Glossary
Landscape terminology becomes useful when it helps you understand a real site or explain a design decision. This glossary defines common words for layout, planting, soil, drainage, and materials. Each entry includes a plain-language explanation and a practical example, with links to related elements or planning guides for further context.
B
- Borrowed Scenery
- Borrowed scenery is the use of a view beyond a garden’s boundary as part of its composition, visually connecting the garden with an existing landscape outside it.
C
- Curb Appeal
- Curb appeal is the visual impression a property makes from the street, shaped by its entrance, building frontage, planting, and the condition of visible outdoor features.
F
- Focal Point
- A focal point is a feature that attracts attention within a landscape composition, giving the eye a place to pause or helping explain an important destination.
- Foundation Planting
- Foundation planting is planting placed near a building’s base to relate the structure visually to its surroundings while preserving access to the building and its services.
H
- Hardscape
- Hardscape is the constructed, nonliving part of a landscape, including paths, patios, steps, and walls that give outdoor space its surfaces and boundaries.
L
- Layered Planting
- Layered planting is the arrangement of plants at different heights or depths so their forms remain readable together and create a foreground, middle ground, and background.
M
- Mass Planting
- Mass planting is the arrangement of many plants in a recognizable group or drift so they read as a larger visual unit rather than as isolated individual specimens.
O
- Outdoor Room
- An outdoor room is a defined area of a landscape organized around a use, such as dining or sitting, with surfaces and boundaries that make the space feel distinct.
S
- Sightline
- A sightline is an unobstructed line of view between a viewing position and a feature or area, used in landscape design to assess visibility and visual connections.
- Softscape
- Softscape is the living planting in a landscape, including trees, shrubs, flowers, grasses, and ground cover that changes as plants grow and seasons pass.
- Specimen Plant
- A specimen plant is an individual plant given enough visual prominence to be appreciated for its form, foliage, flowers, or other distinctive characteristics within a landscape.