Garden Design Course: Week One

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One of the first images I saved to my Pinterest board after Week One which started my love affair with black fencing. Source: Pinterest. Credit: Unknown.

I’m not going to lie, this evening Garden Design course was pretty full on from the outset. We had reading lists, recommended equipment to buy/borrow, inspirational websites to browse, real life gardens to visit as well as homework each week to ensure we could finish the six week course with our own individual garden design. Getting my pencil case ready with my best coloured pens for the first lesson was a tad unnecessary when all we needed was a pencil, a brain (tough ask after a long day at work), and patience to revisit some maths and basic geometry from school. Gulp!

But before I lose you with the theory, the message of the entire course was clear from the start of the first lesson:

Be confident to explore ideas that create a space outside your home that is as much about you and is as beautiful as the inside.

I’m going to share the key lessons I learnt each week and the process I went through to design our garden. As you know, I’m not a Pro. This is what I took out of the course, what I noted down, and what I left each week thinking and buzzing about with our garden design. I have tried to simplify the course for you and focus on the key ideas and principles to help you with your garden too.

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1. Park the Plants!
Designing a Garden is a Thinking Process

We were barely 10 minutes into the course when the bombshell was dropped that ‘the plants come last’ and this wouldn’t be covered until weeks five and six. What the hell would we be doing for the next four weeks I thought? I had no idea how much thinking and planning was involved in site appraisals, surveying, scale drawings, design principles, concept development and budgeting before planting themes and ultimately the actual digging and planting. I guess lots of this early planning comes naturally for interiors as we spend so much time in our rooms so we know their strengths and weaknesses, and what we want to highlight or maybe disguise. I had never thought our small garden needed a design process.

The corner patio before the garden design course (October 2018 judging by the pumpkins) when I had limited plants and pushed every pot beside the furniture and took my succulents & cacti off the kitchen windowsill to fake a photo for instagram. Shame on me! But this was my starting point with plants - it wasn't much and they were all in pots.

2. Get a Plant Notebook

You 100% need a Plant notebook (I just used Notes on my iPhone) to write down the name of plants you like as and when you discover them. I took photos of plants I liked whenever I saw them and always took a photo of the label too so I could start a list on my iPhone of my favourite plants. You need to jot down the following bullet points, and I promise you, this makes the planting design so much easier.

• Full botanical name (don’t just record the common name, you also need the full scientific name if you ever want to find the exact same specimen again)

• Height and spread at full maturity

• Description (I just grouped my plant list by colours, style and texture)

• Season (when does it flower and for how long)

• Soil & climate preferences

The Kelnan Plant stand at Chelsea Flower Show 2019 and a good example of why you need to keep a plant list. This isn’t just bamboo, this is Restios Cannomois Grandis (middle) and Restios Elegia Capensis (right). Kelnan Plants are a specialist grower of Restios and Proteas and were a huge inspiration for my garden design.

3. Start a moodboard

So obvious, and so important! I used Pinterest (obvs) to capture the ideas I liked, from photos of complete gardens, to just the furniture, to landscaping, materials, textures and of course the planting. The weekly lessons helped me to avoid my typical approach of quickly saving hundreds of images and then later feeling overwhelmed with so many ideas, to instead analysing each image that caught my attention and working out what I liked, what I didn't like and what could be adapted to work in our garden.

One of my favourite photos from Chelsea Flower Show 2019 which went on my own Garden moodboard to showcase the amazing effect of a black backdrop against rustic wooden sleepers, simple decking and grass, and the most beautiful planting which pops out in both colour and height. Funny how despite all the amazing show gardens at Chelsea, it was this simple photo I took of a display that was barely noticed by the huge crowds that caught my eye and resonated. I knew this would be affordable and achievable with my limited skills!

4. Do a full site appraisal of your garden

It sounds tedious but it’s so important to take time to fully understand what you already have in your garden (the good and the bad) before you start thinking about what you want to design or change. The end goal from this task is a rough sketch recording all the information you need. It’s not a scale drawing nor the design you want to achieve. No garden is ever a blank canvas so you need a plan to record all the existing features and issues you will want your new design to showcase or hide.

What you need to capture in a site appraisal sketch:

We were given a long list of pointers for drawing up this site appraisal but not everything is applicable so you only capture what you have and ignore the rest. For example, there are no winds, smells, tastes or touches in our garden so I ignored that nonsense and skipped on to the next topic. You'll see my sketch below, but here’s the complete list of what to look for:

• Your house, the setting and approach - What’s the style and age of your house? (think about the colour and texture of the materials). Do you have traffic noise? How close are you to any surrounding buildings?

• Your views - What views do you like? Are you overlooked? Don’t just think about the immediate view, but also the distant view and make sure you look at every angle (outward front, to the left, and to the right and then the same looking inward - and do this for the front and back gardens)

• Every single wall and fence - What’s the condition like? Is it attractive? Who owns the boundary? Are there any planning restrictions?

• Hard landscaping and buildings - What patios, steps and pathways do you already have? Do you like it? Are there any sheds or greenhouses? Are they movable?

• Existing trees and planting - Do you like them? Are they healthy? What are they hiding? Can they be moved? Do you have any tree preservation orders?

• Services - Identify where the Water, Gas and Electric meters are on your house. Do you have an outside tap, water butt, electricity point and don’t forget any drains?

• Shape of the land - this is very important (and gets expensive to change) so identify what slopes, dips and hollows there are in the land.

• Climate - Which way does the garden face? Where’s the sun, how long do you have the sun in the garden, where’s the shade and are there strong winds?

• Soil - What type of soil do you have? Heavy, soft, sandy or clay? Do you have good drainage? What’s the depth of the top soil before you hit rubble? What’s the pH?

• Emotion - How do you feel in the garden? Think of all your senses - what can you hear, smell, see and touch that you like and is there anything you don’t like?

Here’s a walk around of my site appraisal.

This is the view from our main patio doors. We have a low fence so we can steal the view in our neighbours huge back garden (that’s her apple tree there) and in the distance we see our local school playing field and tennis/netball courts. We get the full sun most of the day in this area but it also reflects against our white walls which has killed many plants over the years when I’ve positioned them against the house and left them to cook in the sun and forgotten to water them.

Looking to the right from the same standing position outside our patio doors and the first problem is clear. We have a wrap around garden that is immediately narrow looking forward, and has one view to the right (pictured here) which is where we are slightly overlooked. I love the character of the outbuildings from the cottage next door but within our fence there is zero existing character - just plain grass and a lack of footpath to get to the side of the house where we have the services, outside tap and electric points.

Still with me? Ok, now this is that same view but to the left. We have a small patio outside the doors but it’s not really a useable space. It’s more of a wide pathway around the house and to the corner patio. Those are the plants pots I mentioned which get singed to death in the full sun against the white walls. It’s a very wide but narrow garden where in the last two years we have spent all our time squished in that corner patio trying to BBQ, lounge on the sofas and have dinner parties at the table. I do regret not tidying up the dog bowl and garden golf toys before taking this shot but it helps to also show that we need space for the Boy to play ball games as well as space for the dog to run around and play repetitive catch all day long. Both are equally tedious!

This is the last angle, and not the best. Imagine you’re now stood in the corner patio area and area looking ahead. This is the other part of our wrap around garden. As well as walking to the garage and bins, it’s only been used for table tennis and games when we have people over in the summer. Pretty wasted to be honest!

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5. What do you want to achieve

The garden designer that ran our evening course taught us the simple ‘5W’ technique to help us understand what we wanted to achieve in our garden. She always used this with her clients to understand practical needs, style preferences and lifestyle.

• WHAT - What do you want to do in the garden? Is it for sitting, entertaining, dining, gardening, an area for children, dogs, or other pets?

• WHY - Do you want to sit privately and read a book? Or have a large outdoor dining space for family dinners? Is the motivation to grow vegetables? Do you even enjoy gardening? Do your children want to play?

• WHERE - Do you want to see your children playing? Where do you want to BBQ? Do you have an ugly play item (trampoline, hot tub etc) that you want to hide?

• WHEN - Do you see yourself using the garden in the winter? Do you want to enjoy the evening sun after work?

• WHO - Who is using the garden - adults, children, dogs, other pets, maybe even bees?

I found this the hardest part of what we learnt in week one as in addition to the site appraisal homework, I also had just one week to narrow down these demands ready for the next part of the course!

The Boy wants - Table Tennis table area, an outdoor kitchen area to BBQ, a Firepit, and a place to drink cider after work on an outdoor sofa. He also wants zero maintenance, minimal planting and preferably all grass.

Katie wants - A beautifully planted garden to enjoy looking at all year round. An area for basic gardening to improve my skills and to keep growing chillis, tomatoes and hopefully more veg one day. And also an outdoor dining area to socialise with friends and family over long dinners in the evening sun. Plus a space to make the hot tub look good so we use it more.

Week One Homework: Complete the site appraisal, draw up the sketch and prioritise your wish list.

It doesn't need to be pretty, or perfect but capture everything you see when you walk around your garden. Hopefully you can see better here how we have a small wrap around garden which was the reason I went on this garden design course as I wanted to learn how to make it a more usable, cohesive, beautiful space that would create views from each window of the house.

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