Assessing Your Plot

PLANNING YOUR GARDEN PART 1

You need to know your plot inside out before you start to apply your ideas. Firstly record your gut reaction to the site – it might be a feeling of claustrophobia, or that you feel exposed. What do you want to keep? What is in the wrong place? What is missing?

Next make a rough sketch of the plot, don´t measure precisely, just pace it out and use a big enough sheet of paper to draw it at a size that comfortable…you need to get quite a lot of information onto this plan. Put in all the main features, walls, hedges, fences, sheds and gates. Use a compass (or the sun) to find out which way it faces. Mark out the main areas of full sun and of deep shade, places that are shaded all day or for significant amounts of time…or where the sun first touches the garden in the morning. Include your house in the plan and mark how you get into and out of the garden. Note any views beyond the garden - a tower or a neighbours tree that you would like to see better or a view that you want to accentuate.

At this stage the paper will be a bit full! Get some tracing paper and make overlaying sheets so that you can put exisiting plants and shrubs (that you want to keep) on the plan. On another sheet you may need to record the topography of the site in a cross section if there is a significant slope. If relevant on another overlay show different types of ground – boggy, rocky, good soil.

It helps to get information from the surrounding area to add to all your other info. What grows well in neighbours´ gardens or in the surrounding farmland? What is the ´natural´ landscape like? Is there ever frost and where? What about rainfall (or drought)…is that path across the neighbours land really your right of way? Where can you take your garden rubbish if you need to get rid of prunings etc?

Armed with all this information you can sit back and reassess your plot at your leisure. You need this knowledge to help you work out your design and to see how your ideas can work with what you now know about your site – some ideas will have to go, others be modified, but there will be more possibilities for some things than you ever dreamed of ……if you are brave enough to implement them!