How To Create A Garden Inspired By Rococo Style

Are you an expressive and creative person who wants your garden to be as quirky and individual as you are? You may like to have a little fun in your garden by employing some ideas from what we now call 'Rococo' style. If your garden is now coming together and you need to add some finishing touches to make it the place you've always wanted it to be and to make it stand out from everyone else's, Rococo flair could be the answer.

The term 'Rococo Garden' is actually a late 20^th Century construct. The term, however, has now been applied to a subversive spirit of design that came into being in the middle of the 18^th Century and became rather popular with an element of the middle classes of that time. Unable to match the landscaped parks of the gentry of the period, they opted instead for 'Rococo', which was better suited to somewhat smaller spaces. This style (not really a recognised trend at the time) is simply characterised by quirky and whimsical ornamentation and garden buildings, irregularity and asymmetry.

Serpentine lines, and classical formal garden design features wilfully subverted mean that nothing in a Rococo Garden is quite what you expect and everything is just a little off-kilter. Perhaps most striking in a Rococo style, however, are the follies, garden buildings and architectural features. Features such as screens, pigeon houses, arbours, pavilions, unusual summer houses – all of these can really reflect an off-beat and idiosyncratic eye for design and can be incorporated into your own garden design.

Whether you create a building yourself, perhaps using more unusual materials such as glass bottles or other household waste, reclaimed materials or even cob from your own ground, or buy one that fits your mood perfectly, Rococo is all about always refusing to allow the expected. Shell mosaics on a garden seat, wall, or secret 'grotto' or stained glass features on garden buildings could be mimicked by an artistic gardener in all kinds of different and updated ways.

So, if you want to be different, why not take on some of the features that became so popular in the 18^th Century – their ability to inspire joy and to surprise are as strong today as they ever were and can help your garden stand out from the crowd and perfectly complement your planting schemes.