Think about What you Want - How to Create a Design Brief

So...What Do YOU Really Want???

Today we're going to look at creating a design brief for your garden design. It will enable you to focus on what you really want from your garden and how it can be put to best use to suit your needs.

Although it may be tempting to add lots of different elements to your garden, you will need to try to refrain from doing this. Some things may be unpractical and will just make the garden look cluttered - and quite frankly - UGLY!

Give yourself a mini interview - and take notes about the answers you give yourself. Do this in your head or at least make sure you are alone - otherwise your friends and family may become a little bit worried about your behaviour!

Ask yourself questions, not just about the garden, but about how you feel, what your hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes are. It will all help to build ideas and possibly themes for your garden.

Some important questions to consider are:

Who will mostly be using the garden, and at what times of the year?

Do you or your family go away for long periods at a time?

Are there any particular requirements for individuals who may use the garden ( disabilities, etc)?

Will children be using the garden? Now or in the future? Depending on their age you may consider play areas, storage for toys, football pitches. You will need to give careful consideration to safety in the garden. Be aware of toxic plants and consider whether water is absolutely necessary in your deign.

Do you, or family, have any pets that will be in the garden? Again, now or in the future? ( I have a rabbit that has the run of the garden and he can be a pest at times, eating all of my favourite plants and leaving the weeds!)

Do you have preference for a particular style? Maybe a formal or informal design? This could be influenced by looking at the house and its environment.

Also ask yourself what you like and dislike about your current garden. Look at what you would like to keep or definitely want to get rid of. You may find it useful to flick through magazines to get an idea of what design ideas you like. Visit friends gardens and copy their ideas if you like them.

Are you just wanting particular colours in your garden? Or have you favourite plants that you want to make a feature of?

How is your house decorated? Chances are that if you have a modern house then you will be happiest if your garden reflected this design. Similarly if your house is of a certain period, reflecting this outside will encourage a balance and unity between the house and the garden.

Do you want to have a lawn? It is labour intensive to keep one and if you go away a lot, you may find it a struggle to maintain. Think about all elements that you want to include in your design. Will they involve a lot of time to maintain them, or will someone else be doing the maintenance?How much storage do you require in your garden? You will need to allocate ample space for storage but try to blend it into your design so that it is not obtrusive.

Importantly, you will need to decide how much space you would like for seating. Are you a party animal who has lots of people over at a time, or do you want your garden to be a place of quiet solitude for you to escape to?

Start to consider what plants you would like to include. You do not, at this stage need to have an inclusive list, but have an idea of what type of planting you desire. The different types of planting should include screening, hedging, trees, structural shrubs, seasonal interest and ground cover. For ideas you can take a look through my archives at "Friday Plant Profiles" (I'll be adding more soon!). Include in your list, plants that you already have and want to keep. Add a note after each one to remind you that you already own them! Site requirements may dictate what type of plants you can have, sunny, shady, etc, so focus on plants preferring those requirements and you won't go far wrong.

Do you want to add art or sculptures to your garden? A well chosen piece of artwork can add lots to a design but you will need to make sure it practically fits your specification. Visit gardens that interest you and study which features, art, plants you like the most.

Seek inspiration everywhere!

Lastly...before you go absolutely crazy with ideas...try to consider a budget for all of these wonderful things you are planning to do! It's no good designing a masterpiece only for it to remain on paper for the rest of its life because you never quite manage to win the lottery. Be sensible with your ideas and budget and then you can actually make this design happen!

As you continue the design process, don't be scared to change you're mind. If, as your design develops, you decide that actually having an Olympic sized swimming pool isn't the best use of space, change the design and have a jacuzzi instead!

Take your time to really think about everything and you will come up with some really good ideas that we can then start to develop.

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.