More Graden design Principles - Keeping your Garden Design Simple and to Scale and Proportion

Think you understand the principle of Unity and Harmony now? Good. Let's look at a few more principles of Garden Design that you'd do well to remember - ooh, that sounds a bit menacing doesn't it? Sorry!!

Heard of the phrase -

"Less is More"?

Well, it applies to Garden Design too. Simplicity in your design will encourage a strong and successful design. Keeping a design simple isn't always easy, as once your creative juices are flowing you can be tempted to keep adding to your design. Knowing when to Stop though can really help you design a fantastic garden - and if you've lots of ideas that you couldn't use, offer to design a friends garden and use them there (so long as they fit with your friends brief!)

So, how do you keep a garden simple?

The easiest way is to keep monitoring your design and ask yourself if it is getting too busy. If there is so much going on that you don't know which way to turn then look at which elements you can do without, and find the courage to remove them. If you're having difficulty deciding whether to remove the sauna or the jacuzzi ask someone who will be using the garden with you what their opinion is. It's not worth spending hours agonising over so be sure to put the dilemma into perspective. Ensure that simplicity runs through your entire design - from the layout to the textures and colours.

One way of keeping a design simple is to use just a few types of plants and mass plant them. (Apologies for the quality of the photo, my camera was playing up!)

If you find you've got hundreds of juicy ideas flowing from you, don't just add them to your design willy-nilly, keep a sketch pad nearby and jot down your ideas there. That way you'll be able to take a step back and develop the best ideas that will work for your brief.

Another principle that is fundamentally important is

Scale and Proportion

You will need to consider three relationships when you think of scale and proportions. Firstly, the relationship between the house and the garden. Secondly, that of the garden and the surrounding landscape. Lastly, don't forget the relationship that you need to have with your garden.

As soon as you begin your design try to think three dimensionally. This will help focus your mind on how elements will relate to each other and hopefully you will see if something will be out of proportion to something else.

Take a photo of a particular feature in your garden that you are planning to keep. Lay tracing paper over it and experiment by drawing different design ideas, seeing how they relate to the original feature in size and proportion. If you're not confident at drawing it doesn't matter, nobody else needs to see your drawings, just keep practicing until you feel more relaxed with your style. If you're really struggling to get your ideas on to paper, then you might want to consider going to a local drawing class to gain experience.

You could even try making a model of your garden. It will need to be to scale so that you can tell if an idea is going to work but it can be made from any discarded items that you can find. Turn yourself into a Blue Peter presenter and do your bit for the environment by recycling old boxes and toilet rolls. Remember you're not trying to re-create the dolls house that you (or a female relative) had when you were young, it's merely another tool to examine the major elements of your design and see if the scale and proportion will work within the boundaries of your garden.

Whichever method you choose, include a correctly scaled person to your sketch or model. That will show you if your idea relates to the people that will be using your garden.

When you come to size up your major elements and feature, think of their practicalities and what you are wanting to use them for. Make sure that a patio planned for seating 12 people is large enough to take 12 people - and a planned Koi pond can accommodate Koi and not just little fish!

Consider also, the type and size of material that you use. Generally a smaller garden will suit having a smaller unit of paving which will give the impression of having more space. If you were to use small units of paving in a larger garden however, it may have the effect of looking too busy. Be careful if you are including steps in your garden. They will need to be the correction proportion to prevent accidents. Make the risers (the vertical bits) as shallow as possible, and the treads (the flat bit of the step) as wide as possible, ensuring that the steps are comfortable to use and safe.

You can use scale and proportion to emphasise and enhance the sense of space within a garden. Make small gardens that have little space from front to back feel longer and wider by using horizontal or diagonal features. Add elements that encourage people to walk side to side, thereby giving the illusion that the garden is longer than it is as it takes some time to reach the back. You can use individual paving slabs or bricks to make a garden appear wider too. Lay the longest length of the paving slab or brick cross ways on the path and if you want to exaggerate the width even more, consider staggering the edges of the path into the surrounding planting.

You can control the speed at which people use the paths in this way. Bricks laid length ways with make people walk faster whereas laid cross ways, the bricks will slow the user down.

You can alter perspectives in the garden by choosing carefully how you place certain features. Putting larger objects behind smaller ones will make the horizon appear closer to you, shortening the perspective of the garden as a whole. You can also play with parallel lines, which in reality, recede away from the viewer and appear to converge to a point on the horizon. By altering the lines you can make the distance look longer or shorter to suit your desired effect.

Have an experiment with the perspectives and proportions in your garden. Decide whether certain paths need to allow people to move quickly (maybe to a shed or gate) or whether you want them to meander (maybe through a nicely planted area). Try out some ideas and see what will work for you.

How to draw up your Site Survey and Analysis Plan.

Welcome back!

How did you get on with that jigsaw? Or did you take one look at it and panic like I did? Either way, I hope you had a good weekend.

Today, we're going to look at all of the measured and non-measured information that you've got from your garden, and we're going to draw it up in to our Survey and Site analysis Plan. Finally!

Don't panic! It's not that bad! Just a little time consuming, depending on how good you are a technical drawing.

The first thing you need to do is to decide what size scale you need to use. As mentioned before this will be based largely on how large your garden is. If your garden is huge - you lucky things- then you will probably have to use a scale of 1:200, but this is best avoided as you will not be able to add much detail and will be quite hard to draw.

For those of us with normal sized gardens, and those that are the size of a postage stamp, I'd recommend using a scale of 1:100 or 1:50. Whichever scale you chose though, you will need to measure the longest widths and lengths onto your paper to make sure that they fit. Not only do your longest measurements need to fit, but you will need to have ample room around your drawing to be able to make comments. If you try to crowd it into small gaps it will look muddled and confusing, and you probably won't have a clue what you were talking about when you come to use your plan. You will also need to decide the best angle for your piece of paper - horizontal (landscape) or vertical (portrait) - to allow for your drawing. It is usually best to try placing your building at the bottom of the page and working up from that.

Remember to mark on your plan what scale you are using and which way north faces.

For this to work you will need:

Tracing paper
Masking Tape
Smooth 'underlay' paper
Scale ruler
Retractable pencil (0.5mm lead)
T-Square
Adjustable set square
Beam Compass
Drawing Board (optional)

Using the masking tape, secure your underlay paper to the table top or the drawing board. You could use graph paper for this which will give you some sense of scale but it is worth remembering that very few, if any, of your measurements will exactly fit this. Next secure your chosen size of tracing paper over the underlay paper making sure that you can see the lines of the graph paper through it. You must ensure that any vertical or horizontal lines that or are draw on the plan are true and square. Otherwise you will end up with many errors and the plan will be inaccurate and meaningless.

The first line to draw will be your baseline of the house. Draw it in exactly the same direction that you took the original measurement. Next you will need to plot your boundary corners and draw in the lines to your boundary.

To plot your corners, refer to your triangulation notes. Use your scale rule to adjust your beam compass to correspond with your first measurement from, the fixed point at the house to the boundary corner. Now place the 'spiked' end of the beam compass at the location of the fixed point of the house on the drawing, and, using your best guesstimate, hold the pencil end of the compass in the area you believe the boundary corner to be. Then, when you're fairly happy with the position, scribe an arc in that area. Repeat this process with your second triangulation measurement (probably from the other fixed point on your baseline). Where the two arcs meet - that is the actual position of your boundary corner.

Easy, huh?

Continue this process for each point that you have triangulated in the survey. Once you have your boundary plotted, you can then continue to fill in the rest of the drawing. Plot everything that you measured on-site and write information around the edges to complete the analysis. (See Diagram Below)
For features that you measured using the 'offset' method, you will need to plot them onto your drawing in exactly the same method - plot the baseline you used and measure from each point along it, just as you did in the garden.


If measurements are not adding up now that you are putting them onto paper, you probably made an error in the recording stage and will need to re-measure. Don't beat yourself up over it. Simply pop back out to the garden and re-measure - problem solved!

Take as much care with drawing as you did with the measuring. Your plan needs to be as accurate as humanly possible.

And that's all there is to it! It's fairly simple - it's just really time consuming!

Taking a separate piece of paper, you will need to draw up elevation drawings to accompany your Site Survey Plan. Work through your measurements in the same order that you took them, starting from the baseline. Add written information to relate to features along the house front (or whatever the subject of the elevation is) onto your new elevation plan. I'll go into elevation drawings at a later date so don't worry if you can't get the hang of it yet.

The important thing at the end of this stage is that you know exactly what exists in your garden and have an accurate drawing, or drawings, recording that information.

If you're satisfied that you have done all of that -Well Done!. You are now on your way to becoming a garden designer!

The next thing we'll look at, is trying to decide what you might like in your newly-designed garden.

More Garden Designing Secrets Revealed

So...How did you get on with your baseline?

No problem, right? Good. Now we're up and running with this recording garden measurements thing we can crack on.

As I said yesterday, the next thing that we need to measure are all of the vertical measurements on the house. "Why bother?" I hear you ask( actually I don't hear you at all, but that would be really clever wouldn't it?). The purpose of having a detailed plan of your house face is so that any design you create matches in with architecture and is kept within proportion to the building. Although you may not be aware of it at the time, if you design a feature that is out of proportion to the house then it just won't 'sit' right in the garden and will bug you forever, or until you get so fed up with it, you rip it out and change it.

To record the vertical measurements of the house you need to include everything you can see. It sounds a bit daunting, but actually, once you get going, it's not that bad - honest. Remember to record the dimensions and locations of all windows and doors, windowsills, air bricks, vents, downpipes (carrying water, electric, gas), taps, and also the damp proof course (DPC) level. If you can't see a DPC then it may not be visible or may not even exist - don't worry about it in this case then. You will need to be really detailed with measurements for the doors and windows. Don't just record their dimensions, but also measure the doorframe, jamb, and where the middle point of french doors are located. You will also benefit from noting which way all doors and windows open. On the windows look out for not only the actual size of it but where the glass finishes and the sill begins. You might find on inspection an unusual pattern of glass that you can incorporate into your design at a later date.

In order to record all of this accurately, imagine that your baseline tape is now running up the right-hand side of the house face as you are stood looking at it ( only imagine- don't actually move that baseline tape!). Your original point of origin will still be in the same position. Now, using your steel retractable measuring tape, record from the base of the building up to each feature that doesn't reach the ground (see diagram below). You should already have it's location along the building face from your original baseline measurements but you may find it handy to check. There's inevitably something that gets missed.

You won't need to risk your life to measure the whole height of the building. Nor will you need to run to your neighbour, asking to borrow their ladder (apologies if you, yourself, own a ladder). You can approximate the height of the building by counting the courses of bricks and multiplying them. You will need to measure a brick and one side of the mortar joint to do this!

Before you ask what to do if there is no exposed brick, here's what to do. Simply take a photograph of the house, and using a known measurement, for example a window height, calculate how many times that measurement fits within the height of the building. Any features that are above the ground floor may not be directly relevent to the design of the garden and so there is no need for complete accuracy with these measurements. It is acceptable to guesstimate these measurements.

Whilst making all of these measurements, it is wise to add notes in a separate pad, to record details and observations as you discover them. Note the style of the house, colour of bricks, etc.

If your house has a conservatory or existing extension then you will need to take this into careful consideration before you lay your baseline. You will need to record all the measurements of these additional buildings too - sorry!

Now you should have every measurement required to give you an accurate drawing of the house face. You may also have measurements for existing drain covers, outlines of patios, built-in bbqs, etc. That's all good. These will enable you to make a detailed site survey drawing to scale later on.

A Bit about Scale and how to work to it.

The purpose of a scale is to represent a full sized garden. I would be seriously impressed if you could find a sheet of paper large enough to draw a fully sized plan of your garden but I somehow doubt that that is possible.That is why scale is so useful. You can create an exact replica of your garden just smaller.

Before I get all technical with the scale talk, you may find it handy to have your scale rule close by.

If you require a detailed drawing then it is advisable to use a larger scale (these are the smaller numbers on the scale rule). You will need to be careful with just how large a scale you decide to use though, as the larger the scale, the larger the paper, and that could cause difficulties. A drawing that is produced using a scale of 1:20 is going to be much larger than a scale drawing at 1:100. The size of paper needs to be practical to use. I use A2 or occasionally A3. I find that A4 is just too small. There needs to be room for detailed notes as well as the drawing.

The following scales are usually used for garden design drawings:

A Scale of 1:200 - every unit of your drawn plan represents 200 units on the ground. So if you draw 1cm onto your plan, it will represent 200cms, or 2 metres. This scale is restricted to larger gardens where details are not really required.

A Scale of 1:100 - every unit of your drawn plan represents 100 units on the ground. So if you draw 1cm onto your plan, it will represent 100cms, or 1 metre. If you have a small or medium sized garden then this is the scale for you. You will be able to include a reasonable amount of detail without needing a forest to achieve it (that's a metaphorical forest- you don't have to put one in your garden!).

A Scale of 1:20 - every unit of your drawn plan represents 20 units on the ground. So if you draw 1cm onto your plan, it will represent....yep, you guessed it, 20cm on the ground. This scale is excellent for more detailed drawings, such as construction drawings and very small gardens.

A Scale of 1:50 - is between the two scales above and is commonly used for planting plans and medium gardens.

Have a look at your scale rule. You will see that it includes ( or mine does anyway) scales of up to 1:500, 1:1000, 1:10000, 1:1250. These would all produce tiny drawings, so are generally used for producing maps and plans of extremely large areas. I'm talking country estate size here, so it's best you avoid these sized scales, unless you own a country estate that is!

It is vitally important to draw your plans to scale so that you can eventually have your design created in real life. If some poor person is having to re-jig your design so that it fits into your allocated space, they aren't going to be happy.

Try practising using your scale rule to draw simple objects. Only use your scale rule to make measurements. Do not use it to draw the actual lines. This will ruin the edges of the scale rule and future results will be innaccurate.

Try drawing these rectangles at scales of 1:100 and 1:50:

• 6m x 12m
• 3.5m x 5m
• 16m x 8.5m

Repeat the exercise using these following dimensions:

• 10cm x 5cm
• 15cm x 20cm

Now draw them using scales 1:10 and 1:20

Remember to write the scale that you decide to use on the bottom right-hand side of each drawing you produce. That way, when you refer back to it, you won't have to spend ages trying to work out what scale you were working to.

The next part of the site survey to measure, are the boundaries and features within the garden. I'll talk about that later. For now though, have a practice of scale drawing with those rectangles and measure your house facade.

Garden Designing made easy (ish)

So... how do you fancy learning something new today?

Have you ever looked over the fence at your neighbours garden and wished that your garden looked as good as theirs? Have you spent hours admiring their water feature, or their planted borders? Do you want to have a poshly designed garden but can't afford the extortionate fees that professional designers charge? ( I sound like an advertisement, sorry!)

I'm going to use this blog to show you some of the techniques that I use to design gardens. As with before, these are only my suggestions and are in no way, shape or form, gospel. There are no set rules for how to design a garden and you may know of a better way. That's fine with me, but you may find a few tips here anyway,that you hadn't thought of.

Okay...are you ready? Let's get started.

Before you even dare to consider what you might like in your garden, you will need to carry out a site survey. This will give you a measured plan of your garden and provide a blank canvas with which to create your masterpieces. It sounds quite boring, and, I'm afraid to say, it is! However, it is the most important part of designing your garden. Get this stage wrong and your designs won't fit causing all sorts of problems later on.

Can't draw? Don't worry, you won't need to be an artist to do this. It's just a matter of doing things in a methodical and logical manner to ensure that you end up with an accurate site survey drawing.

Things you will need:

• A clipboard and pad


• Large drawing pad - graph or plain paper


• Pens and pencils (pencils work better if it's wet, but I recommend only going out when it's dry, just because it's nicer then!))


• Scale Ruler (I'll go into more detail about scale later on)


• Beam Compass - allows you to create larger arcs than a normal compass


• Measuring tapes - should be 2x 30 metres if possible


• A 10 metres steel retractable tape measure


• Magnetic Compass (unless your already know your site orientation)


• Strong bamboo (or anything else) canes, or poles with which to mark out areas


• One 1 metre spirit level


• Soil pH testing kit (you can buy disposable kits from any garden centre - I'll talk about soil types later on)


• Some clean plastic bags and labels for your soil samples


• A digital camera (you could use a camera that needs film but it is harder)


• A trowel


• A pair of secateurs (how overgrown is your garden?)


• A large ball of string, 20- 35cm wooden pegs and some lengths of timber (this is to measure any differences in ground level)


• You may like to consider getting yourself an assistant at this point to help with the survey

And that's it, you're ready to go measure that garden. You can of course, use anything else that comes to hand that you might find useful. Old bricks or stones for holding down tapes, etc.

Okay, so the primary purpose of a site survey is to accurately measure the plot. However, it is also at this time that you should make notes of anything that may influence your design. Become a detective in your own who-dunnit mystery and use your sleuthing skills to spot any potential problems. For example, there may be old electric cables running just underground, which if later dug up could prove rather dangerous.

Don't think that you can only measure the plot in one go. If you think, when you come to drawing up your site survey that you've made a mistake, get yourself back out to the garden, and measure it again. Take as much time as you need. As I said before, it's important to get this bit right.

When on-site ( this means you're in your garden but I'm going to refer to it as on-site now as it's quicker for me to type), you will need to make as accurate a record of all features as possible. You will not need to draw your plan to scale at this point. Which is lucky, as if it was pouring down with rain, it could prove tricky to be drawing a scale plan! You will however need to sketch a rough plan of everything you need to measure onto your graph paper (or whatever paper you chose to use). You may find it beneficial to record some of the main features (boundaries and baseline) to scale whilst you're on-site to ensure accuracy when you come to draw up the entire site survey. Your chances of success are greatly improved if you use a sensibly sized piece of paper for your on-site draft - using a small sheet of paper is just going to get too crowded with numbers for you to read it.

A quick lesson on how to use a measuring tape

Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs at this point, but it is important that you get to know your particular tools well. Familiarise yourself with your tape measures (you don't need to be on first name terms with them, knowing what they look like will suffice!). Some tapes are bound by metal ends which unfold to produce the start of the measure. Have a look at yours. It may be that it starts at 3-4 centimetres. If this is the case you need to remember this when you are using it.

When using your tape, make sure that the ends are up close to the position you want to record and that you hold it taut. Do not allow the tape to twist and keep it as low to the ground as possible. Holding a tape high could cause it to sag and you would not get an accurate reading. This could occasionally be unavoidable in the garden setting. For example, you may need to measure through large shrubs. If this situation occurs, don your camouflage paint and army trousers and head into ambush (or should that be "a bush"?). The only way to do this successfully is to get right into the thick of things. Your secateurs may come in handy at this point!

Measuring tape lesson over.

The first thing that you will need to establish on your site survey is the baseline. This is a line between two static points in the garden that you will take all major measurements from. It is usually taken from the line of the side of the house that faces the garden. This is because, with a bit of luck, the person who built your house, built it straight and so should provide accurate results. After this you can then measure the boundary walls, or fences, that come from the baseline. You should try, as much as is possible, to use the baseline to record all significant features. This includes any drain covers, trees, or plants that you wish to keep. At times, it may be necessary to have more than one baseline. If you're lucky enough to have a garden that surrounds your house, then you will need to create a baseline for each side of the house and take subsequent measurements for that side of the garden only. Are you still with me? Or have I lost you completely?

Let's look in detail at how to measure the baseline...

Arm yourself with your first 30 metre tape. Position its end at the left-hand boundary of the house and secure it there. Now run the tape along the edge of the house and to the edge of the garden (boundary) that is in line with your baseline (see diagram a). This is your baseline and will be referred to as the point of origin for all future measurements. Following this, you will need to plot every detail that happens along the baseline. For example, doors, drains, air bricks, etc.

The baseline in this diagram runs along just in front of the house rather than up against it. This is to allow for any protrusions such as doorsteps. Notice that all measurements are written at right angles to the line. This is to prevent numbers muddling into one another and creating chaos when you come to draw them up.

When you measure points along your baseline, you should measure starting from zero. Refer to diagram a again, you will notice that each feature is measured from the same point of origin, in this case, the left-hand boundary. You should never move your baseline, or point of origin as any mistakes made will acculminate and be made worse with subsequent measurements.

If, as is in the case of our made up house in diagram a, your fixed baseline has had to to be laid away from the house wall to allow for protrusions, then you will need to use your steel measuring tape to record where the house face moves in and out.

Once you are satisfied that you have all of the measurements that exist along the baseline, leave the measuring tape where it is, you will need it again.

The next thing to record will be all of the vertical measurements for the house face. I'll discuss that later though. For now, just focus on getting your baseline measurements accurate and we'll go from there.