To create a successful landscape you need to design  a focal point into the layout of your garden.  All you need to do is create one event that catches the eye first when you look at the  garden area. A focal point is essential to a good design whether you are designing a room, painting a piece of artwork or creating a landscape. The purpose of a focal point is to give the eye something exciting to enjoy, to keep the view from becoming dull and boring.

You can create more than one focal point, but consider secondary focal points to be supports for your main event. Don’t add competing focal points that take away from the main feature and confuse the composition. Consider points of interest that are less riveting than your main focal point to be like supporting roles in a play. They help build the overall story and support the main event. Focal points can be living or not, a single object or a grouping. You can use  rocks and boulders, constructs or sculptures, fountains or logs.  Focal points can underscore a theme, like a carved tree-trunk bench in a woodland garden), an unusual banana specimen plant in a tropical garden or a wagon wheel in a rustic Western landscape. Consider a showy seating area with unusually shaped, colored or styled furniture as a focal point.

Lead up to your focal point with paths, garden beds, fencing or decorative border materials. Add an archway or an unexpected gateway to a fence and that can become a focal point in itself.

Creating a focal point can one of the more fun parts of designing the landscape. You can use a favorite item, search through garden centers, check out your attic, garage or wander through a junk yard and find a creative way to recycle some object into a focal point. Or you can plant an exciting area with some really showy specimen plants to create drama in your garden design. Designing a garden focal point can not only be a fascinating project, but it can make a bland landscape beautiful.