Charlie Albone

When I first started designing gardens I used various methods of design: first, at the age of 16, I tried the ‘going in all guns blazing method’. This simply consisted of me stepping into a backyard (luckily my mother’s) with a whole bunch of materials and just going for it. Needless to say, my mother was not impressed with the results! Secondly, after being thwarted by my first attempt at it, I roughly (not to scale) scribbled out a plan showing areas of interest I wanted to incorporate into the design. These included entertaining spaces, water features and utility areas. Then I ran outside, once again like a bull in a china shop, and went for it. The results were less than inspiring; the scale and marriage of each element were completely out of proportion to each other. With all her wisdom my mother had persuaded me to mark out this design before I wasted any more time constructing. So back to the drawing board I went, and this time I was armed with a scale ruler and a proper drawing board. It was here the design and garden really took shape. A few years on, the finished garden is shown below:

What I’m trying to emphasize here is the importance of the process we call the “landscape design.” Since my first attempt I have changed my method of getting to the finished product. Through these articles I will take you through the process I go through to reach a finished landscape design.

The initial step, which is sadly the most boring, is getting yourself a scale base plan. This has to be accurate so take your time; time invested here will really impact on your completed product. First, measure all your boundaries and external house walls, and try to get all the angles as true as possible. Then make a note of any constraints on your design. These will include drains, down pipes, power lines and levels.

Once you have all this information you need to plot it to paper to create the base plan. If you do not have a drawing board or drawing tools, try using squared paper and a scale ruler. If even this is too much for you, or your site is too large, a surveyor or designer can complete this step for you.
Before you leap in to scribbling your ideas all over the page make sure you have plenty of copies, as I’m sure you’ll have plenty of ideas. Then, on one copy, do a ‘functional analysis’. This looks at all constraints outside of your site that will impact on your garden. It will make note of things like nosy neighbors, the flight of the sun and shade; any prevailing winds and areas you need screen.

Now we need to start looking at styles of garden, but I’ll leave that for next month.