Great garden design – made easy!
Tips and tricks on how to design your garden the expert way…
Whether you’ve inherited your garden and all its features and foibles or are lucky enough to have a blank canvas, don’t just rest on your laurels – get it up to scratch now by following our guide on where to start.
We all know the daunting feeling you get when you’ve got a bare border just waiting to be filled with wonderful plants, or a bed in need of a refresh – just where do you begin? Well, don’t be discouraged, it needn’t be intimidating. We’re here to take the dilemma out of design, simplify your plant search and inspire you to become an expert in your own back garden!
1 Don’t be daunted
Now, you wouldn’t be hesitant to change a room in your house, so why your garden? Look at it as simply another room to beautify! It should be seen as exciting more than anything, with the prospect of lots of beautiful plants to enjoy, and each element should be taken a step at a time; don’t try to do everything all at once. Concentrate on one small area before you move on to the next stage.
2 Plan ahead
Get some ideas together before you start – what are you using your garden for mostly? Relaxing? To grow veg?
For the kids to play in? Do you prefer co age gardens or neat and tidy bedding bonanzas? If you like trees, decide on what sort you prefer: small, large, evergreen? Is it to be peaceful and would you like a trickling water feature? Buy a nice new notebook, call it your Garden Design Journal and note down a few sentences about what you want. This works for a garden as a whole, or even just a small border overhaul.
3 Treat your garden like a picture
A well-designed garden should look pre y as a picture, so treat yours like one. Treat yourself to some coloured pencils and open a fresh page in your Garden Design Journal. Draw a few sketches of how you might like your plot and see which one takes your fancy. All the best gardens have started out as a drawing and look like a complete picture, everything complementing everything else and pleasing to the eye. Scribble down some of your favourite colours, too, to get an idea of what goes with what.
4 Avoid a football pitch
A lot of people imagine a garden and plonk a lawn right in the centre, with squared off borders all the way round. This is fine, especially, if you have football-playing children or an active dog, but garden design can be a whole lot more imaginative. Consider circular lawns or patios, wavyedged borders, gravel areas, rockeries, hedges snaking across the middle – a mix of different textures and ‘garden rooms’ makes for a pleasing whole. You’ll enjoy and make the most of your garden more with your own exciting design!
5 Create the bare bones first
Think like a designer and first set about creating the essential shape and bare bones of your new garden. Would a small wall, a trellis or arbour divide up the space handsomely? Would a raised bed suit that corner? Consider where some permanent evergreen interest would sit nicely all year and draw those areas into your sketch. You’re just marking out your ‘garden skeleton’ ideas at this stage – exact plants and border contents will come later.
6 Paint your own Picasso!
Here’s where your school geometry comes in! Have a play around with some abstract shapes in your drawings. Ever thought about a triangular or hexagonal lawn, or a winding S-shaped path leading to a seating area? Either side could sit a raised bed or two or a rockery gravel area, full of alpines. Try whatever you like in your design – start with a series of circles for lawns, beds and trees, then perhaps add in some squares of paving. It’s a bit like a phone doodle: one shape leads onto another, and before you know it, a pa ern has formed!
7 Try a few design secrets
There are a few tricks of the trade that may help you in your design. Firstly, S-shapes, tapered lawns or tapered paths make your garden look longer, as does dividing up gardens into rooms – it makes it seem wider and longer and adds to the mystery to break up the length with walls, trellis or hedges at intervals. To widen, use large mirrors, or break up your lawn into overlapping circles. Make sure you can see your favourite features from your house, but be sure to leave some bits a mystery, hidden away in corners to create a journey.