A Simple Guide to Garden Planning
by silver medal winning garden designer Mary Newstead
- Part 1: Introduction
- Part 2: Choosing a style
- Part 3: Doing the design
- Part 4: Materials
- Part 5: The little extras
- Part 6: Plant combinations
Introduction
If you are about to embark on creating a garden from scratch for the first time, or you are entertaining the idea of re-designing your existing plot, this series may help you work towards your aim. It will contain useful tips, taken from personal experience, on the intricacies of designing a garden, presented in a practical and methodical way. It’s not rocket-science - every one of us can do it. All it requires is heaps of enthusiasm and to learn a few basic rules, the most important being to take your time.
Creating and tending a garden is often likened to rearing a child and, like parenting; it will demand your undivided attention. In these days of instant gratification we all are guilty of wanting everything now, but when it comes to gardening, patience is definitely a virtue. Time waits for no man and within a few short years - a blink of an eye in gardening terms - you can give birth to your own perfect paradise. You have probably just committed to spending the largest amount of money in your life when you purchased your house and garden. It is also quite likely that you intend to live in it for several years - so what’s the rush? Resist the temptation to go for a quick makeover - a piecemeal approach, with haphazard features and ill-considered materials tends to have unstylish results. And when you do come to sell-up, a well laid-out and thoughtfully planted garden can be the icing on the cake as far as a firm sale is concerned.
Get to know your garden
You have just become the custodian of an established garden or possibly a brand new plot. Maybe you have owned your garden already for several years. Whichever of these categories you fall into, there’s one thing for sure - autumn/winter is the perfect time to begin the planning process.
If you have just bought into a well established garden, it’s a good idea to live with it for one year i.e. autumn, winter, spring and summer and certainly don’t be tempted to rush in to planting anything just yet - although a few bedding plants for quick colour in containers may help cheer you up in the meantime.
The primary reason for waiting is to give you time to live with your new garden throughout all the seasons, giving you the opportunity to discover what secrets it may hold. You may move into your new house in mid-winter so how can you possibly know what treasures may be hibernating beneath the earth - summer perennials and spring bulbs will not be visible yet. Similarly, if you move in summer, you will not be aware of winter flowering bulbs or winter/spring perennials like dicentra or arums that die down in summer.
If, on the other hand, you have a new garden with absolutely nothing in it whatsoever, or you have been living with your garden for several years already, then you won’t have to wait quite as long, although it’s still wise to exercise a little prudence or you may find yourself making ill-considered judgements. This is particularly important when it comes to hard-landscaping, which is fixed so will be difficult to correct at a later stage, although a little less important when it comes to plants, which if necessary can be moved if misplaced.
The best gardens grow out of good design and forward planning, so be patient as there’s plenty for you to be getting on with during the first year. It’s always a good idea, particularly if you are new to gardening, to begin by reading as many gardening books and quality magazines as you can, to familiarise yourself with plants that you may otherwise not have heard of or seen before, and don’t forget to visit gardens and flower shows for ideas. Check out events in your local area and enrol on short courses and one-day lectures - a brilliant way to learn quickly and to meet other like-minded people.
An upstairs window is a useful vantage point
You will want to make a note of the areas of sun and shade, which will vary depending on the time of year as the sun tracks across the sky, changing the dynamics of your space from one season to the next. Think about what you want to use it for - entertaining, children, pets, car parking. Do you want to grow your own vegetables; will you want a utility/composting area or a greenhouse? Make a list of essentials that have to be catered for like dustbins, washing line, climbing frame, a shed for tools and toys.
Then make another list of luxury items that you’d like to include, but be prepared to make compromises as you will probably itemise far too many, so some whittling may be needed at a later stage, depending on how much space you have available. And do this several times during the year as a shady spot in winter, where you thought might be suitable for the dustbins, may be much sunnier in the summer months and could be an ideal location for a seat. Take time to plan your garden on paper and don’t be afraid to change your mind, which you are sure to do several times before you come up with the final layout - it took me six attempts to design the right plan for my current garden.
Try and take this first year to identify all your plants, if you don’t know them already, and learn about their preferred growing conditions and how to prune and propagate them. Maybe you’ve inherited a plant that you would like to keep but it doesn’t look healthy, so try and find out why. Taking your time not only gives you the chance to see the garden at all times of the year but also enables you to watch how the plants change throughout the seasons, helping you to highlight those worth keeping and those that don’t cut the mustard or are possibly planted in the wrong place.
It is important to thoroughly investigate your site. If it’s a new plot, it will probably contain copious amounts of rubble, which will need removing, as will any builder’s sand, often to be found lurking beneath the surface. The whole site will probably need to be thoroughly dug over and new soil imported. And on the subject of soil - you should know whether yours is acid, alkaline or neutral so invest in a soil-testing kit to establish this fact well before you begin any planting. And remember to test soil from different areas in your garden as it can vary within the same plot. Perhaps the plant you have already earmarked to keep - you know the one that looks ill - maybe it’s sick because the soil isn’t suitable, in which case it will never be happy, even if you move it. Feel the texture of your soil – it should be crumbly to the touch like a pastry mix before any liquid has been added. If it’s not, organic matter should be incorporated - you can never add too much. Check out the depth of soil all around the garden. You may want clematis along the back fence but when you come to plant it you find a huge lump of concrete barring the way – clematis like to be planted deeply. Beds close to manhole covers can be equally shallow so make a note of areas like these that may be unsuitable for planting.
Consider the aspect
So you see there’s plenty to consider even before you lift a spade or plant a single shrub. And OK so it takes quite a while to do all the preparation work, but once it’s done, and any building work is underway, it’s then only a matter of a few weeks (depending on the size of your garden) before you reach the final stage of planting the borders. It always reminds me of TV cooking programmes - we see the chef creating his gourmet masterpiece in a matter of minutes but what we don’t see is the time it took someone to prepare all the ingredients without which there wouldn’t be a finished dish. Remember this motto - fail to plan - plan to fail.
Mary Newstead
Mary is a garden designer from SW London and her courtyard garden ‘Green is a Colour’ (above) was awarded a Silver Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show 2003.