How to Plan Your Garden?

Obviously, having a map of your property is necessary if you’re going to develop a garden design. As a preliminary step, or warm-up exercise, sketch a bird’s-eye view of your property based only on your memory of it. Make the sketch as rough as you like, but try to include as much detail as you can. Be sure to indicate major parts of the garden, pathways, and any other features. Your memory sketch shows how you perceive the parts of your yard and the relationships between them.

Once you’ve drawn the accurate base plan, it can be revealing to compare them to your rough sketch. What did you make bigger or smaller than it actually is? Did you draw any elements that are closer or farther away than they actually are?

Think about how you feel about the discrepancies. This exercise can uncover additional pieces of knowledge for you to use in planning the final design. For example, did you draw your vegetable garden far larger than it really is? Does that mean the work it requires is a burden? In

your drawing, is the clump of trees in the far corner of your lot smaller and more remote than they really are? Does that discrepancy reflect the fact that you’d like more shade and trees closer to your house?

The base plan is one of the most useful maps you can have of your property. It shows your boundary lines, indicates which way is north, and maps the size and location of the house and other buildings. In addition, it also indicates the location of important, semi-permanent features such as utility lines, rights-of-way, wells, septic tanks and fields, walls, driveways, and paved areas. It can also indicate changes in elevation.

A base plan is a useful tool at all stages of creating a landscape design. Once you have your base plan, it’s best not to write directly on it. Instead, make photocopies. That way, you can use a copy to make an existing conditions plan and another draw out the final design. If you’re working on a copy, you’ll also feel free to sketch out rough ideas as often as you like without worrying too much about making mistakes, because you’ll able to start again fairly easily.

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