landscape plan

Does it take a carrot or a stick to produce a great garden?

Someone kindly (?) referred to this website as “porn for garden lovers.” As much as l laughed at that, it has made me think; are people just ogling and not actually doing? I want this to be a useful resource where you can come and get the tuition you need (move on from the porn analogy, if you haven’t already).

I thought if I did this website, offered free advice, people would get ideas and they would go off and make their garden* great. But it doesn’t seem like that’s happening.

Why Aren’t More People Designing Their Gardens?

Blog post tutorials are just too passive. As much as people are reporting they are loving this site and all the information provided, they are not going off and putting pencil to paper. The exception are the ones doing the online garden design course.

What’s The Key To Helping People Create Their Dream Garden?

There needs to be a big motivator. I’ve had an idea that could help provide this motivation. It came to me a couple of weeks ago, after I interviewed Anne Wareham for a new feature on inspirational gardens. She has created an amazing garden and isn’t a professional landscaper. So, if she and people like her have created great gardens by studying garden design, it shows what can be achieved when someone puts their mind to it. Trouble is, most people don’t do that.

Where Do You Start With Landscaping Your Garden?

One of the main reasons people don’t do anything with their garden is because they don’t know where to start and get overwhelmed. They don’t know if they should do it themselves or hire a designer. If they do it themselves, they might muck it up. But if they hire a designer, what happens if they don’t like what the designer comes up with? Either option could be an expensive mistake. So maybe a few plants get put in, or the garden just gets left, with a vow to do something one day.

A Perfect Solution?

I think having a ‘roadmap’ to follow would be a big help. One that shows you how to either work with a landscape professional successfully or point you in the right direction on what you need to know to be able to design the garden yourself. But that’s not all. So I’ve set up a course that will guide people through the process and they can show their finished results if they wish. See The Great Garden Formula Home Study Course page for more details.

What’s Your Excuse?

Whatever the reasons are for not having done something great with your garden, tell me what they are. I have a few ideas on what the roadblocks are, but I don’t know what your blocks are. Even if the blocks are something outside of what would be considered a garden problem; tell me.

FREE Guide On How To Landscape Your Garden

Get your copy here: http://www.successfulgardendesign.com/freeguide/

Filed Under: Garden Design Tagged With: Garden Design, landscape design, landscape plan, landscaped gardens, landscaping

Ideas for your garden – gallery 3 Modern Contemporary Gardens

By Rachel Mathews 3 Comments

In last week’s ideas for your garden gallery we featured a selection of more traditional styles of garden with a heavy emphasis on plants.

This week’s gallery, the last in this series, is the complete opposite of last week’s style of garden and focuses primarily on modern contemporary styles. These types of garden tend to have more focus on design and use of hard landscaping materials so may not be to everyone’s tastes but I hope you still get some inspiration even if you want a more traditional style of garden.

Want to Know the Surprising Secret to Creating a Great Looking Garden?

Watch this free garden video tutorial (be warned the content may upset some people!)

A Little Bit Of Planning Goes A Long Way…

I’ve called this gallery advanced because a lot more time and skill goes into creating this style of garden. In part because the focus is on the hard landscaping materials. This means that the design shape is much more noticeable. In traditional style gardens you can hide a multitude of sins with a good planting scheme but with slightly less focus on plants, that is harder to do!

Gardening Blasphemy!

In case anyone is reading ‘less focus on plants’ to mean that plants are not important – don’t! Using fewer plants means that their selection is even more vital. Any planting scheme needs a lot of thought put into it but in my opinion, even more is required when planting areas are small. The less plants you have, the more each plant needs to ‘give’ to the space it’s in.

Next Week Could be a Shock to the System…

I’ll be going back to my normal blog where I actually write posts and don’t rely on moving images to keep you entertained! For those of you who prefer to watch rather than read, don’t worry, there will be more garden design video tutorials and garden galleries coming along in due course.

Oh and Talking of Good Blogs!

If you haven’t already discovered Jenny Peterson’s blog - DO go and check it out this week. Yours truly is in her brand new Gardener of the Month feature and before you ask – no I didn’t pay her to write this (though I half feel I should have!).

Filed Under: Contemporary Gardens, Garden Ideas Tagged With: contemporary garden ideas, Garden Design, garden ideas, landscape design, landscape plan, modern garden ideas

How to draw your garden site survey plan to scale [part 2]

By Rachel Mathews Leave a Comment

In this video we take a look at how to turn all those measurements you took from the last video and translate them into a usable drawing.

Why bother, though?

I mean, really, who wants to spend any of their free time trying to get a garden survey onto a bit of paper?

Answer: anyone who really wants to do a good job creating their dream garden.

The rest of the population will be too lazy and won’t care enough. That’s not you though, is it? If it were, you probably wouldn’t be spending time to learn how to create a great garden if you didn’t really want to achieve one, would you? Unless of course the garden design fairies have hidden a hypnotic message into the YouTube efforts (seek help if you think that’s the case).

To get yourself though this slightly dull but VITAL part of creating a beautiful garden – just envisage your dream garden a few months from now. Imagine sitting in it on a lovely summer’s evening sipping your favourite beverage – surely that was worth an hour spent measuring your garden and drawing up your survey? If it wasn’t, you didn’t imagine a beautiful enough garden – try again!

As you’ll have seen in the video, the shape of the freehand, rough survey sketch and the finished drawing is significantly different. THIS ALWAYS happens – that is why you mustn’t guess what shape and size your garden is! If you haven’t already, read the tapemeasureaphobia post, you will see why this is SO important to do.

Next week we get onto the fun part – the design. You’ll see exactly how the process is done, from beginning to end – plenty of top designer trade secrets coming your way!

Filed Under: Garden Design Tagged With: Garden Design, Garden plan, garden survey, landscape design, landscape plan, measuring gardens, scale drawing

Garden design – Be careful of the 'gap trap'!

By Rachel Mathews 1 Comment

Lend-me-your-ear! 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!

Filed Under: Garden Design Tagged With: Garden Design, Garden plan, landscape design, landscape plan

Why Having a Garden Plan Saves Time & Money

By Rachel Mathews 3 Comments

Successful-bricks

Why would you want to design your garden, you have better things to do with your time – right?

Well only you can answer that but if you want a really good garden then, I’ll answer it for you – YES, you most definitely do need to plan it!

Still not convinced planning your garden is worth all the effort?

OK, let’s go with the assumption that you have a zillion other things you should be doing and spending the time to sit down and design your garden, just isn’t on the agenda, or if it is, a 5 min scribble will do….

That’s a big pile of…

Bricks! Imagine having a big pile of bricks delivered and building yourself a house! No plan, just build! What are the chances of you getting the rooms the right size, the right function and flow in the building… in fact, the right anything? Pretty slim I imagine, especially if you aren’t an architect and have never built a house before! Thankfully NO one does that (at least I hope not) but when it comes to building a garden…. vrrooomm – straight down the garden centre, buy as many pretty things as possible, come home and plant them, build a patio or two, wherever the creative muse bids!

Has the notion of a ‘garden in a weekend’ seduced you too much?

I know it’s VERY tempting just to get on with it one weekend and hope for the best but… if you can think about things and plan it properly in advance, it’s got to be better, right? Think about it, how many things have you done in your life that turned out great on your first attempt? Maybe you are an exceptionally talented individual that can turn your hand at virtually anything… but even so? If you plan your garden on paper or your computer first, you can change things that don’t work with the click of a mouse or a squiggle of your pencil.

£££ It’ll cost you! $$$

Or to put it another way – it is SO much cheaper, if you get it wrong, to change your mind on paper than it is once you’ve built and planted your garden!

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