Getting ideas and inspiration for your garden

Garden design is a process where different ideas and different creative disciplines meet.

When thinking about the design of your own garden, you might take a leaf out of the book of a professional designer: When talking to clients, garden designers have to find out more about the proposed garden than just the basics (if there is to be play area, where to put the bins, places to sit etc.) The designer then seeks inspiration from diverse sources - from the history of the place, the memories of the people who live there, their favourite colours, which places they have enjoyed visiting – and the garden will eventually evolve from this mish mash of information.

In applying this to your own garden, think about gardens you've seen that inspired you; or start with a single plant you love, or equally by the memory a city square you visited in spring when the orange trees were in bloom or the sound of a stream you paddled in as a child.

You could research garden styles that interest you. Moorish gardens are a sanctuary from the harsh heat of summer and the source of endless inspiration. Looking at Japanese gardens gives different inspiration, a chance to use a minimal approach and to explore the use of simple planting with rocks and gravel.

The landscape around where you live will inspire you. A bleached hillside gives ideas about making a garden where the colours and shapes of mounds of grasses are the main features - a palette of browns and beiges.

The beach might influence you to use pebbles and stones in different patterns with plants informally growing between.

Even a favourite rug or piece of patterned cloth can give you ideas for a palette of colours that will determine your choice of flowers.

The lines of architecture of your house (or your street) may influence your design. Planting can soften the lines of buildings or the features of the house can be accentuated by the orderliness of the planting, the placement of paths or the way trees can be clipped or trained.

A practical way of discovering what kind of garden will suit your taste is to make a list of your likes and dislikes – not just garden things like plants, hedges or fountains, but shapes, colours, types of buildings and landscapes as well as feelings and emotions.

In conversation with clients, designers try to find out their preferences and dislikes and then create a collage of ideas that becomes a source of inspiration…try it for yourself with a few national Geographic mags, postcards or plant catalogues and see what you come up with!