Increasingly, more people are having their gardens designed by an architect

Prague - As the construction of new family houses rises, especially in satellite towns, so does the interest in designing adjacent gardens. Owners primarily prefer gardens that are minimally demanding in terms of maintenance. Their initial ideas are reportedly full of evergreen conifers, which they usually get specialists to dissuade them from. This was stated by garden architects in a survey conducted by ČTK.
  "The demand for project gardens is high, but clients want to reduce costs as much as possible and realize the garden with significant concessions," admitted Eva Voženílková from the Prague Society for Garden and Landscape Creation.
  According to her, many houses in satellite towns are built using mortgages. Owners often have their houses built literally on untillled land and are forced to establish a garden, even though they do not have much money for it. "There is still a trend that clients are willing to invest in the construction and modification of the house, but less so in the garden. The garden is left for last, depending on how much budget remains," added Voženílková.
  Nowadays, people are said to lean towards gardens that are as low-maintenance as possible. Families from rural areas commute to work in the cities, take their children to school, and spend weekends in shopping centers, leaving them little time for garden maintenance. Their ideas therefore focus on conifers, preferably evergreens.
  When establishing a garden, according to experts, it is also important to consider the climatic conditions of the location. "This means: do not plant spruce in Polabí or delicate plants in mountainous areas," said the expert, who believes the ratio of conifers should be about one-third to other plants.
  According to garden architect Jiří Slepička from Tábor, a garden is complete when it has trees, shrubs, and perennials. "All of these belong to it," he noted, adding that when people pay for a project to create a garden, it is an investment in the future, as they lay it out for future generations.
   "When someone designs the surroundings of their house by themselves, they often plant trees where they should not be," he warned. According to Slepička, customers most often request designs that will ultimately be low-maintenance. However, in the end, they largely take advice.
  The boom in garden architecture supposedly began right at the start of the 1990s. "Back then, it was mostly wealthier clients from the 'upper ten thousand', footballers, people from show business, and other entrepreneurs who were interested," said Slepička.
  The field of garden architecture is taught at the Faculty of Horticulture of Mendel University of Forestry and Agriculture in Lednice. Approximately one in five applicants is accepted each year. "We consider this to be a strong interest," said study secretary Ludmila Hrubá. In the case of stronger cohorts, up to ten applicants competed for one study place.

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