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Restful and easy-to-live-with as they are, vines are not at their best trained haphazardly on a wall – any available wall – the way paintings are often hung to fill an empty space.

The lines of vines are so prominent that using them in a by-guess-and-by-golly manner can cause confusion and even offense. Except for spectacular specimens that become focal points wherever they’re placed, vines are usually most effective used in combination with other plants or items like pictures, mirrors, pieces of furniture.

But used with care, vines can create breathtaking effects against walls, fireplaces, railings of stairs, and other vertical areas. To harmonize and connect a background – the wall – with a table or chair standing before it, hang or train a vine just above the furniture. Stand back and squint at the composition to see if it is balanced. Check the relative proportions of space, to furniture, to plant. Decide whether the shapes are harmonious, whether colors and textures have interesting contrast. Then, congratulate yourself on achieving one of the difficult but most artistic types of interior design.

Or arrange a vine with or around a mirror that reflects the image and doubles the effect. To lower a high ceiling, train a vine horizontally at some point above eye level; try the reverse with vertical lines. Experiment with breaking up a large, bare surface with the line, light, and shadow effect of a vine.

Available variety of suitable vines, of course, depends partly on cultural conditions. Walls are not usually brightly lighted, so foliage vines are used for their fresh greenery and the pattern of leaf, stem, and shadow. Small, slow-growing varieties are out of scale on large walls; massive, heavy vines are too dominant for limited areas. Some clinging vines will climb a smooth wall without support; stem-and tendril-climbers need cord or wire. Take all these qualities into consideration, then take off on one of the following suggestions or a creative idea of your own.

In a living room corner where a rough stone fireplace joins a wall of smooth plaster or paneling, the abrupt change can be softened and the two surfaces blended by a soft foliage vine trained up to the ceiling and across the top of the second wall. Fatshedera would do well here, or some of the climbing philodendrons.

In the bathroom, where the air is moist so it can have guttation in plants, tropical climbers will grow faster and cling tighter even to smooth walls. Try a flat-clinging variety up the side of the shower. In the library or TV room, cut a hole in the top of a bookcase, just large enough to hold a pot by the rim. Provide a plant-to-ceiling support like a thin, straight tree trunk or moss pole, and let several variegated scindapsus cover it with white-splashed, overlapping leaves.

On the fireplace mantel, avoid the trite matching bowls of ivy. Try one large, low, centered container overflowing with nephthytis, or balance a tall candelabra at one end against a low, spreading asparagus fern at the other.

In a contemporary house I know, the wall dividing living room from kitchen stops two feet short of the ceiling. On top, the talented home decorator sets a bowl from which long stems of garden ivy hang down to break up the broad expanse of bare wall. When the ivy fades, she replaces it with potted philodendrons or other foliage vines, sometimes balanced by a bark-mounted staghom fern.

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If you are interested in adding some paved areas to your home, you may be interested in learning more about some of the various paving materials available on the market today. Many people think that paving areas are very cold and look too industrial for use in their homes but this is actually not the case. By using different materials that look natural you can create a durable surface that is suitable for a range of different uses.

There is one initial choice that you need to make when deciding which paving material you want to use. You can opt for paving material that is one solid and continuous solid surface. This is when you would use concrete whether or not it has been colored and textured. You can also choose to pave an area with paving stones or interlocking bricks which are also durable and beautiful but are not one solid piece. Therefore they have a very different look.

There are areas where concrete is a good choice for a paving material. You may want to consider using concrete around pools. Pool decks that are made with textured concrete can look beautiful and the surface can give you more purchase and make the area less slippery if it gets wet. You can use the same product to create very durable driveways, walkways and patio surfaces. The main advantage is that it can be harder for weeds and plants to grow up through the paving material since there are no gaps or spaces like there are with other paving materials.

Textured cement is mixed with pigments which color all of the concrete. This is excellent because if one area gets chipped or damaged, there will not be any white layer showing through underneath. It also means that you need to make the decision to color your concrete at the time it is put in. After it has been colored, it is poured into molds that keep it in the area that needs to be paved. It is then stamped with a variety of stamps which shape and add texture to the surface. The result can look like bricks, stones or other alternative paving techniques.

You don’t need to worry about the durability of textured concrete. It is very hard and easy to look after. About the only thing you need to remember is to avoid the use of salt as a de-icing agent. This is because salt can break down the cement, causing it to crumble and drastically shortening its lifespan.

Many people prefer the classic look of cobblestones, cultured stone or interlocking brick. These can form some beautiful patterns and are also durable. They are often less even than the surface of textured concrete. They also have different installation methods, but they are great if you like the way they look. They can also be very useful if you are trying to pave an area that will not be easy to pave using concrete.

The first is that you need to make sure that no weeds can grow up between the bricks or stones. You want to make sure you are putting down a plastic layer that will keep weeds from growing up through the stones. It is never a permanent solution but it will work to keep your paved areas weed free for much longer than they will be without the layer. Then, a layer of sand is put down. This is a critical step for several reasons. The sand layer cushions the bricks or stones. It levels the surface that the stones or bricks have been placed on. It is also flexible and can handle changes in the ground due to frost or other weather conditions. Once the sand layer has been put down, you want to put the bricks or stones down and adjust them so that they form the pattern or look that you are after.

By taking the time to look at your options and decide which will suit you best, you can find the perfect solution to your paving needs.

Craig Johnson is an expert in home landscaping. If you would like more information about paving or are searching for a trusted paving company please visit http://www.clearancepaving.co.uk

It is easier to understand what unity does than to explain what it is. Any design – a small dish garden, cut-flower composition, living-room decor, patio planting, landscape – has unity if the whole hangs together to make one pleasing picture. Without unity a design “goes off in all directions,” has a restless, disorganized, discordant effect.

Not quite the same as unity, but an important part of it, is harmony – a restful quality created when all parts of a design or decorative effect add up to one style or mood. An extreme example may illustrate the point. Setting an urn of clean, stark contemporary lines beside an ornate, Victorian garden seat would be inharmonious; each style is foreign to and unsympathetic with the other. But a low fence is in harmony with the rose that clambers over it; vining plants can unite harmoniously the upright plants in a window box with the box itself.

There are innumerable techniques for unifying a design, of which the following five are probably basic.

1. To have unity, a design usually has only one focal point or center of interest. For example, a vine or other planting and its container can be the object of interest against a wall; or the vine can be so arranged that it supports a center of interest, like a fireplace. Any attempt to use it for both purposes can result in either chaos or complete lack of interest.

2. To have unity, a decorative effect should be designed to hold the eye inside the picture. The flowing lines of vines are particularly effective here. Training a vine around a large window, for example, holds the eye and keeps it from wandering off.

3. To have unity, the elements of a design can often be arranged so that they interlock or overlap. Here again, vines are useful. Without a vine planted at its base, a tall shrub may seem entirely separate from the tub it is planted in; when a vine overlaps the container below and the shrub above, the two are tied together.

4. To have unity, the important parts of a design must be in pleasing relative proportion or scale. The vine selected to blend a shrub like yucca branched and its tub should be neither so small that the shrub overpowers it, nor so large and bold that it dwarfs the shrub.

5. To have unity, a design or decorative effect should be executed with restraint, moderation, good taste. Too many elements create a disturbing, helter-skelter, cluttered appearance. So a single wall bracket or hanging basket, or a matching or harmonious pair, is generally preferable to a varied assortment.

Create your own unity in the landscape with vines!

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