To bring your garden into focus, find a place where your eyes can rest.

Focal points are a garden's visual resting spots. In the flashy riot and exuberance of a summer garden, they lead the eye through it all, gently imposing order on a view. At every season, a tall, carefully placed urn, a sparkling birdbath or a handsome specimen shrub doesn't steal the glory from the rest of the garden -- it enhances the scene by giving it direction.

"The most common mistake people make is they try all these different varieties of plants, and their backyard ends up looking like a tossed salad," says Mike Miller, a landscape architect at Ewseychik, Rice & Miller in Longwood, Fla. "We use a broad, simple palette," he says, "and create focal points."

Finding a focal point and settling on an appropriate plant or architectural element to achieve the desired effect may take some thought and effort. Some designers actually give their clients a large, empty picture frame and ask them to walk around with it, defining the important views. If a picture frame makes you self-conscious, pick up a camera, instead: Taking pictures of your garden will reveal the places that naturally attract your eye; it might also reveal spots that need to be screened from view. You'll be able to forget about an annoying utility pole out there in your view if you plant a screen of evergreens and place an arbor strategically in your line of sight.

Peggy Krapf, a garden designer in Toano, Va., near Williamsburg, works hard on the details in her client's gardens. One suburban garden seemed to have all the right elements, but simply did not feel welcoming. "There were all these little bits," she says. "They had nice plants and paths and a fountain, but they were like separate thoughts." Visitors were not sure where the garden began or how to approach it, and the existing paths hurried them along without encouraging them to enjoy the experience of the plants along the way.

Krapf needed to unify the garden. She first suggested a proper garden gate. The 4-foot-high gate, flanked by evergreen shrubs, makes visitors pause a little before entering the garden, allowing them to take in the scene. Krapf then placed a bench at the end of the path, creating a destination, and moved a few shrubs to make the fountain the focus of the view from the porch. In another client's garden, she designed a curving stone bench to put in one corner: The bench draws visitors out to enjoy the flower beds up close and takes the sharp edge off the corner of the property.

In her own large country garden, Krapf put a garden bench at the end of an axis, about 50 feet from her front door. The bench occupies a space with raised flower beds on either side and invites her to sit there and admire her blooms. From the bench, looking back toward the house, she created a sort of focal point in reverse, framing the view of her own front porch between an oversized urn and a columnar boxwood.

"We often use containers as focal points around a door or on a patio," says Molly Moriarty, a garden designer and owner of Heart and Soil Design in Minneapolis. "We're shooting color where we need it," she says of these pots full of flowers, and at the same time giving structure to the whole setting. Containers can be a challenge through the winter in cold climates, but Moriarty uses combinations of twigs, evergreen branches, dried vines and seed heads in her winter pots: they bristle with texture and look especially pretty in the snow. When spring comes, she is ready to replant with cold-tolerant flowers such as pansies and with ornamental kale and cabbages.

Focal points -- like Moriarty's pots -- can have even more impact if they change through the seasons. Shifting light and shadows will affect the way you experience an arbor. You can enjoy the blooms and perfume of roses or other climbing plants in summer and the tracery of vines in the winter. A birdbath will attract different complements of visitors at various times of year. A specimen tree planted as a focal point will change through the seasons, too: A crabapple, redbud or another hardy flowering tree might be covered with blooms in spring and with berries or decorative seedpods in the fall and winter.

Even small gardens have room for more than one focal point, but it is best not to let them compete with each other -- if you can see three focal points at once, then the garden is already out-of-focus. And make sure the focal points you choose are in scale and in character with your garden. In general, sculpture, flowerpots or plants used as focal points should be large enough to command attention. Bold strokes are more effective than subtle touches. An armillary sphere or sundial on a plinth should sit well above the flowers around it, or stand all by itself. When your focal point stands out proudly, the rest of the garden seems to come to attention, too.

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There are a heap of reasons why every gardener should be making compost, and one of the best is that it is so easy.

Autumn leaves will soon be abundant and free. A quick round of tidying up around the garden will yield a hardworking starter pile of the leaves, spent flowers and green trimmings you need to turn yard waste into the best soil amendment there is.

Healthy soil is the basis of a healthy garden, and compost is full of the essential bacteria, microbes and fungi that support fertile soil. Linda Chalker-Scott, a Washington State University extension horticulturist and author of "The Informed Gardener" (University of Washington Press; $19.95), puts it simply: For vegetable gardens or flower gardens, she says, "Compost is great stuff."

Gardens are not often laid out in advance with a designated spot for composting, but it's not much trouble to find a place to make compost. Any corner will do, and it is easy to landscape around a compost heap with flowering shrubs or evergreens. The minimum size for a healthy working heap of leaves, grass, garden clippings and vegetable trimmings from the kitchen (if you choose to use them), is about three feet on a side -- smaller than most shrubs. Set aside a big corner of the garden, perhaps five or six feet on a side, and you'll have room for a compost pile or a bin, an old garden fork, and maybe even a wheelbarrow. You're not really giving up part of your garden -- you're putting the garden to work, recycling waste that you might otherwise have to pay to have hauled away.

Good-looking compost bins make it easy to incorporate composting into the life of a garden, and they keep the process tidy. Wooden bins with wire sides, or with space between the boards, allow plenty of essential air circulation. Compost tumblers (you can find them made of wood or heavy-duty plastic) hold a surprising amount of compost ingredients and make it easy to turn the pile, which speeds up the decomposition process.

Convenience is an important consideration when you're trying to decide where the compost pile should be. "A composting area is functionally the heart of your landscape," Mary Palmer Dargan says in her book "Lifelong Landscape Design" (Gibbs Smith; $30), but that doesn't mean it belongs right in the middle of the garden. Dargan and her husband, Hugh, created a large composting area, 35 feet long and about 16 feet wide, behind their kitchen garden in Cashiers, N.C. The space, discreetly fenced off, allows for three 3-foot-square compost bins, a compost tumbler and a place to store their chipper and garden cart.

Connie Link, owner of Sweetbay garden design in suburban Kansas City, set up a three-bin composting system on one side of her vegetable plot that doesn't take up much more room than the bins themselves -- it's about four feet deep and 10 feet wide. She didn't try to hide the heap; it's right at hand, so she can toss garden waste into it. She also doesn't have to cart the finished compost very far -- a path through the tomatoes leads right to the bins. Another Kansas City gardener installed an 8-foot-by-4-foot section of fence (fence sections in various designs are sold at building-supply stores) in front of his composting area, parked a garden bench in front of it, and planted a rose to clamber on the fence.

Gardeners who make their own compost can't seem to get enough of it. A wheelbarrow full of crumbly brown compost, cool and slightly moist, is a fine sight to behold. When you work a shovelful of it into the soil, it improves the soil's structure, adds nutrients and improves drainage. Spread on top of a flower bed or vegetable garden as mulch -- it helps control weeds and replenishes the soil as it breaks down. A layer of compost mulch around plants also looks beautiful.

It's almost impossible to make all the compost you need, so just making enough to use for the vegetable garden or the flower beds is a reasonable goal that will allow you to make use of a great deal of yard waste without giving up much space.

Composting in place works, too. If you simply don't have a spot for a heap, mow over autumn leaves and spread them on flower beds, in the vegetable garden, or under shrubs (just skip the kitchen scraps). You're making great leaf-mold compost right there in the beds.

A bag of mulch can cost $3 or more -- who says money doesn't grow on trees?

Sources and additional information

Garden shops and gardening mail-order specialists sell all sorts of compost bins. Among the most extensive offerings are those of Gardener's Supply Co. (www.gardeners.com), which sells large and small bins and tumblers, and also crocks to keep in the kitchen for broccoli stems, onion skins and such destined for the compost heap. The company's website also offers advice on making and using compost.

Williams-Sonoma's Agrarian gardening lifestyle company (www.williams-sonoma.com/shop/agrarian-garden/?cm_type=gnav) sells cedar and redwood compost bins and a redwood compost tumbler, along with composting supplies. The website also has a basic guide to composting.

If you'd like to make a bin yourself, take a look at the University of Missouri Extension's plans (http://extension.missouri.edu/p/g6957) for several sizes and styles of compost bins, and the free publication "Making and Using Compost" (http://extension.missouri.edu/p/G6956).

Linda Chalker-Scott, author of "The Informed Gardener," writes about her research and "horticultural myths" on her website (http://puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/index.html). Her research on soil amendments, including compost, can be found here.

Jeff Lowenfels explains the science and biology of compost and makes his case for backyard composting, even on a small scale, in his book "Teaming with Microbes" (Timber Press; $24.95).

CAPTIONS AND CREDIT

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Garden sheds change the landscape of a backyard. They're a great place for your garden tools -- and help keep them out of the garage -- but that's just the beginning.

Sheds redefine the garden; they create an irresistible destination -- and that in itself opens up new opportunities for landscaping. A good shed makes a garden more beautiful and interesting.

"A shed is a catalyst for a backyard transformation," says Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, whose company, Studio Shed, was founded after he designed a shed to solve his own storage problems. Horgan-Kobelski and his wife, Heather Irmiger, both competitive mountain bikers, live in a 1,000-square-foot ranch house in Boulder, Colo. They desperately needed a place to stash their bicycles.

"I wanted to incorporate a little storage building into the landscape -- something I could create positive space around," Horgan-Kobelski says. Standard metal and wood-panel sheds from big-box stores did not inspire him much, so he designed his own smart-looking building for the couple's collection of about 20 bicycles. It suits their design sensibilities perfectly.

Outdoor buildings have always reflected the changing tastes and styles of their owners, sometimes over generations. Outbuildings (or dependencies, as they are sometimes called) were usually very functional: old farmsteads had smokehouses, chicken coops, woodsheds and outhouses. Over time, these buildings were modified and updated as they found new uses. Kids claimed the old smokehouse as a clubhouse; gardeners, naturally, took over spaces that could be used to store garden tools.

James Baggett, editor of Country Gardens magazine, calls the garden shed "an outdoor closet without the fuss of wrapping a house around it." The magazine often has a brightly painted garden shed on the cover. Old-fashioned sheds have the charm of a child's playhouse, but they appeal to grown-up modern gardeners who appreciate well-organized storage areas. They may also see a shed as a private space of their own, away from distractions indoors.

"When they are well-placed in the garden, sheds become a hideaway for the green-of-heart," Baggett says. "If you're like me, they'll even offer space for puttering."

Studio Shed's customers have the same goal. "People's homes are no longer a sanctuary," Horgan-Kobelski says. Adults leave their offices and come home to a bustling, Wi-Fi world of social obligations and responsibilities. A backyard shed can be an escape from both home and work, Horgan-Kobelski says -- a place to keep stuff, but also a spot physically and emotionally separated from workaday worries.

Studio Shed's designs are infinitely adaptable and are used for storage, as potting sheds, artists' studios and backyard offices, and as a place to entertain. "It dovetails with the small-house movement," Horgan-Kobelski says. "People are asking themselves, 'Do I need a big home, a big addition?' And most people don't. You don't need all this gigantic space, you need the right space."

It's a good idea to check local zoning regulations before you decide on the size and location of a garden shed. Bigger is not necessarily better, Horgan-Kobelski says; sheds 8 feet by 10 feet and 10 feet by 12 feet are the two most popular sizes among Studio Shed's customers. Sheds this size often do not require a permit, but setback rules may dictate their placement in the garden.

A porch or deck outside the door of a shed is a nice touch, but a path of stepping stones will suffice to make the shed an enticing destination and suggest that it's more than just a place to hang up tools.

A gardener in Richmond, Va., painted her shed's door sky blue and installed a small cupola on the roof, to add a little old-time aristocracy to the tiny structure. She planted boxwoods and daylilies by the front door. Flower beds and shrubs settle a shed into its garden context, just as foundation plantings do around a house. Flowerpots or window boxes echo blooms in the garden, and they're easy to take care of.

A writer in California who made a 10-foot-by-14-foot Studio Shed into an office in his backyard says his shed has become a think tank where he does his best work. A vegetable garden on one side of the shed makes even his 20-second commute productive -- he can pick beans for the dinner table on his way home.

SOURCES

-- Garden sheds of all kinds can be made from kits; plans are available, or you can improvise. Big-box stores offer ready-made metal and wood-panel sheds of all sizes. Garden magazines are great sources of inspiration. An Internet search for "backyard sheds" turns up a world of possibilities. Try searching Pinterest and Houzz, too.

-- Studio Shed (www.studio-shed.com), based in Colorado, sells customized, pre-fabricated sheds for storage, workshops, home offices and studios, with finished or unfinished interiors. The 4-year-old company designs sheds to help homeowners "live simply and thoughtfully," says Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, co-founder of Studio Shed.

CAPTIONS AND CREDIT

(NOTE: These photos are for ONE-TIME use ONLY. At Home photos, with the proper credits, are to be run ONLY with At Home stories. Conversion to black and white is OK.)

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com or the Universal Uclick Editorial Department at -uueditorial@amuniversal.com)