Beginning to plan requires a little time-out from digging the border.
Take a clipboard and your camera, your coffee and go out into the garden to assess what you have.
Take your camera and take some photos of your garden. Try to take a series of photos that will give you panorama once you tape them together. The camera will include things that your eye, subconsciously, does not. The untidy heap of wood by the garage, the scruffy fence, an overgrown shrubbery, the telephone pole you want to screen, the church spire that you could frame as a view from the garden. All these are easier to see when they are on film
Take shots of the hidden corners in the garden as omitting these from your eventual scheme will let down even a dramatic and beautiful garden.
Next you need to record what you have. You need to make a rough survey of your section. It will contain and organise the key exisitng aspects of your garden onto paper.
Draw a rough outline of the section and outline your house and the boundaries of your section on it. It need not be to scale, it need not be beautiful but it does need to be able to handle your notes and observations. Mark on north your sketch, the position of the sun is critical to a successful design.
Why 'Design' Your Garden?
Designing your garden is something you do either consciously or unconsciously. Even those gardens that 'just grow like topsy' are the result of a series of decisions about planting a tree there, digging a border here. The result, however, is usually much better aesthetically and practically, and the overall design more coherent, if you plan consciously and include the entire garden in your scheme.
You need not develop every part of your plan at once, but if you have later requirements in the back of your mind you will not find the children's sandpit or a beautiful specimen tree, too big and precious to move, plunk in the middle of a planned axis or vista. There will be room for the children to play, for the car to turn out of the garage, a place for vegetables and the compost bin, and, perhaps most important of all, a place that is sunny, sheltered and beautiful to linger over lunch with friends or to have a solitary coffee.
Where do you start when faced with a new garden, an older garden that you have just taken on, or even your own garden when your needs and available time change...
Mark the doors and windows from the house. Show the garage, driveway and turning area, garden taps. Note any slope on the section and estimate how much it rises over one metre.
Mark any features you love and those you hate, eyesores or pretty vistas or views. Move around the garden and assess the different views from each place.
Make notes about the soil (clay, soggy, stony etc) and drainage, windy or sheltered areas, sunny or shaded areas, mark main drainage and cable runs (you do not want to plant a tree over these later!).
And mark on any features that you would like to incorporate.. but try to keep things simple at this stage.
Take you rough survey diagram and your photos, and look at them critically to see what you have omitted from your survey, eg. that telephone pole or neighbours balcony that you simply don't notice any more.
Glue your panorama to a page so that you can write notes easily, and relate the various photos to each other.
You need to take a break and think through what you have discovered from your survey and your photos. Then it will be time for the next step....
Design 102 outlines the planning stage and dealing with the wish-list here
Glue your panorama to a page so that you can write notes easily
