the leaves turned brown and crispy! I think the euonymous will do fine here although it lacks the elegant shape of the maple. I'm not entirely pleased by pink flowers with a yellow-green shrub, mind you - OTOH, this bed takes virtually no water, little pruning, and never seems to have any pests. I can't argue with success, Mother Nature-style.
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