Summer is the one time of year that we get a chance to really enjoy our garden, but if your backyard isn’t looking as good as it could, it can certainly lessen the enjoyment!

If you think you’ve left it too late to improve your landscape now, don’t worry, you haven’t. I’m going to shares five simple tips that will help you transform your garden so you can increase your enjoyment this summer. There is nothing worse than finally sitting down in your favourite sun lounger only to start noticing how various parts of the garden aren’t looking good.

Top 5 Tips to Transform Your Garden

1. First off, photograph your garden as it is now. Photographs can help you see the overall picture, which you can sometimes miss when you are in the garden. Also you’ll know which parts work and which don’t during the summer months, this can help you when planning for next year.
2. Cut back any untidy plants that have finished flowering (unless you live somewhere hot and dry, wait until it’s cooler). Just a little bit of a tidy up will do wonders with how your garden looks.
3. Edge your lawn, preferably in a coherent shape that will improve the look and flow of your garden.
4. Fill in any gaps with seasonal perennials or annuals in tubs. A big burst of flowers will create dramatic interest and liven up any dull spots.
5. Strategically placed focal points like benches, pots, urns and statues in key viewing locations. This draws the eye around the garden and creates visual full stops, which helps bring coherency to unruly planting schemes.

These five simple things alone will make a world of difference to how your garden looks. Then it’s just a matter of inviting your friends and family around, and enjoying your wonderful landscape. Throw a burger or two on for me please!

Video Tutorial

If you’d like to see some of the principles mentioned above in action, just watch this great garden design video tutorial.

And if you have any tips you would like to share or questions you would like answered on your garden, please ask them in the comments below.

It is often said that the Chelsea Flower Show is the world’s best garden show (for those outside the UK think of it as a horticultural Wimbledon). I view the Chelsea flower show as a catwalk for garden design. All the latest fashions and trends in one place.

Like with fashion, a lot of what you see at Chelsea is designer flights of fancy. But having said that, if you look beneath the hypey ‘just for show’ stuff, beyond that is real design inspiration that can be used in any garden.

One complaint often raised is that the gardens are impractical and are beyond the reach of most people. The show gardens at Chelsea cost around £180,000 to build.

So How Do You Translate Chelsea Catwalk Fashion Into Your Garden At An Affordable Price?

British Heart Foundation Garden

Rather than focusing on the unaffordable elements of the show gardens, focus on how you can translate something that inspires you into something that works in your own garden.

Ideas themselves are often not expensive, its construction and materials used at Chelsea that cost the money. For example Ann-Marie Powell’s garden for the British Heart Foundation has lush green planting round a central pool. The elements that make it standout are the bright red metal tubing that has been used to form archways. If you wanted to copy that, the tubing doesn’t have to be metal, nor does it have to be red. You could create the look using plastic pipe on top of metal rods inserted into the ground.

Coloured plastic pipe

You probably need a bit more space between each set of pipe because they’d clatter in the wind, but you get the point you can create something like this for a fraction of the cost with a bit of imagination. And one advantage with using plastic piping instead of expensive metal tubing would be if you get fed up with it you can quickly and easily remove it and if you’re really nifty you could recycle the piping and make a poly tunnel frame!

Construction Counts

Monaco floating deck planter

Another example is the fabulous central feature of a floating deck lavender planter in the Monaco garden. Now whilst it looks wonderful without upright supports to make it look like it’s floating, the expense of RSJ and the construction efforts that would go into creating it aren’t really worth it for most gardens. You could create something very similar for a fraction of the cost if used a pergola frame clad in hardwood decking.

The runway of deck in that Monaco garden doesn’t have to be a water chute for a pool, it could just be a deck path.

How To Use Inspiration In Your Garden

When you see something you like train yourself to ask what is it specifically that you like about it. Is it the colour, shape, texture or planting? Once you’ve narrowed it down you can then work out cost-effective way of doing the something similar in your own garden.

If you’d like to learn more about successfully planning your own garden take a look at my online garden design course the homeowners. Here I’ll guide you step-by-step through everything you need to know to create fantastic garden.

To see more of the show gardens visit the RHS website. What inspiration have you taken from this year’s Chelsea Flower show?

To listen to the interview, check out the Great Garden Formula Podcast, episode 2 on iTunes.

David Stevens is an internationally acclaimed garden designer and author. David has written 22 books including favourites like Backyard Blueprints and has won 11 Gold Medals at the Chelsea Flower Show in London.

Rachel: Hi David, thank you so much for joining me. One thing I’ve always wanted to ask you is how did you first get into garden design?

David: Oh it’s a long story really, garden design, horticulture, gardening is one of those things where you try everything else before you find what you really want to do, I’ve always been able to draw, and I’ve always enjoyed drawing. I was always fixated on maps and drawing and that kind of thing. But then at school we never really got to know about horticulture or anything like that to be honest. When I left school and tried all sorts of jobs like the police force and the army and couldn’t get on with those at all, that’s when I suddenly found garden design. I studied landscape architecture and did a five-year degree course, worked with John Brooks back in the 70s. It was a while ago and was good fun, it still is.

Rachel: Yes that’s one thing I really notice about you. You keep your passion and design interest after all these years, do you continually rework your design style, what keeps your interest?

David: I think you’ve got to, if you lose interest in any subject pack it in! I think it’s a kind of shame in the way I’ve got a lot of pals in the industry and you can see that some of them have reached their peak and carry on designing the same stuff and it looks good and it’s very competent but you can see they’ve not really pushed themselves and I couldn’t do that. It would feel wrong, you know what I mean?

Rachel: Oh definitely, I know exactly what you mean.

David: You’ve got to keep improving, hopefully!

Rachel: Every time I feel myself getting a little bit bored, I realise it’s time to stretch myself and develop my designing more. And thankfully seem to get client that is a bit more adventurous to let the experiment!

David: Absolutely.

Rachel: Can we talk about your process a little bit? Do you have a set process where you see it in your mind or do you need to work on paper?

David: The mind part has got better over the years, there’s no doubt about that. When I’m talking to other designers or teaching, it’s all to do with getting information and getting inside your client’s head, that’s where it all starts. It’s not my garden it is their garden, garden designers are just facilitators. You put your own ideas in your own skills in to make it work but at the end of the day it has to be just for them.

Yes it is on paper, we were on computer graphics years ago, but I never really got on with it. It’s probably because I was trained as a draughtsman and a landscape architect. It’s the relationship between my hand pen that really gets it. I think it was Frank Lloyd Wright said if you don’t have something pretty much in your mind, there is no point in fiddling around on paper. I tend, as time goes by, to see a client and I’ve got it pretty much before I leave the client, then you can get it on paper and take it from there.

Rachel: Ah that’s good, I was someone who could never visualize, so it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve been able to visualize how a garden would look. So I try to reassure people that are new to garden design, as long as you start off with paper and create a way to visualize it, it doesn’t matter and you don’t have to be a massive artistic talent.

David: Well no it doesn’t, I think just to start with you do need to work on paper and it just comes down to experience, which is the one thing you can’t teach! You can teach guidelines and rules but with experience you’ve just got to do it, I suppose and it comes with time.

Rachel: And practice definitely!

If you could give some advice to people just want to do their own garden what would be your top tips on where to start with a garden, and what are the biggest mistakes people should avoid?

David: The first biggest mistake is on the first warm day of spring to bowl off down the garden centre and go on a random binge of purchases! Unfortunately something we all still do, we all still get seduced by plants, but the key thing with your own garden is to take your time. I would say to people if you can take a year and watch the turning of the seasons, to see how high the Sun pictures in the summer and see where the shadow patterns are, check what sort of soil you’ve got and where the good and bad views are, and unconsciously after a while the design will start to make itself obvious to you.

Whether you call it a design or whether it’s your place in the garden you’ll know whether to put a stream in or whether you need a seat in, or if that corner catches the afternoon sun, wouldn’t it be great for an arbour? Slowly your ideas will start to come together to the main thing is honestly not to rush and do it straight away. So analyse, make lists, open it up to the whole family, do what ever you can so you don’t rush in and waste your money. Otherwise the garden centres and nurseries will just be rubbing their hands together every time they see you!

And information gathering is fun, and it’s amazing how much your ideas will change, and by all means look through magazines and tear out ideas and perhaps make a mood board, just get together the things you like and are attracted to. Whether it’s kinds of plants or plant combinations or a brick path, whether it’s hard landscaping of one kind or another, whether it’s water, all of those things will hone in on the kind of style you like. Very often the style is picked up from the house, you live in a house that you like the architecture, and the architecture then gets translated into the garden, you extend the lines out, you extend the materials.

The garden isn’t in isolation, you can’t separate it from the house, the landscape, the cityscape, which is very important.

Rachel: And for those people that have just newly qualified, they have just come out of college and are a little bit nervous, what advice would you give them?

David: Don’t worry! We’ve all had that thing called designer’s block, you’ve had it I’ve had it, I still get it. You sit there and look at the drawing board and all the measurements, you’ve talked to the client, all the rest of it and you’re still stuck. So get up from the drawing board, take the dog for a walk, have a cup of coffee, and it will start fall into place.

I think honestly that a lot of it has to do with confidence, and some people are simply more confident than others. I wasn’t particularly confident in the early days, I thought I could probably do it, and with each design you do, that will give you confidence. To start with it will take you longer than you think, sometimes a design will drop straight out in five minutes. You can design something in five minutes but it may take you three days to actually draw it up.

It is honestly down to confidence and that mysterious thing called experience, the more you do the better you get. One thing that designers and artists often have is the ability to feel when you’ve done it right, you’ve got to feel good about it. So if you are feeling happy, then it’s right. If you’re not very happy about it you can keep going until you get it right.

Another important thing is you’ve got to learn to think three-dimensionally, unless you’re working on CAD you need able to do in your head, think how high the trees are and how tall hedge is, how dense your shrub border is. Always thinking three-dimensionally even though you’ve got to put it onto paper.

My honest advice is to stick with it, look, read, get inspiration from whatever source you can. A lot of my inspiration is architectural. It can come from other designers, cruise the web, your website is great!

Rachel: Thank you!

David: Well it is! I found it and thought this looks good. The more you look on the web, the more books, and I’m a bookaholic, most gardeners tend to become a bookaholic, the more you’ll learn. Visit gardens, take lots of pictures and a notebook; otherwise we forget so easily. Simple plant combinations can look quite fantastic but always record it so you have a record of it so you don’t forget. So information, information, information, gather, gather, gather, that’s where you broaden your palate, it really is.

Rachel: Yes, I used to have a designer swipe file and it was your books I used to use for inspiration!

David: That’s very kind! You do get information from books whoever’s they are. They’ll give you inspiration and get your mind working perhaps in a different direction and that’s the important thing.

Rachel: Yes just flicking through them before you start to design, I used to find that things would just mesh together and I would know where I got the information from. And you could never really copy a design because no two gardens are the same.

David: You just need to develop your own style and that’s what clients or customers want. I was influenced by Sylvia Crowe and the Bauhaus movement and all design really springs from there. We all design, in many ways, in all the same way. It’s all to do with practical thinking in keeping it simple.

That’s another thing, if you designing your own garden for goodness sake, keep it simple! Over complication is the death of a good design in whatever form.

Rachel: Is there a way people can stop themselves from making things overly complicated?

David: Mmm it’s a bit like when you do a watercolor you should know when to stop and you can easily overwork it. I almost feel that it, so it’s quite an intangible thing in a way. A lot of designers work off checklists so you tend to prioritize that checklist and you can eliminate the things of the least importance and then if you want to add extra things it works and doesn’t feel too busy. Design is a structured process which you build up and I build my design up in areas, I work away from the house. Work out at the beginning if you really need all these things and that will help you during the design. Can things be combined so you can save space in a small garden?

Part 2 of the interview will be up next week. To find out more about David Stevens, visit his garden design website.

If you can’t wait until then, check out the Great Garden Formula Home Study Course – step by step guidance on how to make your garden look fabulous.

Have you ever tried to improve your garden, excitedly trundling off to the nearest garden centre, come back with a car load of plants, having spent a small fortune, only to find you’re really not happy with the results?

So, why is this? Garden centres are absolutely full of beautiful plants, so theoretically, all you’ve got to do is bring them home and put them in and hey presto, you have a fantastic looking garden.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work like that because of one thing….

What Is The Mysterious Ingredient To A Great Looking Garden?

It’s that little old thing called shape. Now by shape, I don’t mean the size and shape of your garden boundary. That shape isn’t important.

What’s important are the shapes you create in the areas of ‘empty space’ like your lawn and patio areas. If you get these right, they define how the rest of the garden looks – and that is critical. Plants really are just the icing on the cake; they’re not the cake itself.

Have you ever had a cake baking disaster where you got the sponges out of the oven with one side so flat it looked like someone had sat on it? I have! And no matter how much tinkering to make it look good, it just doesn’t work.

My cake baking efforts were so bad I couldn’t just sprinkle icing sugar on top, I had to try and ice it and pretend it wasn’t supposed to be a Victoria Sponge. Can you picture how awful that looked?

Clearly a good job I didn’t want to bake cakes for a living!

It doesn’t make a difference whether it’s cakes or gardens. You have to get shape right first, otherwise, it’s disastrous.

Plants alone cannot give you a fantastic looking garden no matter how nice they are. You have to get the shape right first, otherwise, you’ll be about as successful as I was trying to disguise my malformed sponge creations.

Does Your Garden Pass The Test?

If like most people, you’ve placed things wherever you had space, chances are you haven’t got the results you really wanted with your garden. This is because the garden isn’t flowing from one area to another very well – and that is one of the main keys of good design.

A good garden should be a whole entity even if you divide it up into various rooms like you do with a house – it still has to function as one whole unit.

The fact is, when you have an overall lawn shape that links everything, it automatically just works without you having to do a great deal. Just one coherent shape can make an enormous difference to your garden.

Does Your Garden Have A Coherent Shape (lawn and patio areas)?

If your garden doesn’t have a coherent shape, the good news is, it doesn’t cost a fortune to alter the shape of your lawn. Just doing this one thing will make a tremendous difference to your garden.

If you’re feeling creative and have the space, linking several key shapes together really does look amazing very easily. Now this method works regardless of whether you have an established garden or a complete blank canvass.

So if your garden is established, is there a shape you can make with the lawn area and perhaps the patio as well that links all the items in your garden together?

A Trick To Visualisation

To help you visualise, get a piece of paper and literally scribble down the outline of your garden as it is now. And then try and put in place a very large geometric shape that just links everything.

There is a little trick that you can use to help you visualise; once you’ve drawn the shape, leave the paper flat on the table and then just duck down so that the table and paper is at eye level and you’ll find that you kind of get a little bit of perspective look to it and that will give you the idea of how it will look.

Secrets Explained Further…

If you’d like to learn more about how to make your garden look great, then you’ll find this garden design video tutorial very helpful!

I’m going to start this week’s blog post by shamelessly stealing someone else’s idea! My good friend Jenny Peterson did a great garden video showing highlights of her gardening year in 2010.  So, I thought I’d do a video of all the fantastic gardens I visited last year. Here it is…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alhambra Palace garden Granada Spain

Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden

Burghley House Lincolnshire

Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, Cordoba, Spain

Coimbra Botanic Garden, Portugal

Parque de Maria Luisa, Sevilla, Spain

Jardines de las Reales Alcazares

Exciting News!

I’m interviewing internationally acclaimed, award-winning garden designer and author David Stevens tomorrow for the new podcast series. Do you have any questions on garden design that you’d like me to ask him? If so, please leave them in the comments below or send me an email from the contact page of this website.

More News!

I know, bumper packed news this week – the 5 Minute Plant Expert is now finished. In this mini-course you’ll learn all the tricks and shortcuts to becoming a ‘Plant Whisperer’ just by working through the simple mini-course for 5 minutes a day for 2 weeks!

Creating a garden with the ‘Wow!’ Factor is easier than you think, if you follow 3 simple rules.

The reason few people have a really fantastic garden is because the route to creating them is somewhat counterintuitive…

1. Keep It Simple!

Simple? But I want Wow! Factor, I hear you cry. How can Simple = Wow? Let’s have an example. Think about the most beautiful car you’ve ever seen, picture it in detail.

Now try and imagine that same car with a pyramid shaped bonnet, a flat roof and a ski slope shaped rear! How is it looking? Not quite so sleek, huh? Forgetting for a moment it’s completely impractical, you probably wouldn’t want to be seen driving around your neighbourhood in it.

In a nutshell, simple coherent shapes work the best. It doesn’t matter if it’s a car or the shape of your lawn, simple shapes make good design, which always tops overcomplicated.

2.  Use The Rule Of Three When Choosing  Materials

It can be easy to overcomplicate the choice of materials in the garden. As in our first example, too much creates a chaotic effect. If you stick to the simple rule of three, you won’t go wrong.

The three rule doesn’t apply to plants, but hard landscaping materials like paving, gravel and walls.

Just make sure that you don’t use any more than three different types of hard landscaping material. So, for example, if you have a patio, you can mix one type of paving with some gravel and incorporates bricks and it will look good. Start to add in tiles, cobbles and a wall using a different type of brick and you’ll have a hotchpotch which will look ugly.

Think of it like adding clothes to your body. Do you want to wear 10 different textured fabrics that don’t match, or have a coherent outfit using three or less fabrics?

3. Plants Are The Finishing Touch Not The Starting Point

Blasphemy, I know! This is often the hardest part for people to take on board. We all love plants. They are what makes the garden a garden, surely? Well, yes and no.

Creating a fantastic looking garden is a bit like baking a cake. The ingredients have to go in the right amount and most importantly, in the right order. Plants are the icing on the cake, they are not cake itself.

When you’ve created a beautiful but simple shape lawn and patio area, then it is time to add the plants (the decoration). Think about how effective it would be, if you added the icing sugar and cherries before the cake had baked. Can you imagine what a mess that would be?

Unfortunately, the same thing happens if you start out by trying to put the plants in before you have shaped the main areas of your garden.  Your lawn is likely to end up a random shape that doesn’t create interest or make the garden look and feel more spacious.

The Secret Sauce

Any form of art or design always looks harder than it actually is when you haven’t been taught the basics. Creating a Wow Factor garden is easy to do when you know what steps to take.

If you’d like to be guided step-by-step through the process, take a look at The Great Garden Formula HomeStudy Course – it covers everything you need to know in an easy to understand format with video tutorials along side the written materials. And as it’s coming up to Christmas, for a limited time, you can get it for half price! Take a look now, and give your garden the Wow Factor it deserves!

Inspirational gardens can do more than just inspire, if you know what to look for they can show you how to make your own garden sensational.

I’m currently on a jolly around Spain and Portugal. I mean, I’m working very hard on your behalf, to find exceptional gardens that will inspire and help you improve your own garden.

What Makes A Stunning Garden?

Mostly it’s shape. The shapes you create within the garden are the most important, not the actual shape of the garden. After that it comes down to subtle factors. Today, we’ll take a look at those more subtle elements that make the difference between OK and great gardens.

The above picture is of Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, a garden I discovered quite by accident whilst wandering around the beautiful city of Cordoba, Spain. I’m not usually drawn to formal garden styles but this one really did it for me. It took my breath away. There aren’t many gardens that I say that about, being a fussy designer.

What Makes This Garden So Hot (apart from the climate)?

What impressed me so much about this garden, wasn’t the obvious grandeur, the exuberant water features or the stunning setting. It was the use of sightlines and focal points. Everywhere you looked there was a stunning view. Every conceivable viewpoint had been thought about. I’ve never been in a garden before where every time I turned round there was something more amazing to look at with every view.

The design of this garden had been thought about, really thought about. This garden didn’t just happen, it was planned. Every time you reached the end of the path and looked to your left or right, there was another path with a view enticing you to go further into the garden. Turning around to view behind you was even more spectacular than walking down it in the first place.

So How Was This Achieved?

With very controlled sightlines. Every view was carefully orchestrated. The designer had complete control over what you saw and what you didn’t. It was impossible to see the entire garden in one go with the use of taller planting and hedges steering your view. This very clever organisation of space, with strategically placed features and focal points, made for a truly wondrous garden.

How Can You Transform Your Garden?

Think about how your garden is viewed from different locations. Which view do you see the most? Is it the view from your kitchen window perhaps? If so, what is it that you’re looking out to? Can you improve the view by the placement of a bench or statue? Then, when you get to that point in the garden, what is the view that you are looking back to?

Really think about how the garden is viewed from different locations. Then look at how you can improve each view by shaping it and placing a focal point to capture and hold attention. It doesn’t have to be a stature, a specimen plant like the one in the picture below can often do the trick.

Experience It Yourself!

Annoyingly I haven’t been able to do this garden anywhere near justice with my photography skills. It is spectacular in a way that will make your heart miss a beat, so I urge you to go and see it for yourself and experience the mastery of an exceptionally well planned garden.

Next Week It’s Plant Time

In the next blog post we will take a detailed look at what made the planting so effective in this garden. We’ll also discuss how you can create great planting schemes in your garden.

If you want to know precisely how you can make your own garden great, check out the Great Garden Formula Course. The discounted price will be coming to an end soon, so make sure you snap up a bargain now! The people that have already taken advantage of the discount are having great results, so I’m confident you will too (hence the 60 day money back guarantee!).

How You Can Improve Your Garden Now

Gardens should be for sitting in and relaxing. That’s certainly my motto. A nice garden is one of the most relaxing places to be on a nice sunny day. But nice gardens don’t happen by accident, they need to be planned properly.

Now is the perfect time to start thinking about how you can improve your garden. Some people prefer to think about their garden only in the Spring. However, I think the perfect time to to be planning your garden is right now.

Now is when it’s fresh in your mind which bits of your garden worked and which bits didn’t. You’ve spent the summer using your garden, maintaining what is there and trying to get the best from it. Now is the time to make it fantastic for next summer, so all you have to do is sit back and relax in your favourite comfy chair.

Where To Start?

Grab a pen and paper and jot down your answers to the following questions:

1. Which bits of your garden didn’t look good this year?
2. Why didn’t those areas look good?
3. What can you do now to improve it?

1 Which Bits Of Your Garden Didn’t Look Good?

It might be that there’s just a few gaps in your planting border that can be easily fixed by a trip to a local garden centre to see what is looking good now. If it’s more than just a lack of plants, then you need to take a look at the shape of your garden.

2 Why Didn’t Those Areas Look Good?

It all comes down to shape. Not the external shape of your garden, but the internal shapes you’ve created. The lawn and patio areas are the most critical to get right. The mistake most people make is to put things here and there in the garden, the lawn then becomes an odd shape to accommodate new features. It should be the other way round. The lawn and patio shapes should be the most important shapes to get right and the areas that are left to make the planting beds and areas that features can go.

3 What Can You Do Now To Improve Your Garden?

Reshaping your lawn so that it is a coherent shape will work absolute wonders for your garden. As simple as it is by just reshaping your lawn, it can bring amazing results. That’s assuming of course you get the right shape!

The Key To Success

Keep it simple. Simple geometric shapes work best, especially in small gardens. Larger gardens can lend themselves to free-flowing curved shapes, but even these need to work as a whole entity.

If you’d like to know more check out the New Garden Design Course For Homeowners

The Great Garden Formula Course is now available. Grab your copy now at the great introductory price. Click image or link below for further details.

http://www.courses.successfulgardendesign.com/create-a-great-garden/

I’ve just returned from Spain where we finished planting the Courtyard Garden. You may remember at Easter, we put in the bones of the planting scheme. By bones I mean the main feature plants, the ones that add permanent structure and form the backdrop to the softer, flowering plants. Well, now we have just put in the flowering star performers.

If you are new here and want to see how it all began, watch the garden design process video.

The Main Focus

The job of any plant in the garden is to add beauty and wow factor. The plants are the icing on the ‘well-designed’ cake. Getting the planting scheme right from small garden is really tricky. The lack of space means you have to be really careful with your choice of plant.

How To Think Big in a Small Garden

With a large garden, you have plenty of room to add as many plants as you like and experiment with different varieties of your favourite plants. In a small garden the lack of space makes every choice of plant critical. Every plant you put in a small garden, must really earn its place there. So how do you choose?

Important things to think about are how the plant looks all year round, but how big it gets and how good it looks next to the plants surrounding it. For this Spanish courtyard garden, we want to create a tropical flowering jungle look.

Size Does Matter!

Although we have tried to be careful with the size of the plants that we put in, in order to create a jungle effect we have put in a few plants that get larger than the space we have allocated them, so some things will need to be pruned regularly to stop them from becoming too enormous. Hopefully we’ve got the right balance between jungle and correct plant spacing. It is very easy to get carried away and put in too many plants, not allowing them to grow to full size.

Choose Plants That Create The Look You Want

We’ve chosen a selection of plants primarily for their foliage and architectural qualities. Things like palm trees and phormiums makes for wonderful shapes and all year interest. And in between these architectural specimen plants we’ve planted lots of flowering perennials and annuals to fill in the gaps. The enormous pink flowers are Hibiscus bushes.

My parents have got a little bit carried away with the amount of bedding plants that have gone in to fill the gaps, but all in all I’m very pleased with how the garden has turned out (I’m pretty certain there is no room now for the threatened pansies and daffodils! – big sigh of relief!). Later in the year we will be repeating the use of the blue Agapanthus. Repeating some of the plants around the garden adds more clarity to the scheme.

Choose The Right Plants For The Conditions

Because the planting borders are essentially containers, we’ve installed a drip irrigation watering system. This is the most efficient way to water plants without wasting valuable water reserves. There’s a pipe connected to a timer that feeds the water for two minutes, every three days, via tiny offshoot pipes to each plant. We’ve chosen plants that can cope with the heat and minimal water. But even so, until they are established they will need to be watered regularly.

What To Learn Some Simple Plant Tips (that even ‘brown fingered’ people can master!)?

If you’d like to learn the cheat’s way to become a plant expert, check out the 5 Minute Plant Expert. You’ll learn how to become a ‘Plant Whisperer’ quickly and easily with a simple method that anyone can follow. To learn more watch this short plant video tutorial.

In part one, we looked at where to start with planning your garden. If you’ve followed steps 1 to 7, you’re now ready to go onto stage two, the planning.

What to do now

Now that you have your base plan, showing the position of all the trees, features, and existing plants you want to keep in your garden, you are now ready to start designing. The way to do a good design is to concentrate on the shape. When I say shape, I don’t mean the shape of your existing garden. I mean the shape of the empty spaces  within it. If you think about it, the majority of your garden is empty space. Your lawn and patio area constitute empty space, and the shrub borders and features form solid areas.

How you shape the empty areas of space (your lawn and patio area)  are the key to creating a really well-designed garden.  Rather than concentrate on things like features and individual plants, instead think about what shape your new lawn and patio will be.

Action steps

1. On your base plan, start to draw some geometric shapes, like circles, squares, rectangles, any easy geometric shape to represent your lawn and patio areas.  These shapes should fill approximately two-thirds of your garden plan.
2. Once you’ve chosen a shape that you like for your lawn and patio, the areas that are left over are going to be the shapes of your planting borders. If planting borders feel too large, you may then need to add some additional features to use up the space, so that it isn’t all planting.
3. Make the shapes you’ve chosen lead your eye from one side of the garden to the other. This will create a sense of movement, and will make your garden feel much larger and more interesting.
4. When you are happy with the shape of the empty spaces, it is then time to add the planting and any features you wish to include in your design.

Below, is the plan of the narrow garden shown in the photograph above. The red line that zigzags down the garden, shows how the position of the rectangle and circular shapes lead the eye from one side of the garden to the other, thus making it look wider.

It may feel counterintuitive to design the empty areas of your garden first but this is the best way to make sure that your design flows and works well as a whole unit. Most people, when they design a garden, put a feature here and something somewhere else, and then stand back and wonder why the garden doesn’t look as good as they’d hoped. The reason it doesn’t look good is because nothing links together. If you just design in little areas, your garden will never look as good as it will if you design a garden as a whole entity.

It is really important to concentrate on what shape lawn and patio areas you have first, and then you can embellish your design with nice features and planting schemes. Planning your garden this way round will ensure you of success.

The Great Garden Formula – Beginner’s Step by Step Guide To Landscape Planning

Learn the easy, step-by-step method that will get you the results you want with your garden quickly and easily. Take a look at the Great Garden Formula Course… which just happens to be on special offer at the moment, so hurry along there now!