A beginner’s guide to designing a garden

The thing that has shocked me most about owning my own home, is how much I have begun to love gardening. Designing a garden has been fun. Let me tell you, I was not remotely interested in gardening growing up (despite my mum being a keen gardener) and in our first flat, I became utterly disheartened when my first attempt at gardening failed. I tried to grow a pot of lavender on our rather chilly, north-facing, almost sunless balcony: it died.

I have learned a lot in my four years in this house: I have devoured gardening books and spent an inordinate amount of time on the RHS website. I have a subscription to Gardeners’ World magazine and am on the waiting list for an allotment. Although I am not a professional gardener by any stretch of the imagination, as an amateur gardener, I have a lot to share. So here is my beginner’s guide to designing a garden.

Learn about your garden space

I am not a patient person and so I sympathise if this is not what you want to hear, but taking it slow is my best advice. You need to learn about your garden before making any design decisions. By doing this, you will get better results overall and need to make fewer changes later on.

I hope this guide will be compatible with big and small gardens, as even a space a few metres squared will have little pockets of sun and shade. My experience is based on my own garden, which is an L-shape and about 6m x 16m (at the longest point) and I will refer to it a lot.

Designing a garden – the basics

Start with a sketch

Get a notebook, and roughly sketch out the main sections of the garden. Note down anything that can’t be changed, such as a patio or large tree, because these will need to be taken into account in your design. This is my sketch:

Work out the aspect

Which way does your garden face? The easiest way to work this out is with a smartphone. Download a compass app. Stand at the bottom of your garden, facing the garden, and open your app; it will tell you which way your garden faces. Mine faces north east. Do the same in front of your fences. Once you know what way your fences face, deciphering plant labels will be easier. They often have guidance on planting locations, such as ‘position against a south facing wall’. Remember to stand in front of the fence, facing away from it, to work out its aspect. Note the way the fences face on your sketch.

As a general rule, north-facing gardens get the least amount of sun, followed by east-facing, then west-facing and finally south-facing gardens spend most of the day in full sun. North and east-facing gardens are generally cooler than south and west-facing gardens. The size of the garden will affect the rule – a larger garden will always receive some sun no matter what aspect it is.

Track the sun

Once you know the aspect of the garden, you should observe the movement of the sun during the course of day. My bottom patio is sunny in the morning, but never warm. The sun then travels across the garden, with the top end being sunny most of the day. The corners get really hot. The whole garden is in shade by about 5pm. Knowing which parts of the garden are mostly in sun or shade helps you choose plants. Plant labels often say ‘full sun’ or ‘part shade’ for example.

Is it windy or sheltered?

Keep a note of how windy the garden is. Urban gardens like mine tend to be more sheltered, as there are houses all around. If you live on top of a hill or by the coast, it’s likely to be windier. You may have areas within the garden that are more or less exposed than others and even an otherwise sheltered garden may have a small wind tunnel.

Whether the garden is sheltered or exposed will affect what grows well and may impact on where you decide to place certain items of furniture.

Zoning the Garden

Now you have a rough idea of the sun movement microclimates in your garden, consider what you want from the garden.

Designing a garden – what to include

How you use your garden is personal to you. You may really want to grow lots of plants and have wide borders. Or you may want a huge entertaining space with a fully-fledged outdoor kitchen. Get ideas from Pinterest and gardening shows such as Love Your Garden or Your Garden Made Perfect.

In your notebook, make a list of what you would most like to include in your garden. Some ideas might be:

• Vegetable garden
• Family dining table
• Kids play area
• Man Cave / She Shed
• BBQ / bar area
• Potting station
• Tool shed
• Pond / water feature
• Trees / wildlife areas

Wildlife matters

This is a bit of a plea from me. You share your garden with wildlife. Wildlife doesn’t just mean the sweet robins and hedgehogs, but insects, snails and spiders too. All of these little critters form part of a food chain. Spiders eat insects. Birds eat spiders. Hedgehogs sometimes eat baby birds.

Try to tolerate the wildlife in your garden and for god’s sake, please don’t fill it with plastic. Plastic lawns should be banned in my opinion. I am tired of hearing about how low-maintenance they are. Real lawns are low maintenance! Who cares if it has a few dandelions (great for bees) or the dog wees in the same spot leaving it a bit bare. And let’s be clear, there is no such thing as a plastic ‘living’ wall. These things will end up in landfill and they are damaging to produce. They leave you with a garden devoid of life. Think bigger picture – do you want the next generation to inherit a world without bees and butterflies? If the answer is no, then cross ‘astroturf’ off your life right now.

You might want to keep your garden looking spic and span. There’s nothing wrong with that, but avoid any products for the garden with any kind of ‘-cides’ in them. Pesticides etc. This is poison. Please do not fill your garden with poison.

Trees

Every garden, even a small one, should have a tree. My garden has six trees. We have three acers, an olive tree, a spruce (it comes indoors every year for Christmas) and a crab apple. You can grow trees in pots. Olives are great options for sunny gardens and acers like some shade. Fruit trees often come in dwarf varieties. Trees are really low maintenance as well, which is always a win!

Designing a garden – creating the zones

Below is a picture of my garden shortly after we moved in and then last summer. Despite being full of pots and seating now, it feels bigger. This is because the garden has been zoned into different sections.

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My garden rooms can roughly be described as:

1. Potting area (bottom patio)
2. Family seating area (small patio with large table)
3. Lawn and borders
4. Sunny patio
5. Veg patch / play area

I am currently in the process of transforming what was our veg patch into a play area for Léo.

Map is out

Let’s start designing a garden! The easiest way I can go through the process is with reference to my own.

Bottom Patio

I chose this as the potting area as it’s the most obvious place. It is too cold to sit on this patio, even in summer. It’s shady by about noon. The bottom patio is sunny in the mornings, so the plants in my grow house get the light they need. Our shed is on the bottom patio. We didn’t want it to take up precious sunny space.

Family Seating Area

This is where we have out large table. The family seating area is close to the house, which is handy when bringing out plates of food. The table is a sheltered spot, so the parasol doesn’t go flying off. This area is sunny until mid-afternoon and a good spot for lunch. It’s warm enough for a drink on summer evenings.

Lawn and borders

We put our borders in soon after moving in, when there was still plastic grass from the previous owners. It was expensive to remove so as a result, the borders are smaller than I’d like. We had sleepers put in at the time and they aren’t easy to reposition as they are cemented at the corners. Consider this a cautionary tale – remember what I said about not doing things too quickly? Try to avoid making permanent decisions early on. I would really like curved borders, but I am a little held back by the sleepers.

We have a pond in this part of the garden, which is great for attracting wildlife. Ponds can be dangerous for children and therefore they may be best avoided if you have little ones. I would never allow Léo in the garden unsupervised while we have this pond and I may end up filling it in.

Sunny Patio

I would probably not have chosen to have such a large patio here, but it’s poured concrete and was here when we moved in. We don’t have the budget to change it. Instead, we have made the best of this space by adding an arbour which is nice for a cup of coffee in the afternoons, or to kick back with a book. We also have our BBQ here. I have lots of pots and a living wall, to maximise growing space. This summer, we will add a bistro set for a sunny spot to sit. This is the warmest part of the garden.

Veg patch

Our veg patch is in full sun and we have had three amazing years growing the veg we love: tomatoes, courgettes and aubergines. This area will become a play area for Léo this year. I am sacrificing the veg patch as our needs have changed.

Work Logically

Speaking from experience, it is far easier to design a garden in a logical order. Begin with any landscaping work and end with planting. I didn’t do this and as a result, I am not always trying to work around climbing plants I can’t bear to move!

1. Get rid of anything you don’t want first, including patios and decking or in my case plastic grass.
2. Think about the positioning of any lights – will you need an electrician to install any fittings?
3. If you are planning on replacing fences, do this early on, so that any climbers can establish on the new fences rather than old ones.
4. Deal with any landscaping, such as putting in patios, dividing walls, decking, pergolas and so on.
5. Add any furniture or large garden items like tables and sheds.
6. Design the shape and style of your borders.
7. Finally add your plants and any finishing touches such as pots.

Planning your planting

Right. You are now well on your way to designing a garden with different zones, so we are ready to plant! Accept that you will make mistakes in your planting and that is ok. Don’t be afraid to give something a go. The worst that can happen is the plant will not thrive but that doesn’t matter. Plants can be moved and if you end up simply not like something, just dig it up.

Designing a garden – planting considerations

Soil

The type of soil you have will affect what grows well. The RHS have the best guide for getting to grips with the type of soil you have. You can also test the ph of the soil, in order to see whether you have acid, neutral or alkaline soil. It’s helpful to know, because certain plants will need a particular type of soil. For example, rhododendrons and blueberries need acid soil. If you really want to grow these plants, but don’t have the right soil, you can grow them in pots using ericaceous compost.

You can improve your soil by mulching it. We had really gloopy clay-like soil. There was no aeration because it had been hidden under ghastly plastic grass. However, mulching each year with bark has really improved the soil texture and the worms have been working hard to get the soil healthy again.

Water

Plants need water. But some plants need lots and others not so much. How much rain your garden gets will affect your planting. For example, a hydrangea will thrive in a garden with plenty of moisture, but it will be rather unhappy in a hot, dry garden. Meanwhile, Mediterranean plants such as lavender and thyme will be in their element in gritty soil, with hardly any rain, but if they are in very moist, clay soil, they will become straggly.

Talking of water, its a good idea to add a water butt into your design. These attach to guttering and collect rain water allowing you to water the garden as sustainably as possible. You might need to think about installing an outdoor tap too.

Aspect

You’ve already established which parts of the garden are sunny and shady, so now you should keep this in mind when choosing plants.

Designing a garden – choosing plants

Always keeping in mind the pointers above, lets get on to choosing some plants. Plants are absolutely key when designing a garden because what is a garden without plants?

Climbers

I love to have climbers over fences and walls. Evergreen climbers will add year round interest. Many typical garden climbing plants are perennial (meaning they come back every year) but annuals such as sweet peas will quickly cover a fence.

Borders

Try to layer heights of plants. Big plants at the back and small, low-level plants at the front. Include some evergreen shrubs, or come winter the borders will look bare. Allow perennial plants (which come back each year) space to grow and establish themselves and fill the gaps with annuals (which last just one season). I mentioned before that my borders are too narrow which makes planting difficult. Try to make sure your borders are wide enough to allow for plants at different heights.

Have fun experimenting with plants. You will learn far more by getting it wrong than by reading books and blogs.

Pots

Pots offer lots of opportunity. They can brighten up patios and be rotated with the seasons. Planting in pots allows you to grow plants that may not be best suited to your soil, as you can personalise the planting mix to the plant. Even if you have no borders at all, a fabulous display of pots can be quite breathtaking.

Recommended Gardening Books

I can’t possibly cover everything there is to designing a garden in one short blog, though I do intend to keep this particular blog updated with more tips and ideas as I continue on my gardening journey. In the meantime, the following books have been really useful to me as a beginner gardener. I still use them all regularly.

• Big Ideas Small Spaces – Kay Maguire & Tony Woods (I absolutely love this one)
• How to Create Your Garden – Adam Frost
• RHS Complete Gardener’s Manual
• The Urban Gardener – Matt James
• The Complete Gardener – Monty Don

And for more gardening inspiration from me, check out my other blogs here.