How I Designed My Own Garden

Now is a great time to be thinking about changing your plot, big or small. I was left with little choice some fifteen years ago when I was faced with a small part of a farmer's field and a new build plot of compacted rubble covered in thin topsoil.

Our house sits on the edge of a village and has open fields, often used for animal grazing, to the rear. That is our north face! It's exposed, with little sunlight (shadowed by the house) and is often subject to frost apparently rolling off the fields. The house sits with a small amount of our land around it on all sides with the main garden extending to the west in the ex-field part, giving about a third of an acre in total. A mature, but damaged walnut tree on the east side of the house, a line of mature limes along the south boundary and a fence, open post and rail, between our garden and the field made up the features. The builders left us with a line of slabs around the house and an undersized patio outside one of the French doors from the house. It was certainly a blank canvas.

Most new build owners are faced with something similar. I had experience of tackling gardens; this was our fifth house and our third new build. I was no garden designer but had built up quite bit of gardening know how and enthusiasm over the years. But here's the thing, right at the beginning knowing about plants is not the most important thing; knowing how you want to use the garden is.

In my opinion, unless you are willing to spend a great deal of money on a garden designer, you might as well design it yourself. You know the answer to the questions they will ask of you anyway. Once you have them, you can create a plan pretty easily. Most of us can make material choices and either build it ourselves or get someone to deliver our plan. Then and only then, is it time to think new plants. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So what are the questions you need to have answers for?

- How and when do you intend to use the garden?

This was quite easy for me. The girls were beyond needing paths for bikes and scooters. They might need space on the lawn for a sunbathe or ball game but I was not going to have to incorporate the dreaded trampoline or sand pit. There needed to be space to sit with family and friends outside enjoying light meals, the odd barbeque perhaps but I didn't need an outside lounge area, it just wouldn't be used. I also had a garage which meant no shed was needed for storage.

The when you use a garden is important too. If you're strictly a summer only user, you only need to consider the sun's position in summer. A north facing garden might not get any sun at all in winter - mine doesn't. I considered if I wanted to sit out in the morning for breakfast or in the evening with a glass of wine? this may have affected where to put the patio as evening shade is likely to be chilly in the most part of summer. For me, the use was likely to be day use, with the occasional evening but from as early in spring as possible until early autumn. So a west facing patio was good and some seating by the kitchen/dining room (the north face!) for convenience.

-How much gardening do you want to do?

Now the answer here has to be some. I'm no advocate for plastic lawns and total hard paving. That's not a garden, unless you're covering it in potted plants but even then, dig some beds!

I knew that I liked to garden, it was how I relaxed from a demanding job but I also knew that I was the only gardener and so it had to be manageable in the down time I had. I didn't want to maintain a garden pond for example, wildlife is important, but with a nearby brook, there was plenty of water available. That being said I wanted a greenhouse to grow seeds in and few raised beds - I think I planned vegetables but I'm not certain. Apart from a few summer tomatoes, I'm a flowers girl all the way now.

- Where's the sun?

The orientation of your garden is critical. You may want a patio outside your kitchen or sitting room door but there's no point if you only want to be catching the evening sun and you have an east facing plot. Think about how much sun you actually want. Being a fair skinned red head, I can only cope with so much and welcome a patio on the north side of our house to bring much needed shade and escape. That being said, I love the patio on the west side of the house for spring and autumn when we're trying to get as much out of the warmer weather as we can. If you're going to want to grow vegetables or cut flowers, they need sun (as do most but critically not all) plants so it may well impact where you put your flower/vegetable beds.

- What are you hiding?

Most of us have something we don't want to see in the garden but actually they have to be there. It might be the bins, the car, manhole covers (most new builds have an abundance) or the neighbour's garage, toilet window or fence. I was quite lucky as the neighbour's houses are shielded in the main from our garden by the line of mature lime trees. The bins remain away from the seating area and so I left them be for practical reasons. In a smaller garden you may need to consider more ingenious methods to cover them, such as with fencing or bin houses with a green roof perhaps. Some may have the opposite problem, a feature beyond the garden that they want to show off, the field beyond or a neighbours tree. If a view is blocked, it is well worth 'punching a hole' through the fence, hedge or border to free up the view beyond and bring it in. An open barred country gate makes a feature of this idea even if it's not used for access.

- Access, paths and going on a journey

I'm not one for dallying about; if you need to move regularly from A to B I think it is best to go directly and the same is true in gardens. I planned the access paths accordingly and kept them straight. I didn't forget who may be using them either. Paths need to be at least 1m and often 1.5m wide. I didn't scrimp on width, as they would have looked half-hearted and would rarely be practical if more narrow. I'd consider what your using them for, the buggy, the bins, a wheelchair? Necessarily, hard standing is best for access paths. But then, in contrast, when basic access was not the main feature, I considered paths to lead me through the garden - the journey.

Creating the actual design

At this point I was ready to start some sketching. I started with the area around the house, where the patios and main access paths, the hard standing was going to be. I generously sketched in the size of the patio and allowing for changes in depth of the house tried to keep a pretty similar depth of path all the way around the house. Too many steps out in slabs can be difficult to use and look busy in a design so I kept it as simple as I could. Next I sited my greenhouse, in a corner of the garden near the house and garage for convenience but in a sheltered sunny spot.

I was lucky enough to have a garden on four sides of the house. I left the the front, south side simple with a path and lawn (this has later gone) to remain maintenance free. I'm not keen on gardening in public view of the neighbours to be honest so this suited at the time. The east side, under the walnut tree was pretty enough with the tree and I think I thought I'd dig the whole area for vegetables at the time. I never did but it was neat and needed little attention. This left the sunless north face and the ex-field west side. I took a very different approach to both.

The north face has the majority of the house windows looking onto it. It gets no sun in winter, is cold and merciless. It also has the greenhouse in the one sunny far corner. I decided to go formal. I created a rectangular formal design the length of the house using paths. These were journey paths and could be made from cheaper materials in our case large stone gravel. In front of the greenhouse, I created the three large raised beds their size determined by the shapes I was creating in the formal plan. I took account of outside door positions and where I was likely to want to walk out from there and made cross paths. The plan began to flow with a series of rectangular shapes emerging.

Rounding the corner to the west side of the house. I wanted a totally different feel. Much less formality, more organic shapes but keeping a sense of journey through the garden. As I stood looking out from my planned west facing patio, I had the huge mature limes to my left. I knew I would emerge most often from the north corner of the house and so planned the journey path in the same materials used before to curl through the garden from that point. I needed a destination for my path and planned a pergola with seating area below as the end point, just in front of the limes.

This was where I wanted lawns. I think its important to have lawns of shape, a good circle or square looks so much better than planning the flower beds first and the lawn being and after thought. I drew two large lawn shapes, slightly amorphous but not wiggly in nature, intercepted by my path. Then and only then, did I draw in my beloved flower beds, making sure they had real depth and substance and certainly no less than 1m in width. Anything else would be piddling and wouldn't allow for decent planting. But that perhaps is another story.