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.

It’s taken me a little longer than I would have liked to get part two to you. I’ve been busy driving the graphic designers that are putting the finishing touches on the Great Garden Formula Course, insane… I am a bit picky with finishing details! Anyway, let’s now get back to how to plan your garden part two.

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.

Garden Shapes & Movement

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 Garden Planning

Very shortly, I will be releasing a new downloadable mini-course, which covers the design process in much more detail. The course will contain the design formula I use every time I design. The Great Garden Formula is  the beginners step-by-step guide to planning your garden. If you’d like to be notified when it becomes available, please enter your e-mail address below. The first 10 people who buy the mini course will get it at a significant discount in return for feedback testimonials for the website.

There will be several mini-courses in this series concentrating on  how to do the perfect planting plan, what to do if you have a small garden and want to make it look bigger, how to deal with changes in level and sloping gardens, and also how to design an awkward shaped garden. If there is a particular problem you have with your garden, please let me know in the comments or by e-mail. And if you have an issue that isn’t already covered in one of the mini-courses , you’ll win a free course as a thank you.

Enter your e-mail address below if you want to be notified when the mini courses become available. Don’t worry, I won’t spam you!

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