Breaking Through a Creative Block in Landscape Design

Sometimes nothing looks good, and none of your solutions are working. There is a time in every landscape design project when this is true. It’s especially true if you’re thinking about getting it just right on the first few tries. The problem is that you’re thinking about an end result. Instead, you want to step back and get into the tweaking stage again. You aren’t trying to fix the problem at this point, you’re just trying to get back into the tweaking mode.

So go back to a sketch you had and re-draw it with one thing changed. For instance, you might change the shape of a patio, or move a walkway over a foot. By doing just one thing at a time, you can analyze whether that one thing worked or not. It’s easy to get one thing right, and it gets you moving in the right direction again. Here’s the thing that often happens when you’re in this mode… you keep starting over.

While it’s easy to think you’re making headway, you’re really just starting from scratch again. Instead of starting over, take a design you had that you think is wrong and play with it. Try one little tweak at a time, just like I mentioned above. Even with a design you think is all wrong, you can play around and figure out if your tweaks are making it better or worse. This keeps you in a patient mode, and it helps you analyze.

So take 15 minutes a day and simply trace a pervious idea instead of trying to create a new one. As you trace, tweak. Tweak the space between things, or the alignment, or whatever. You’re not trying to get it right, you’re just moving your pencil and trying to get into a flow. You’ll find that as you do this, ideas will start to emerge again because you’re not thinking about creating from scratch.

Finally, sometimes the best thing to do when you’re in this funk is to stop designing and just observe again. Walk around and look at other landscapes again, or go through your books. Look at some of your favorite designs and figure out why you like them. Observe where the space is, where the hardscapes are, how things flow. Then go back to your design and make one tweak based on what you observed.

You’re bringing a new idea into your design and it’s based on reality instead of something you’re trying to imagine. Eventually, the dam will break. You’ll start moving again and before you know it, you’ll be onto the next phase of your design. You’ll be feeling confident again, not because everything magically looks great, but because you can confidently tweak your way to success.