Home Gardener's Garden Design & Planning (UK Only). A. & G. Bridgewater

shade conditions: look at the way the sun moves around the garden, note the areas that are sunny and shady, and position the plants accordingly.

      Scale: take note of the potential size of plants – the width and height when fully grown. Be especially wary of some of the fast-growing conifers.

      Year-round colour: aim for a broad selection of plants, so that you have year-round foliage, bud, stem and flower colour.

      Container-grown plants: these can be purchased and planted all year round.

      MAKING NOTES AND SKETCHES

      It is a good idea to go out into your garden, with a stack of coloured pens and a pad of gridded paper, and to make sketches. Take measurements of the garden, decide on the scale – say one grid square equals 60 cm (2 ft) – and then draw the garden in plan and perspective view, with close-up details showing special areas of interest (see below). Draw what you already have, and then draw in any desired changes. Try to visualize how the changes will affect how you use the space. Place markers around the garden so that you can more easily visualize changes.

       Use a rope, hosepipe or chain together with some pegs to help you plot out an irregular shape.

       A perspective view of the garden is more difficult to draw than a plan view, but is nevertheless the best way to visualize your design.

       A plan view of the garden (viewed from above) can be drawn to scale over gridded paper. Colouring in areas can be helpful.

       Important features can be drawn separately and in more detail.

      Getting it down on paper

      If you want the project to run smoothly, you need to plan everything out and make drawings. The procedure is as follows: first, make a rough sketch on a scrap of paper, showing the existing garden with measurements. Next, transfer these details onto graph paper to make a ‘site plan’ (drawn to scale). Then, set a sheet of gridded paper over the site plan and make a ‘master plan’ of the new garden, tracing the boundaries and existing items as required.

       How do I make a working drawing?

      MAKING THE SITE PLAN

      About graph paper You will need a pad of graph layout paper – meaning thin paper that has been printed with a grid – the biggest size of pad that you can obtain. Look at the size of your garden; say it is 30 m (100 ft) long and 25 m (80 ft) wide, and decide on the scale of your gridded paper. Count the squares on the long side of the paper and divide them by the length of the garden. Work to the nearest whole square. So, for example, if the paper is 100 squares long, then you could say that one square on the paper equals 30 cm (1 ft) in the garden.

      Measuring your garden Use a long tape measure to measure your garden. Start by measuring the length. Plot this measurement on the long side of the paper. Repeat the procedure with the width of the garden and plot it on the short side of the paper.

      Right angles – 90° angles Check for right angles by measuring the diagonals. For example, if your garden is in any way square or rectilinear, then the crossed diagonal measurements should more or less be equal.

      Awkward shapes You can plot an awkward shape by drawing a straight line from two fixed points – say between two trees. Step off at regular intervals along the straight line and measure how far the curves of the awkward shape are out from the stepped-off point.

       Items that you need to mark in on the site plan

      • NSEW

      • Midday sun

      • Outline of boundary

      • Items that you want to keep or modify

      • House

      • Mature trees

      • Neighbours’ trees

      • Underground pipes and cables

      • Doors on house

      • Windows on house

      • Drain access points

      • Main gate

       Paths and drives

      If the site plan is a record of items and structures that you have no choice but to leave unchanged, you have the option here of whether or not to mark in the position of the paths and drives. You could say that, since the position of the front door and the front gate are fixed, it follows that the paths will also stay the same. This does not necessarily follow, however. That said, it is usually a good idea to draw them in.

       Slopes in cross-section

      The easiest way of recording a slope is to draw a cross-section view. Draw the length of the slope on a piece of graph paper and label the line ‘top’. You need a spirit (carpenter’s) level taped to a 2 m (7 ft) long batten. Working from the top of the slope, hold one end of the batten on the ground so that the level is true, and measure the vertical distance from the overhanging end of the batten down to the ground. Mark this in on the drawing. Continue down the slope until you have a record.

      MAKING THE MASTER PLAN

      Tracing the site plan Put a sheet of graph paper over the site plan and use the underlying plan to work out what you want in your new garden. You might well have to go through this procedure a dozen or so times before you have a drawing that suits all your needs.

      Pencilling in your design Once you have achieved a good preliminary plan, set it under another sheet of graph paper and trace it off with a pencil. This new drawing is your ‘master plan’. You should now have two finished drawings – the site plan that records the bare bones of the garden, and the master plan that sets out the design of the new garden. You can photocopy the master plan so you have lots of copies.

      Separate details Some items are so complex in themselves that they will need working drawings. So, for example, with a water feature, you will need a plan view, a front view and a cross-section showing how it is constructed.

      Colouring in Some people make coloured drawings to show how the garden might look at various times of the year. To make a coloured drawing, set a sheet of plain paper over the master plan – hold it against a window and make a tracing. Tint this drawing with coloured pencils or watercolours.

       Calculating materials

       Save time and money by calculating quantities and ordering in bulk.

       Area

      Rectangle – Multiply the length by the breadth to give you the area. A plot 30 x 15 m = 450 square m (100