Modern Garden Design
Gardens have functions.
Most gardens have some function in the house design. It can be visual if you're never going to sit out there or it can be for entertaining or quiet contemplation but whatever it is, the design of the garden has to create the opportunity for this to happen.
It is not enough to say "Give me a modern garden design" as that doesn't help the designer. Instead focus on the function of the garden and say something like, "Give me a modern garden design that encourages evening entertaining" or "Give me a landscape design emphasizing interesting flowers I can watch bloom over the entire season".
Gardens Have Shapes
Not many people understand that not only does the garden and its structure have shape, but the plants themselves have shapes. Think of vertical - lined grasses or squat round evergreen shrubs or even triangular shrubs. Vines trained to vertical or horizontal lines and roses occupying barrel shaped spaces in our gardens.
Everything in a garden exists within four dimensions (you have to include time as a dimension in the garden because of the seasonal and yearly changes to plant shapes) so your planning has to include this.
In this case, suggest to designers your emphasis is on a big spring show or summer evening entertaining so the plant shapes can't intrude over into the walkways or have thorny branches reaching for fine clothing fabrics.
You get to decide if bottle plants are modern garden design or simply trash. (in this case, it was in a high-end modern garden but.... :-)
Gardens Have Colors
While we touched on this aspect of modern garden design above with flowering season, it it important to make color preferences clear to the designer. A modern garden is going to use color as a sword to cut through the fog of everyday sensations in the garden. In the picture below, the tree blooms have been mirrored in the off whites of the walls and stone work in the garden. This spring garden is a calming blend of color perfect for wandering to enjoy the bulbs that are about to break out to whisk the viewer into full glorious spring (and then summer).
Do you want the color of the fashionable year in your garden? This happens more often than you can imagine and then, when the colors change the garden is left feeling old. Far better to provide the fashionable color of the year as flowering accents in containers or beds that can be pulled up and replaced when the colors change. The hardscape is then left to complement the house or surroundings.
Bottom Line
In creating a modern garden design, we still have to go through the same set of exercises to define how we're going to use the garden, the primary shapes and colors we want to see in our lives.
The difference of course is that once you have those things out of the way, the designer has far fewer limits on their imagination.
Advice on Picking a Designer
The really sad news here is that most designers for garden centers get asked for boring same-old, same-old every week. What shrubs are going to go into the foundation planting (only use a foundation planting if you have an ugly foundation that requires hiding) :-)
The measure of a great designer is whether they can break out of the same-old, same-old mold to give you something exciting and modern. Or whether they fall back into the old habits. The good ones will jump at the chance to give you something truly different.
I suggest you ask for previous designs as part of their portfolio to see if they can come close to what you require.
