Cottage gardens can be formal or informal, but this one is decidedly informal. Curving beds, the asymmetrically placed arbor, the winding flagstone path -- all are casual.
Even rustic buildings can be at home with a formal design. An orderly series of rectangular beds holds herbs and flowers for cutting. They also are ideal as "nursery beds," areas filled with top-quality soil for planting seeds or nurturing cuttings and small perennials.
Vegetable gardens especially benefit from a formal layout. Because they spend so much of the growing season in informal disarray as gardeners plant, tear up, and replant, a disciplined design adds a little order.
Though associated with nature-inspired designs, water gardens can be formal, too. This one is a mossy series of rectangles and low falls. Its formal design is especially striking because it lies in an informal woodland garden filled with naturalistic plantings.
Formal gardens nearly always have an element of repetition. In this garden, it's the unusual arbors echoing each other across the central axis of the formal garden that lies between them.
Even in rolling countryside, a formal garden can look right at home. This one is defined by a rustic fence to help it fit into the rural scene.
There's a fine line between informal and wild. This garden keeps things in line with a well-cared-for clipped lawn and a bench to give it human touch.
Gardens can include elements of both formal and informal style. Here, an arbor adds structure and geometry to a garden that could otherwise be considered informal.
This is the look that many gardeners associate with formal design. This garden is a boxwood-outlined parterre, an array of planting beds laid out in a strictly symmetrical pattern. The garden's centerpiece -- literally -- is a fountain placed on the central axis with equal-spaced pots contributes to the formal design. However, a few informal elements, such as the rough stone rim on the fountain, loosen up a garden that otherwise could be staid.
Here's a more managable version of the parterre garden (see previous slide). In this case, herbs are used to create the outline, lending a less stiff look than boxwood hedges. The size has also been reduced, but the formal design principles are precisely the same.
A wildflower garden doesn't always need a meadow. Sunny front yards are appropriate spots in which to create slightly more civilized versions of this most informal of gardens.
