There are two types of people in the world (ok there are probably more but humour me) there are those that like to give things a go and there are those that don’t. Which one are you?

I definitely fall into the first category – I will always give things ago. That could be viewed as a good quality but sometimes it isn’t.

In my enthusiasm to get things done, I have been known to rush in and try something, then stand back and see that it hasn’t worked out quite as I planned and then need to call a professional in to fix what it was that I’d attempted (this website springs immediately to mind…thanks Nick for the website makeover!).

I’m not the only person who gets carried away with their enthusiasm. On a day-to-day basis I see what clients, with similar dispositions, do with their gardens.

When I do garden design consults there is one sentence I hear over and over again:

“Oh we just put that there because we had a gap, it doesn’t have to stay there”…

What the ‘that’ is, can be anything from a summerhouse to a birdbath or anything else you care to imagine. To most people, the assumption that an awkward area, that they don’t know what to do with (or somewhere they have a gap) the obvious and most logical solution is to put ‘something’ there.

But if you REALLY think about it – is that really a GOOD reason to put something somewhere? If you were starting the whole garden from scratch – would you still put that ‘something’ there? If the answer is ‘no, it would be much better in the other corner where ‘it’ gets the sun’. You have your answer.

If your answer is I don’t know, then that is the same answer as above, you are just hedging your bet with uncertainty!

Imagine if Mother Nature was looking at us and saying to Father Nature – “You know what honey? I think that forehead is a bit empty looking, how about if we put an extra nose or two each side of it?”

Then Father Nature adds his bit and says “Great idea but what about the gap in the middle? How about an extra ear?! How cool would that be? Think how much more they’d be able to hear…”

Now if the above conversation sounds totally stupid – just change the word forehead to lawn, nose to tree and ear to pond and hopefully you’ll start to see where I’m going with this…

Anything that is well designed is thought about, in detail, from conception to creation. Just adding bits as you go along (if there is no master plan to follow) doesn’t usually work.

The reason additions don’t usually work is because if you had planned for something, you work everything else around it and it works with everything else a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle.

When you design a really successful garden, features line up with viewpoints from the house or other parts of the garden. So if you are adding something at a later date, unless it lines up and is in the right place, it will never look totally right.

Now before I totally put you off ever adding anything ever again to your garden – there are exceptions to this, well not really exceptions, just good luck. Sometimes there really is a gap at the end of the garden that is perfect for a seat or something. It just happens to line up perfectly with the patio doors so will make a great focal point from the lounge and the addition makes the whole area come to life.

So look carefully at your gap before you put something in it (I probably could have phrased that a little better). Make sure you would still put the same thing in the same place if you had a blank canvas.

Do NOT under any circumstance put something somewhere just to fill a gap unless it really works with everything else in your garden! RESIST the temptation to add that extra ear!

If you’ve got to this point and still don’t know why there are ears mentioned in a garden design blog, you skim read too fast!

COMING NEXT WEEK – the long awaited set in Spain series on how to survey your garden!

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Tagged as: Garden Design, Garden plan, landscape design, landscape plan