Planning a Garden - Landscape Ideas

The more care and time that you devote to the planning a garden stage, the more smoothly your garden will take shape, and the fewer expensive errors there will be. Mistakes will be made, of course; we all make them, whether through ignorance, carelessness or the sheer perversity of life in general, but we can reduce them to a minimum and, with any luck, avoid the more ruinous ones.

Having done all the preliminary research about garden landscape ideas for planning a garden, and decided upon the type of garden you want, your next step is to make a plan. You will need some squared paper, either graph-paper or the kind that dressmakers use to cut patterns from. Both types can be bought from most large stationers, but if you cannot find them you can make something similar. Use lining paper, or old wallpaper (plain side up, of course) and cut it to fit a pin-board, either one that is purpose-made, usually from felt-covered cork, or one that you have made yourself by glueing cork tiles to off-cuts of wood or hardboard. I find that about 60cm x 75cm (24" x 30") is a convenient size.

Use drawing-pins to fix the paper firmly to the board and then draw a grid on the paper. The size of the squares will depend on the size of your garden, but the bigger the scale the better. 1/50 is usual for small gardens, 1/100 for larger ones. Each square on the grid will represent a unit of measurement, either metric or Imperial. Older properties will have been constructed on the Imperial scale, so you may find it easier to work in that. More modern properties will probably be metric, so work accordingly. Whichever type of measurement you use, most builder's merchants and other tradesmen will be able to work out the necessary conversions when you order materials, if you find this beyond you.

Measure out your plot carefully. If your garden is regular in shape, this will be an easy job, but if it is large and irregularly-shaped, things will be a little more complicated, so check first to see if there are any existing plans. Sometimes they are attached to the deeds, and if an architect has been used at any time for the building or alterations, he or she may well have drawn in the outlines of the plot. If not, you will have to resort to a system of measurements called triangulations.

For this you will need a good, long measuring-tape, some skewers to hold it in place, a builder's square (a larger version of a set-square, which you can make yourself), a spirit-level and a home-made measuring-pole to mark changes of level, some line (string or clothes line will do) and canes or skewers to hold it. With these, you can do the job single-handed, although it will be quicker and easier with two people.

To fix the boundaries and the position of the house and other features within them, start by measuring outwards from a face or angle of the house to a boundary line, then measure some distance along the boundary and, from there, back to the house at the spot from which you started.

Continue round the house like this until you have built up an accurately measured plan and work on your garden landscape ideas. If the garden is a large one, you can work from the house to any fixed point such as an outbuilding, tree or wall, in the same fashion. On any empty site, where no such fixed points exist, make your own by driving a stake into the ground, or make two parallel lines of stakes and, by measuring between them and out from them to the boundaries in a series of triangles, an accurate set of measurements can be drawn up and transferred to your plan, noting down any significant internal measurements as you go. You will need to mark in the boundaries, the house and outbuildings (including doors and windows), plus any features that you intend to retain: water, large trees, walls, hedges, entrances and exits, terraces and paths, etc.

If the site is level you will be able to take the measurements with a tautly-held tape at ground level, but if the levels vary you will have to take the measurements at a higher point, checking the line with a straight-edge and a spirit-level as you go. This method can also be used to plot the fall of the land, and a sectional drawing of this should be made and marked in on the margins of your plan, as this will be a help when it comes to planning and estimating for steps and retaining walls, etc.

Remember to leave enough room around your plan to mark in any features on neighbouring land that will affect yours - an eyesore to be screened out, a beautiful view to be opened up, a handsome building to be 'framed', or trees that overhang and cast shade on your land. When drawing in existing trees, note both he position of the trunks and the dimensions of the spread of the branches or 'canopy', as this will affect your planning and planting.

If you do not know where your drains and main service supply lines are, make sure that you find out, either from your builder or from the relevant authorities, before carrying out any major works. Mark their positions on your plan with dotted red lines and remember to check back to them as the work goes on. Man-holes should also be drawn in; they must be accessible and are expensive to move, but can often be disguised by plants or containers, and can sometimes be raised or lowered a little to fit in with the changed levels.

Make notes in the margins of areas of light and shade in the garden at various times of the day, for example, morning sun, shade at mid-day etc., throughout the year, as well as notes of the prevailing winds, frost pockets and, of course, north, south, east and west. These are all relevant when considering garden landscape ideas. It is also a good idea to note down any peculiarities of the soil, such as boggy ground, dry shade, and acid or alkaline soil.

In larger gardens, there may be several variations like this in different parts of the plot.