One advantage of a shade garden is that with foliage taking precedence over flowers, it is easier to create yearlong interest.  Many foliage shade plants, from low growing pachysandras to the tall evergreen conifers that created the shade in the first place, have persistent foliage and will be attractive year-round.   When our Landscape Architects and Garden Designers plan a shade garden we include a nice portion of evergreen, both broad-leaved and needles and include not only the usual trees and shrubs but also other plants that retain their foliage all year.  If only one-fifth of the plants hold onto their leaves year-round, you will already have a surprisingly colorful garden in winter.  Fortunately, we have a vast list of those plants with persistent leaves.

Colorful or unusually shaped or textured stems and trunks also add off-season interest.  Papery River Birches, striped-bark maples,  gray-barked beeches and corkscrew hazel – all may shed their leaves yet still offer winter interest.  Plants like peonies and many hardy geraniums have colorful fall hues that can also add interest to the shade garden.  And an abundant planting of spring blooming ephemerals we call bulbs, many of which adapt perfectly to shade, will bring us full circle to the shade garden in summer once again.

Container gardening allows you to put plants in the soil less areas of the garden – along the garden paths, on the stairs, in the sitting areas and even on the tops and sides of walls and fences.  Our Live Oak Landscape Maintenance crews not only design creative containers, they will maintain them as well.

Pairs of pots have a natural place as markers on either side of front entrances, gates, flight of steps or midpoints of a path.  Think of them as sentinels, and give them lots of presence: for example, plant them with trees that have a strong outline or interesting branching structure or with any plant that has bold foliage or flowers: or use fancy large pots and set trellises inside them.

Mediuim and small containers look most effective in groups.  You can make a strong focal point with them, perhaps to take the eye off of a less attractive feature in the garden, or use them to dress up an entrance, a plain patio or top of a wall.  You may be able to arrange many different plants artistically, generating a balance of form that satisfies the eye.  To keep moisture from staining decks or patios and to prevent the decay of wood surfaces, elevate pots on wood blocks, cleats, terra cotta feet or trivets.

Filled with silver foliage and white flowers, the evening garden is designed to brighten up dusk and shimmer in the moonlight.  With few color contrasts, the garden is a place of serenity by day, but at night it is full of the play of shadow and glistening highlights.  For gardeners who spend their days away from home, the evening garden offers a scene for peaceful strolls or quiet relaxation.

Some evening gardens rely on a foundation of blue-gray or variegated foliage plants for their brightening effect, while other consist largely of white-flowering plants.  Pale foliage reflects evening light.  White blossoms flow resplendently in the moonlight, especially those with large or doubled petals. Garden rooms, patios, and sheltered corners of the landscape are especially pleasant in the evening.  They provide a sense of privacy and seclusion.  A garden room also provides a setting for tender, container grown plants that need protection from hot summers.

At Live Oak Landscape Contractors, we have the right mix of landscape architects and landscape garden designers to make your garden glow at night.  With April Showers Lighting professionals providing the correct lighting patterns for your landscape, you will truly enjoy your evenings filled with beauty, peace and quiet!

Even homes with tidy, well-kept surroundings often suffer from a lack of planning.  Their owners design one small area as a need or problem arises, or they go on a shopping binge in a nursery and bring home a load of plants to “find a place for”.  Often the result is a spotty landscape design – a little of this, a little of that, and nothing to tie it together visually.  Time and money are wasted on plantings of the wrong scale or in the wrong place that later must be torn out.

To avoid costly mistakes, Live Oak Landscape Architects and Garden Designers devise a detailed scheme.  The object is not to make a carbon copy of someone else’s design but to know which plants thrive in your area and to discover some pleasing visual effects that you had not thought of.   As we develop this plan, we look at the architect of your home, the kind of life style you lead and talk to you about ideas on landscape features.    We then  tie it all together to make the big picture. Many owners of the homes that we have landscaped refer their friends to us knowing that we will create another beautiful garden for their enjoyment!

With ever increasing difficult weather patterns in our state of New Jersey, plants will have a tough time surviving unless you know the “right plant for the right place”.  Live Oak Landscape Garden Designers know exactly what to do for the following difficult situations:

Moisture Loving Plants – Perennials include Sedges (carex), Rodgersia (Rodgersia aesculifolia) – Shrubs include Red Chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia), Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) and Virginia Sweetspire (Itea Virginica).  Trees include Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum) and Musclewood (Carpinuis caroliniana).

Shade Tolerant Perennials – Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum), Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica), Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria).  Shrubs – Fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii), Hydrangea, Serviceberry (Amelanchier grandiflora). Trees include Eastern Redbud (cercis canadensis), Dogwood – Japanese (Cornus Kousa) and Eastern (C. florida).

Perennials for Full Sun and Dry Soils – Yarrow (Achillea), Purple Coneflower (Echinaceae purpurea), Sedums and Gayfeather (Liatris spicata).  Shrubs include Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) and Smokebush (Cotinus coggygria). Heat and drought tolerant trees include Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), Silver Linden (Tilia tomentosa) and Kentucky Coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus).

And the list goes on!  There are so many unusual plants, shrubs and trees  for New Jersey Gardens  and we at Live Oak Landscape go out of our way to make your landscape different from all others.

The easiest way to solve a problem is to turn it into an opportunity.  Our garden designers at Live Oak Landscape match the right plants to create the easy care garden. 

Whether you are dealing with dry or moist shade, you’ve got a perfect spot for a dazzling wildflower and woodland plant garden.  We start solving shady site problems by identifying spots that receive different amounts of shade during the day and by getting a realistic picture of what parts of the garden are in shade all day or only part of the day.  Not all sites are created equal!  A site can have light, filtered shade or deep, dark shade.

Our landscape architects have a complete list of those plants that thrive in shade, including Oakleaf hydrageas, variegated Solomon’s Seal, Fingerleaf rodgersia and Goat’s beard, just to name a few.  A textured shade garden might include Desdemona bigleaf ligularia, Japanese painted fern and climbing hydrangeas.  A native plant garden might include Crested iris, Allegheny spurge and Cygnet foamflowers.  A Victorian shade garden would include Soft shield fern, Repandens English yew and Variegated English Ivy.  Shade gardening does not need to be boring and we at Live Oak Landscape Contractors have all the necessary tools to make your shade garden exciting!

Many gardeners in our area use any color in their gardens which can become chaotic.  A successful garden uses a combination of colors that take a little more thought.  Our garden designers at Live Oak Landscape uses a very handy tool – the color wheel.  Each color on the wheel is flanked by two other colors called analogous colors.  When two analogous colors are used together, such as blue and violet, the effect is considered soothing and pleasing to the eye.  Colors directly across from each other on the wheel, like red and green, are called complementary colors and when used together, are so contrasting that they really stand out creating a feeling of excitement.

For a peaceful mood or for a meditation garden, analogous colors are for you.  Complementary colors are stimulating and ideal for gardens where you want to create a feeling of vibrancy.  Add white and silver shades to tone down excessive intensity.

All gardeners have their favorite colors.  Some love yellow, some hate it.  Some crave orange, others avoid it.  Some have a passion for red flowers, but find them impossible to fit into a planting scheme.  Offered a choice, many will choose the white flowered plant.  Those that avoid white do not think of it as a color,  but merely cold and lifeless. Those who love white consider it sophisticated, elegant, ethereal, calming and cooling and in the New Jersey landscape design, all of these elements create a beautiful, relaxing garden.

Whatever your preference, gardens planted with white flowers, in association with silver, green or white and green variegated leaves can have real impact.  The white gardens created by Vita Sackville-West at Sissinghurst  fulfilled  a similar role:  cool rooms that contrast with  surroundings filled with color.

The impact of white is dependent on light.  In full sun, white flowers glare; they are tricky to photograph appearing as white blobs.  In early morning or evening light, or in shade, they come into their own, reflecting low rays, shining against a darker background.

Our garden designers at Live Oak Landscape Contractors have a complete list of those enchanting white plants for your New Jersey landscape design.

Trees, vine supports and other tall garden elements add a third dimension of space that is especially valuable in a small garden.  The vertical lines lift the eye up, away from the small garden floor and if some plants are grown up off the ground, additional plants under them will make the garden lush.

Trees expand the garden dramatically; their tops reach far over our heads and touch the sky.  To avoid creating too much shade in a small space, Live Oak Landscape Architects and Garden Designers can choose tall, skinny trees or small trees with delicate branching such as a Japanese maple which lets light filter through the leaves.  We would then plant a diminutive ground cover beneath the tree making  it look taller.

Introducing a few vertical plants in a shrub or perennial border will  direct the eye upward.  Good choices include foxglove, delphiniums, hollyhocks and ornamental grasses with graceful seed heads.

When wind seems like your garden’s enemy, sucking moisture from leaves and roots, breaking branches and knocking down flowers, block it with a windbreak.  Live Oak Landscape Garden Designers know exactly what would do best for your situation; building a fence, planting living barricades of perennials, grasses, trees or shrubs.  When you use windbreaks to protect plantings near your house, you will notice an added benefit, –lower heating and cooling bills!  But if a windbreak is not your style, we can create planting areas that will tolerate drought and high winds.