A gazebo can be an impressive feature in many different gardens. But how and where you decide to incorporate one within a garden design scheme can make a big difference to how successful the overall effect will be. 

In garden designs, focal points are important. They draw the eye and direct the gaze, helping to make a space feel bigger, and taking advantage of perspective. Using a gazebo as a focal point for your garden can be an excellent idea. 

Placing a Gazebo At the Centre of Open Spaces

Gazebos can be eye-catching features and make great focal points when added out in the open in a garden. Often, they would have traditionally been added to a grassy lawn, but you might also place one in the heart of an eco-friendly wildflower meadow, chamomile or thyme lawn, or a bright and sunny Mediterranean gravel garden for example. 

A gazebo stands out amid lower planting and adds a vertical element in the middle of the space. 

Placing a Gazebo At the Heart of Circular Gardens

You might also place a gazebo at the heart of gardens laid out in a circular design. Especially when clad with climbers, a gazebo can be the main feature at the heart of a mandala design, or concentric flower or vegetable beds. 

Whether your circular gardens are loose and informal – like a cottage garden design – or much more formal like a mediaeval knot garden – a gazebo can draw the eye to the heart of the design and also provide a space at its heart with great views in every direction. 

Placing a Gazebo At the End of a Straight Path in a Symmetrical Design

Gazebos can also elongate a space when placed at the end of a straight path leading through the centre of a symmetrical garden design. 

Your path might lead between carefully manicured hedges, large herbaceous borders, or avenues of trees. And the gazebo will serve to draw the eye to the far end of the space, and allow the pleasing symmetry to gain its full expression. 

Placing a Gazebo Through an Archway Which Frames the View

Another situation in which a gazebo can serve as a focal point to draw the eye is when the view of the structure is framed through an archway. 

This might be an arch trellis, clad with roses or other climbing plants, or an archway in a wall or fence structure. The view of the focal point gazebo can lead you through from one ‘garden room’ into the next, hinting at the delights to come and serving as an end destination for strolls. 

Placing a Gazebo In A Woodland Glade

In food-filled forest gardens or woodland garden designs, views can be foreshortened by the dense planting and the trees. But placing a gazebo in a sunny glade within such a garden can draw the eye through the dappled shade and help to keep the space from feeling too enclosed. 

As a focal point, glimpsed along pathways and between the trees, a gazebo can be a destination that draws you through the space, inviting you deeper in and through the area. 

A gazebo can look beautiful within a range of different settings and can be a key part of many garden designs. Practical as well as aesthetically pleasing, one of these stunning structures can allow you to think holistically about how the space looks, and how you move through it. 

So thinking carefully about placement in terms of visuals, as well as practicality, can help you make sure that your gazebo becomes an integral part of the space, and a key feature within the overall design, which enhances, rather than detracting from, the whole.