How to Assess your Garden

Whether the site is brand new or an old established plot, the same principles apply to planning and designing your ideal garden. First, assess what is at your disposal, then decide what kind of garden you want and whether you can provide its requirements. For example, a kitchen garden needs fertile soil and full sun, whereas woodland species need shade; alpine and rock plants need less space than an arboretum, when nothing less than about four acres (1.6 hectares) will do justice to a collection.

For most purposes, one needs reasonably fertile soil and a sunny, sheltered position, but even without these ingredients do not give up. Assess your garden’s potential, its strengths and weaknesses, and then decide how to take advantage of the former while minimizing the effects of the latter. It is the surest way to successful garden design.

Dimensions

The first step with a new garden is to familiarize yourself with its dimensions. Size matters, but only in so far as it might limit the number of different areas you can create, and the size and number of plants and features within them. If the garden is on the small side, there are several ways of putting the available space to more efficient use. Vertical surfaces, for instance, offer scope for climbers, wall plants and hanging baskets. The range of plants is enormous. One small area could contain the dark red flowers of Clematis viticella growing up through the long catkin-like racemes of Itea ilicifolia, with a Cytisus battandieri nearby bearing early summer, pineapple-scented yellow flowers. Though the latter is strictly speaking a freestanding tree, it can also be grown against a sunny wall. Raised beds and terraces also extend the growing areas, and containers make maximum use of sterile locations such as paving and window sills. Furthermore, the illusion of size is easily achieved. Clever design demonstrates how even the most cramped plots can, with crafty positioning of screens in the form of hedges and trellises, give a spurious impression of size and stature. The secret is to have a surprise around every corner, and to make the visitor think there are more Corners than really exist. One of the most sophisticated forms of illusion is trompe I’oeil. At its most developed, it involves painting a scene on a wall suggesting an extra area beyond, but “receding” trelliswork and the clever use of mirrors can easily give an impression of depth that does not exist.

Incidentally, too large a garden can also cause problems, although they are easily solved by strategic planting, with the emphasis on trees and shrubs underplanted with ground cover. However, since the great majority of gardeners find themselves with limited space rather than too much, this text will concentrate on that extreme rather than coping with extensive acres. By itself smallness is not a problem, what counts is how it is used.