How to Start your Garden Design

Once you know all about your site, exactly what you want from your garden, what inherited features are worth preserving and how much time you want to spend on maintenance, you can begin the design. To do this you will need squared or graph paper and a pencil, but to generate any useful ideas, first stand in the garden – or on the patch of wasteland that is to become your garden – and think. Turn the area into a dream space in your mind’s eye. Think not of specific plants but in terms of shapes and colours. As ideas begin to form, you can then explore practicalities and solve problems. Finally, you should measure the plot and trim your dream to fit the area, and your pocket.

Preparing the plan

The practical business of designing – preparing drawings to scale, organizing plant lists, and so on -appears to be far more daunting than it really needs to be. Accuracy is important but it is not that difficult to achieve; if you are methodical and careful, the site can be measured and a true plan drawn. You should include all important details: architectural features, the herb garden, beds and borders, pond, large trees, topiary, key shrubs, and the like. If you find it difficult to visualize designs from lines on a piece of paper, there is really no reason why you should not use the garden itself as your drawing board. The site, if not already clean, will have to be cleared of any rubbish or unwanted objects before you begin. Then, using sticks and lengths of string (preferably strong and very visible baler twine) as markers, it is possible to indicate where everything should go. Keep making adjustments to these markers until you have the layout you want. A length of hosepipe is very useful for marking out curving border fronts. I certainly feel much more comfortable working on the design in the garden itself, juggling my sticks, string and hosepipe until I feel I have laid out all the features and details in the best order and proportions.

Complicated details, like a parterre, may require a more striking outline. This can be achieved with whitewash, brushed over the grass or surface of the proposed location. Eccentric though this may sound, any step between planning and planting is invaluable and saves subsequent heartache. It is also worth visualizing height where this is a vital factor. A step-ladder erected to the height of a mature hedge will give you a good idea of the ultimate effect. If this looks too tall, obscuring a fine view and casting too much shade, select a different hedging plant. Again, if you intend to include a lengthy pergola, you could draw on a clever technique of an earlier era. In the 1920s, wealthy house owners placed cardboard cut-out pillars in various positions until they looked exactly right. Another eccentricity, but useful and potentially great fun if enough people are involved. Improvise in such a manner wherever possible: put a chair in a proposed seating area and try it out. Is this the best place, or will it be ruined by an unpleasant view?

When you have a clearer idea of the arrangement of your site it will be easier to transfer the details onto paper; this will be essential for reference once the heavy work has begun. Before you draw up the plan, leave the markers in place for a week or so to ensure that the idea really is going to be practical. Then, when you are finally happy with the main elements of the design, draw up the plan.

The proposed planting

With the outline in hand, start filling in planting details on the plan – shapes, colours, texture and scent, leaving the choice of most plants until last. Scent is most easily dealt with. Tobacco plants, pots of lilies, Choisya ternata and the like, need to be in sheltered positions where the fragrance will hang in still air. Ideally such plants should surround the seating and eating areas where they are really going to be appreciated. A bench or patio can be backed by a semicircular, enclosing trellis threaded with scented climbers. The plants should be chosen so they flower in succession right through the summer and you get a prolonged spell of delightful perfumes, not one overpowering blast for two weeks in August.

The next stage is to ensure that the planting line-up is going to provide colour and interesting shapes right through the year. Use four different coloured pens (signifying winter, spring, summer and autumn) to mark blocks of plants on the plan and, if possible, grow a star plant for every season in each area. (When planting, leave space around the young specimens to accommodate their ultimate spread. Annuals and bedding plants can fill the gaps temporarily.) Many gardeners are drawn to the idea of an all-white garden at some point, but it is important to remember that they generate a lot of extra work as faded blooms present a glaring eyesore.

Foliage

One key point rarely mentioned is that most plants only flower for a relatively short period, which means foliage and shape ought to be rated just as highly as flowering interest. Palm trees are impressive on both counts. They do grow in mild areas, with the advantage that their fronds will not turn the frazzled brown seen in hotter climates. Agaves are much hardier than generally realized and make good focal points, having the additional benefit of a dramatic flowering spike something like once every 20 years! Much smaller but also effective are the white spotted leaves of Pulmona-ria longifolia and the velvety, light grey foliage of Sta-chys byzantina, appropriately called lamb’s tongue or rabbit’s ears. Hunt out other, eye-catching examples.

Construction

With your well-considered plan complete, work can begin. Borders can be dug out, areas for lawns dug, raked and rolled and foundations for paving installed. All the time this is going on, keep reviewing the scene and be prepared to make any changes that might occur to you. This is much easier to do at the outset than later when more permanent construction is under way. With regard to heavy equipment, you should always be sure to hire well-maintained, modern and safe machinery. Make sure you fully understand how to use it, taking all necessary precautions, and leave no harmful devices to hand for inquisitive children to discover.

Needless to say, there is always the option of using a professional garden designer and a contractor. If you have ambitious plans, limited time or an aversion to hard physical work, such experts should be seriously considered. Their involvement could raise the cost of a project quite dramatically, but equally costly mistakes could be avoided. You will not have the complete satisfaction of knowing that all you survey is your work, but you might have come that much nearer to achieving your dream garden. It is a matter of weighing up the advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. A good designer will be sensitive to your preferences and tastes as well as to the context: the style of your house . and the surrounding view, quite apart from the size, shape and contours of the space. Perhaps the key point about a garden is that it is never complete. As with a sitting room, owners occasionally get bored with a particular look and rearrange things. Then, a plant that succeeded in its previous place may, for no known reason, fail in the new, apparently more appropriate site. Another plant must be sought, and the colour scheme suddenly leaps from pink to yellow and different, complementary features become desirable. It is a matter of being aware of the alternatives and gauging whether they can be made to work. The six garden designs give you some impression of the range of options available. The idea is not to copy them slavishly -some of the design elements are solutions to very specific problems – but to apply similar principles of design to serve your own needs and tastes.