While choosing a greenhouse, most people would like to identify the one that best suits their requirements. At the moment, there are different kinds of greenhouses existent in the market and hence you would need some guidance to help you choose the right model. People usually want a greenhouse that would meet their gardening needs at an affordable price. To begin with, you need to assess the size of the greenhouse. You can choose the greenhouse in accordance to the available space as well as the cost factor. For an instance, you would need a larger greenhouse if you wish to grow the entire collection of houseplants.

There are different kinds of greenhouse manufacturers in the market; however you must always choose reputed dealers such as Outdora. Buying a good quality greenhouse would guarantee a better gardening experience. You must also ensure that your greenhouse has enough head room and height. According to the studies, it has been observed that taller greenhouses are easier to ventilate and heat since the air mass gets a bigger buffer space.

In order to better determine the size and the type of the greenhouse, you must know the purpose of using the greenhouse. These days, there are newer kinds of poly-tex greenhouses This would help you determine the insulation value of the which are highly efficient.greenhouses. For an instance, if you wish to grow plants in winter, you would need greater insulation as compared to times in summer. You must pay a lot of attention to circulation and ventilation in the greenhouse. You can either choose to build your greenhouse from a scratch or you can buy one of these ready-made greenhouse kits. Regardless of what you choose, some places would require you to get a building permit. Check with the local building codes in order to check on the permits required. Pay attention to the design requirements, property lines as well as all other requirements.

The Easter weekend tends to be a time when a lot of people start to think about their garden. If the weather is nice, every garden centre across the land will be jammed packed with people frantically purchasing plants for their garden.

The serious folks are lining up at 9am on Good Friday and are probably back on the Saturday for yet more plants. And by Monday the ‘Day-trippers’ are out in force, milling about being seduced by impulse buys.

Which One Are You?

The serious shopper determined to get your garden finished by the end of the Bank Holiday weekend or the impulse buyer? It doesn’t actually matter which category you fall into, either one is equally valid. What matters is what you spend your hard earned cash on. You might have a list of things you think you need and still buy the wrong things. And equally, you may be seduced by an impulse buy and strike lucky with a great purchase. Who knows!

A Game of Chance

When you consider what cautious folks most of us are in day to day life, it’s amazing how all that caution goes out the window when it comes to our gardens. Without really knowing what we are doing, we rush off to the nearest garden centre, spend a big chunk of cash on plants, statues and anything else that catches out eye, come home, strategically scatter out new purchases around and then expect the magic of nature to do the rest…. sound familiar? Come on, we’ve all done it at one point or another.

Trouble is, that method doesn’t work particularly well. It is a game of chance doing it that way. If you’ve loads of surplus cash lying around, taking a gamble can be fun. If you haven’t, nothing is more disappointing than spending time, money and effort and not achieving the results you really want.

If Only You Knew!

Most people don’t fully understand garden design. They have a rough idea of what is involved but not really. People assume I arrange plants for a living. In part that is true, but it is only a small part of the job. A truly great garden is so much more than the plants it contains.

Want to Stack the Odds In Your Favour?

To make life easier for you, I’ve written a FREE guide on how best to go about landscaping your garden. The 7 Steps To A Great Garden is a step-by-step road map that explains everything you need to know from how to do the garden yourself or how to pick the best landscape professional to work with. See info at the end on how to download your FREE copy.

I Have a Challenge For You

One of my biggest passions is show people how they can improve their outside spaces. Creating a great garden is something that is achievable with a bit of time and thought put in. So I’m challenging you to make the best of your garden this year. I don’t expect you to go it alone, so to help you out, I’ve set up a forum where you can talk to landscape professionals and other people that are transforming their gardens. Yes they’ll even be prizes for best 3 transformations.

This Is New

Brand new, just out the box in fact. The Great Garden Challenge officially starts in September this year but before its big launch, I want a group of people to test it and mould how it functions. Basically you sign up and tell me what help you need and I’ll find the right people and information. As a thank you for your input into making the Great Garden Challenge work successfully, you’ll get all the info for free. When it officially launches in September, it will be a paid monthly subscription to take part. But not for you testers – you’ll have free access. This offer is open to a limited number of people that signs up before the end of April.

So if you want to make sure you make your garden great this Easter, get your FREE road map, The 7 Steps To A Great Garden visit The Great Garden Challenge website.  At the bottom of the Great Garden Challenge Home page you can sign up to take part in the Great Garden Challenge. I kook forward to seeing you there.

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Screenshot Channel 4's new series Landscape Man website

Did you watch it Thursday night? Channel 4′s new series called Landscape Man. It was pitched to be like Grand Designs but about creating  gardens.

The opening episode of this new six part series was jaw dropping. A couple living in Devon had bought a 4-acre site and sunk every penny they had into developing their dream garden to the point of severe financial strain. Keith and Ros worked relentlessly to raise all their own plants in their small nursery as well as plant and tend the garden as it developed. Predictably following the traditional TV formula of will they / won’t they.

You could not fault the couple on passion and commitment but they were as ‘mad as a box of frogs’ as a friend of mine would say (in the nicest of ways). Their garden is their obsession. Keith would talk about his dream with wild staring eyes and a look of fervent determination as he explained his ideas.

Garden creator – Keith Wiley screenshot Ch4 series Landscape Man

Is Happy-Go-Lucky The Best Way?

Keith’s process to landscaping his garden was to climb in his mini-digger and spend entire days digging down into the bowels of the earth to create, what the presenter, Matthews Wilson (aka Landscape Man) would describe as ‘canyons’. He would excavate until it was too dark to do any more, every day until he had totally re-sculptured the flat landscape into a series of intricate mounds and paths which he would then plant up with his beloved flowers.

'Canyons' screenshot Channel 4's new series Landscape Man

Then he started work on his Mexican garden (no, I have no idea why he wanted one in the middle of his plot either) and then his water garden, which he excavated to extraordinary depths. I was torn between being slightly aghast as he took on far too much but willing him to succeed at the same time. Apart from the tried and test television plot line, my gripe about this show is I think it is very misleading and could potentially set gardens back, not forward if it continues in the same vein each week.

Misleading

The show made it look like Keith had an idea and off he went to build it without doing a design. In some ways that was true but if you looked really closely he clearly understood design. As much as his Mexican garden wasn’t to my tastes, the paths lined up with focal points and view lines, he had a thought about how it was structured. He had no garden survey or plan to work from, he did it all in his head. VERY few people can do that. I know I can’t and I’m a professional garden designer.

What About Design?

As much as I found the show to be entertaining, I’m worried that people will think that creating a garden is all about digging holes and planting things. It’s not. Keith, bless him, is a creatively passionate guy, who knows his plants and can visualise how things will look. He didn’t draw a plan because he could see it all in his mind. Honestly, not a good idea. My advice is: PLEASE DON’T TRY THAT AT HOME! Draw out your ideas first. If you are new to this blog and want to find out why design is SO important for your garden read: Why Having a Garden Plan Saves You Time and Money.

What he achieved was impressive, partly because of the sheer scale of his undertaking, and because of his unusual methods. But, just imagine what could have been achieved if he had have come at it with more design focus and less plant obsession. He would have created an absolutely outstanding garden. Passion can only take you so far.

Flower garden screenshot Channel 4's new series Landscape Man

I’m Worried

I have visions of folks up and down the country hiring a mini-digger for the weekend and carving out their ‘dream’ garden. The results of which don’t bear thinking about! The very worst case scenario with any garden is to dig first, thank later. Don’t be fooled into thinking Keith just ‘did’ his garden and it all turned out OK in the end. It didn’t. He planned his garden obsessively, day and night albeit in his head (if anything he over designed it). Be a thinker, not a tinkerer!

Reality?

I do hope that future episodes of Landscape Man talk about how important design is to a successful garden. I’m very much in favour of programmes inspiring people to take action, as long as it’s done in a way that actually helps. The problem with ‘reality’ TV is it is anything but real. The budget of £10,000 is a great example of this. You can’t realistically landscape 4 acres with that amount, it would be a struggle to do 1/4 of an acre for that.

If you missed the show you can catch up with it on the Channel 4 website (the link may not work for those of you outside the UK). And if you want to read more about how landscaping is REALLY done, please download the FREE report below which explains the whole process, step by step.

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Up until now I’ve avoided discussing how to use plants correctly in the garden and have focused heavily on design. The reason is because everyone thinks that it’s plants that make a great garden and therefore, plants get more than their fair share of airtime already.

However, now, as I’m in the middle of doing possibly the toughest planting scheme I hope I ever have to do, it seems a good time to bring plants to the forefront of our design discussions.

What’s So Tough About Doing a Planting Plan?

Normally, they are fairly straightforward. I consider the location and environmental aspects, what colour the clients like and the look they are going for be it traditional, exotic, contemporary or anything in between. But this time I’m faced with doing THE dreaded planting plan…

The one where I don’t have much control over what plants get used, the one that makes me pull hair out because the demands of the client are like nothing I’ve ever come across in my life before.

To read the backstory on this, read Plant Passion v Precision (Or When it All goes horribly wrong for a garden Designer!). OK, now you’re up to speed with situation and if you’ve seen the video tutorials you’ll know that the Spanish Courtyard Garden we featured is close to being finished with the paving and planting being done over Easter.

So it is from sunny Spain that I sit and write this. I’m typing away on the beach waiting for the bar to open so I can get internet access (yup, tough life).

Anyway back to this planting saga.

I look at a planting plan from a designer’s perspective – every plant must earn its place. If you think about it, plants usually spend most of year without flowers (in the UK anyway), so it’s important that the whole plant looks good, not just the flowers. Botanical curiosities that require a microscope to see their flowers don’t cut it. Having a beautiful flower that is gone in the blink of an eye to leave a fairly ugly plant behind, again, is of little use.

What Plants Should You Choose?

In any design, shape and form play a critical role. I mentally divide plants up into round, spiky, upright, arching, oval and flat. Unless you are planning a natural meadow, it’s a good idea to put different shaped plants next to one another, it gives clarity and definition to the scheme.

For example if I have something roundish shape like a Lavender, I wouldn’t then put a Sanolina (cotton lavender) and Convolvulus next to it. That would be round overkill and from a distance, they’d blur into one. I would, however, quite happily place a spikey shaped Iris next to the Lavender and something flat topped like Achillea or Sedum next to that before I’d put another round plant in.

From a distance these plants would blurr into one!

Different shapes create clarity

The Eternal Dinner Party

Think of doing a planting plan like planning an enormous, meal seating plan. It’s really vital you put the right people next to one another; putting two big sprawling loudmouths next to a very shy, timid person would be smothering for the quieter one. The same with your plants, you need to not only think about the shape, height, spread, flowering-time. You must consider how each plant looks and works with the plant next to it.

The Here and Now

With regards to the Spanish courtyard garden, I’m resigned to the fact I have very little control over what plants will go into it. BUT the one and only thing I can do is make sure that the oddest collection of plants a garden has ever seen are correctly positioned. I can make sure that the right shapes and colours end up next to each other. You’ll be pleased to know he’s gone off the idea of pansies with palm trees in the garden. The current favourite is daffodils… come back pansies, all is forgiven!

I’ll show you the end result in a week or two when it should be more or less finished (some plants we are struggling to get hold of).

Don’t Miss Out!

If you missed it last week, you can download your free road map to creating a great great garden over at the new site The Great Garden Challenge.com and take part in the global garden challenge test group. Up to 100 people can take part for free before the main launch in September, so go take a look and join in the discussions on the forum.

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For me, it’s the silly season. We are working flat out, trying to get gardens done in time for summer. If you’ve joined The Great Garden Challenge forum then you’ll have seen just how many gardens we’ve built in the last few weeks on the ‘work in progress page‘. One recently, more or less finished garden, featured in the forum is the now infamous Spanish Courtyard…

Progress Report – Spanish Courtyard Garden

These are the updated photos of the garden which was featured in the garden design video tutorials. There are still a few plants left to put in but it’s coming together nicely. The water feature is somewhat bigger than I was told it would be, but apparently it looks in proportion when you are in the garden!

If you want to see more photos, then sign into The Great Garden Challenge Forum – it’s free and you can take a look at all our other projects as well as include your own garden as you develop it.

How’s The Landscape Man Doing?

Despite being rushed off my feet, I have still found time to watch Channel 4′s Landscape Man. Tonight’s episode was another interesting one. The client’s budget was £250,000.

I’ve been writing about the importance of design when planning a garden and this week I had high hopes because they had a real live designer involved! Yay, at last. Trouble is he didn’t come across as overly effective. He was so busy with his Chelsea Flower Show preparations, that he had to let the client’s get on with it half way through.

They didn’t seem to mind that much but even so, I didn’t feel it was the best advert for designers. I was also left feeling that they’d spent an awful lot of money with not a great deal to show for it. Yes the terrace was nice and the large specimen trees were beautiful but I found myself asking ‘Why?’ a lot throughout the programme.

Screenshot Ch4 Landscape Man – Main terrace

Why?

Putting a modern, ex-Chelsea, show garden in part of the garden, close to that style of house didn’t ever seem like it was going to turn out well…

To me, it just didn’t feel like the design flowed coherently. The pleached hornbeams didn’t seem to do a lot, other than be really out of proportion with the width to height ratio of the path they surrounded. It looked uncomfortable. I did like their metal pergola though, that was very nice.

Screenshot Ch4 Landscape Man – Pleached Hornbeam – tad too high?

I’m a great believer in putting things in the garden for good reasons. They created a ‘stumpery’ (if that’s how you spell it) which is basically dead tree roots with ferns planted in. Ok, interesting idea but why? It didn’t really do anything for the look and feel of the garden.

Screenshot Ch4 Landscape Man – 'Stumpery'

I am looking forward to next week’s show though. If you read the comments on the review I did on the first Landscape Man programme, you’ll have read Ed’s comments. His garden is next in line to be shown in the series and they had to cope with a very overgrown 4 1/2 acre site on the south coast of Guernsey. The garden is lashed by strong coastal winds, so they have had to create a garden that works with harsh conditions.

Everything Should Earn Its Place In Your Garden

If you are in the midst of planning your garden and have lots of creative ideas, sit with them for a little while to make sure they are really right for your garden. Random ideas never work well, it’s really important that features tie in well with everything else in the garden.

What Aspects Of Your Garden Can I Help You With?

I’m planning ahead what I write about on the blog, so I’d like to know what type of garden you have and where you are stuck with it? Let me know if there is something in particular you’d like some advice on. If you don’t, I’ll only keep writing about Landscape Man!

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Your outside space can be as much of a curse as it is a blessing if you don’t know what to do with it. And even if you do know exactly what you want, how do you go about achieving it? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

Where and How Do You Start to Plan Your Garden?

A few of you smart folks might be thinking that it all depends on what you have in the garden already. You’re sort of right and sort of wrong. In some respects, it really doesn’t matter what you already have there. What matters is your like or dislike of what’s there now and it’s usefulness.

I should explain more about usefulness just in case you are wondering if plants and features need to double up as multifunction devices in their spare time. They don’t. ‘Useful’ refers to what whatever is there now does for the flow and function of the garden – sorry, I’ve slipped into meaningless designer babble. What I mean to say, is everything in the right place?

How Do You Know What Is Right And What Isn’t?

Good question. Glad you asked. Now here’s where we get to the crux of it all. The REALLY important part. Those of you who read my ode to Star Trek (the key to a great garden) will be way ahead – it’s space. That’s the important part, or more correctly, what you do with it.

Specifically, it’s how you define the ‘empty’ areas of space (usually lawn, patio or gravel) in your garden. These ‘empty’ areas will dictate how the garden is viewed, how it functions and, most importantly, how good the garden looks. As a general rule, wiggly edged lawn with bits nibbled out here and there don’t look anywhere near as good as big bold shapes like ovals, circles and interlocking rectangular shapes.

Use Geometric Shapes like Circles, Ovals, Rectangles for Your Design

Avoid Wiggly Line Shapes

Here’s How You Plan A Garden:

1. Work out what you want to have in your garden. Do this by looking at lots of garden pictures. There are some on the garden ideas page of this website.
2. Measure your garden – if you don’t know how to do that, there just happens to be some video tutorials that show you exactly how to do it. If you can’t be bothered to measure your garden, then read this enlightening article and then decide if that’s quite such a good game plan.
3. Plot on your base plan all of your existing stuff like trees, shrub borders, patio, paths, that you think you’ll most likely keep. Your base plan will need to be to scale. Scale really isn’t as scary as it sounds and is explained step by step in how to draw your garden to scale video.
4. Next, pick a shape. Any shape but preferably one you like and preferably an easy shape. Start with a circle or a square and draw that in the centre of your garden.
5. Keep it simple. How many shapes you use will depend on the size of your garden. To start with, just try one big one taking up approx two-thirds of your garden. Don’t worry if there are things in the way just draw your shape over the top.
6. Here’s where you decide if things are in the right place. Take a look at the things that are encroaching into the shape you’ve just drawn. Is the shrub border that randomly juts out really working with your newly defined ‘space’ shape? If it isn’t, can you adjust its shape to improve its relationship to the shape you’ve just drawn? If it still doesn’t work, can you take out whatever it is that is encroaching?
7. Be objective. Try not to get too emotionally attached to the outcome and worry about each plant being right or wrong. If something doesn’t ‘work’, it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to come out. You do however, need to be aware something is ‘wrong’ in order to fix it. So no cheating, be objective. We’ll look at how you get round problems in the next post.

So, that’s where you start. Next time we’ll take a look at how you develop your simple shape into a workable garden design. Oh, and if there is nothing at all in your back garden, then you just do points 1-4, and sit back with a smug look on your face as you have no ‘does it stay, does it go?’ decisions to make.

What Frustrates You The Most With Your Garden?

I’ve almost finished writing the book that covers in depth the successful garden design formula I use on a daily basis. The book also includes a whole host of cunning tricks I’ve developed over the years that speed up the design process. I’d like to make sure I’ve covered everything you’re likely to need to know, so just to make sure can you tell me what you’ve had the most trouble with when trying to work out how to do your garden?

Prize Time

If you can think of something that I haven’t included that makes the grade, you’ll win a copy of the new book. And you’ll get your hands on it before anyone else! So leave your tales of woe in the comments section to enter and win yourself a copy of The Great Garden Formula – a step-by-step guide to creating a well designed garden.

This could be your only opportunity in life to moan and be rewarded for it! So leave your comments below now.

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Creating a good planting scheme can be tricky. Today, to help you create a great planting scheme, we’re going to dissect what made the planting scheme so good at the inspirational garden of Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos in Cordoba, Spain.

Purple Ageratum & Red Salvia in background

How To Use Plants Effectively (The Power of One)

The Alcazar garden managed to create a scheme that was brave and bold by using very few plant varieties. Not only did it look amazing but it wasn’t boring, nor did it look like a municipal park.

They had large areas containing just one key plant. Sure, there was a box hedge around it and the occasional use of a different plant, but on the whole there was one key or ‘Power Plant’.

How Do You Pick Your ‘Power Plant’?

Choosing a power plant is no easy task. Before I list a few of my favourites, let’s define what a ‘power plant’ is. It’s a plant that gives you most bang for your buck. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an evergreen but it does need to look good for a large proportion of the year regardless of whether it’s flowering.

Celosia cristata instead of traditional roses

The key to it is to pick plants like they have in the Alcazar Garden in Spain that are slightly unusual, not in the sense that they’re hard to come by, but in the sense that you wouldn’t expect to see that particular plant en masse (like using Celosia instead of Roses as shown in the picture).

Plant Quantity And Repetition Are Also Key

Pennisetum Grasses

You need to have an area big enough to put in a substantial enough group of the power plant and then still have room for some minor planting. That doesn’t mean to say you can’t do this in a small garden but you basically need an area big enough that you can put more than five of your power plant.

You also need to repeat it in other locations around your garden to create the best effect. If you think about it, mother nature plants in this way and let’s face it, she is the ultimate designer.

My Top 5 Power Plants

This is my current list, which does change quite frequently.

Stipa tenuissima – It’s a grass that moves like hair in the wind and you just want to stroke it, and it’s great to show off other plants around it. And I think it looks fantastic planted in big bold groups.

Agapanthus – Blue, purple or white flowering varieties are available. The flowers last a fair while and semi-evergreen, strap shaped leaves, make this a good plant to have in my book.

Perovskia Blue Spire – The Russian sage has white stems with greyish/blue foliage which are scented and stunning purple/blue flowers. I use this plant more at the middle to back of borders as it can get ‘leggy’ and need other plants for support. Planted in big enough groups, you get clouds of blue in late summer.

Sedum Purple Emperor –  The deep purple foliage and pink flowers is a good combination. It’s a good plant to show off other plants around it – the flat topped flowers make a good change of shape (more on this in the next blog post) in the border.

French Lavander – I love to see lavender planted in clumps and repeated around the garden, especially when used with grasses and more upright plant forms. When choosing French Lavender, it’s best not to go for the Lavendula stoechas but a named variety of it (there are loads to choose from), the original variety is a bit messy can get leggy more easily than some of the newer varieties.

Before incorporating any of the above in your garden, do check they will be OK with your soil type, location and general climate.

What Do You Most Want To Know About Creating Great Planting Schemes?

What is it that you need some help with? What are you stuck points when it comes to your own planting schemes? Leave your planting questions in the comments below and I will do some future blog posts that will answer all your queries.

In part one, we looked at where to start with planning your garden. If you’ve followed steps 1 to 7, you’re now ready to go onto stage two, the planning.

It’s taken me a little longer than I would have liked to get part two to you. I’ve been busy driving the graphic designers that are putting the finishing touches on the Great Garden Formula Course, insane… I am a bit picky with finishing details! Anyway, let’s now get back to how to plan your garden part two.

What to do now

Now that you have your base plan, showing the position of all the trees, features, and existing plants you want to keep in your garden, you are now ready to start designing. The way to do a good design is to concentrate on the shape. When I say shape, I don’t mean the shape of your existing garden. I mean the shape of the empty spaces  within it. If you think about it, the majority of your garden is empty space. Your lawn and patio area constitute empty space, and the shrub borders and features form solid areas.

How you shape the empty areas of space (your lawn and patio area)  are the key to creating a really well-designed garden.  Rather than concentrate on things like features and individual plants, instead think about what shape your new lawn and patio will be.

Action steps

1. On your base plan, start to draw some geometric shapes, like circles, squares, rectangles, any easy geometric shape to represent your lawn and patio areas.  These shapes should fill approximately two-thirds of your garden plan.
2. Once you’ve chosen a shape that you like for your lawn and patio, the areas that are left over are going to be the shapes of your planting borders. If planting borders feel too large, you may then need to add some additional features to use up the space, so that it isn’t all planting.
3. Make the shapes you’ve chosen lead your eye from one side of the garden to the other. This will create a sense of movement, and will make your garden feel much larger and more interesting.
4. When you are happy with the shape of the empty spaces, it is then time to add the planting and any features you wish to include in your design.

Below, is the plan of the narrow garden shown in the photograph above. The red line that zigzags down the garden, shows how the position of the rectangle and circular shapes lead the eye from one side of the garden to the other, thus making it look wider.

Garden Shapes & Movement

It may feel counterintuitive to design the empty areas of your garden first but this is the best way to make sure that your design flows and works well as a whole unit. Most people, when they design a garden, put a feature here and something somewhere else, and then stand back and wonder why the garden doesn’t look as good as they’d hoped. The reason it doesn’t look good is because nothing links together. If you just design in little areas, your garden will never look as good as it will if you design a garden as a whole entity.

It is really important to concentrate on what shape lawn and patio areas you have first, and then you can embellish your design with nice features and planting schemes. Planning your garden this way round will ensure you of success.

The Great Garden Formula – Beginner’s Step by Step Guide To Garden Planning

Very shortly, I will be releasing a new downloadable mini-course, which covers the design process in much more detail. The course will contain the design formula I use every time I design. The Great Garden Formula is  the beginners step-by-step guide to planning your garden. If you’d like to be notified when it becomes available, please enter your e-mail address below. The first 10 people who buy the mini course will get it at a significant discount in return for feedback testimonials for the website.

There will be several mini-courses in this series concentrating on  how to do the perfect planting plan, what to do if you have a small garden and want to make it look bigger, how to deal with changes in level and sloping gardens, and also how to design an awkward shaped garden. If there is a particular problem you have with your garden, please let me know in the comments or by e-mail. And if you have an issue that isn’t already covered in one of the mini-courses , you’ll win a free course as a thank you.

Enter your e-mail address below if you want to be notified when the mini courses become available. Don’t worry, I won’t spam you!

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I’ve just returned from Spain where we finished planting the Courtyard Garden. You may remember at Easter, we put in the bones of the planting scheme. By bones I mean the main feature plants, the ones that add permanent structure and form the backdrop to the softer, flowering plants. Well, now we have just put in the flowering star performers.

If you are new here and want to see how it all began, watch the garden design process video.

The Main Focus

The job of any plant in the garden is to add beauty and wow factor. The plants are the icing on the ‘well-designed’ cake. Getting the planting scheme right from small garden is really tricky. The lack of space means you have to be really careful with your choice of plant.

How To Think Big in a Small Garden

With a large garden, you have plenty of room to add as many plants as you like and experiment with different varieties of your favourite plants. In a small garden the lack of space makes every choice of plant critical. Every plant you put in a small garden, must really earn its place there. So how do you choose?

Important things to think about are how the plant looks all year round, but how big it gets and how good it looks next to the plants surrounding it. For this Spanish courtyard garden, we want to create a tropical flowering jungle look.

Size Does Matter!

Although we have tried to be careful with the size of the plants that we put in, in order to create a jungle effect we have put in a few plants that get larger than the space we have allocated them, so some things will need to be pruned regularly to stop them from becoming too enormous. Hopefully we’ve got the right balance between jungle and correct plant spacing. It is very easy to get carried away and put in too many plants, not allowing them to grow to full size.

Choose Plants That Create The Look You Want

We’ve chosen a selection of plants primarily for their foliage and architectural qualities. Things like palm trees and phormiums makes for wonderful shapes and all year interest. And in between these architectural specimen plants we’ve planted lots of flowering perennials and annuals to fill in the gaps. The enormous pink flowers are Hibiscus bushes.

My parents have got a little bit carried away with the amount of bedding plants that have gone in to fill the gaps, but all in all I’m very pleased with how the garden has turned out (I’m pretty certain there is no room now for the threatened pansies and daffodils! – big sigh of relief!). Later in the year we will be repeating the use of the blue Agapanthus. Repeating some of the plants around the garden adds more clarity to the scheme.

Choose The Right Plants For The Conditions

Because the planting borders are essentially containers, we’ve installed a drip irrigation watering system. This is the most efficient way to water plants without wasting valuable water reserves. There’s a pipe connected to a timer that feeds the water for two minutes, every three days, via tiny offshoot pipes to each plant. We’ve chosen plants that can cope with the heat and minimal water. But even so, until they are established they will need to be watered regularly.

What Do You Want To Know?

I’ll be writing lots more on how to do successful planting schemes in future blog posts. What do you struggle with the most when it comes to choosing plants for your garden? Let me know in the comments or drop me an email. And there will be some free goodies coming your way very soon!

Next time we’ll take a look at how you can give your garden a makeover this Summer Holiday.

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How You Can Improve Your Garden Now

Gardens should be for sitting in and relaxing. That’s certainly my motto. A nice garden is one of the most relaxing places to be on a nice sunny day. But nice gardens don’t happen by accident, they need to be planned properly.

Now is the perfect time to start thinking about how you can improve your garden. Some people prefer to think about their garden only in the Spring. However, I think the perfect time to to be planning your garden is right now.

Now is when it’s fresh in your mind which bits of your garden worked and which bits didn’t. You’ve spent the summer using your garden, maintaining what is there and trying to get the best from it. Now is the time to make it fantastic for next summer, so all you have to do is sit back and relax in your favourite comfy chair.

Where To Start?

Grab a pen and paper and jot down your answers to the following questions:

1. Which bits of your garden didn’t look good this year?
2. Why didn’t those areas look good?
3. What can you do now to improve it?

1 Which Bits Of Your Garden Didn’t Look Good?

It might be that there’s just a few gaps in your planting border that can be easily fixed by a trip to a local garden centre to see what is looking good now. If it’s more than just a lack of plants, then you need to take a look at the shape of your garden.

2 Why Didn’t Those Areas Look Good?

It all comes down to shape. Not the external shape of your garden, but the internal shapes you’ve created. The lawn and patio areas are the most critical to get right. The mistake most people make is to put things here and there in the garden, the lawn then becomes an odd shape to accommodate new features. It should be the other way round. The lawn and patio shapes should be the most important shapes to get right and the areas that are left to make the planting beds and areas that features can go.

3 What Can You Do Now To Improve Your Garden?

Reshaping your lawn so that it is a coherent shape will work absolute wonders for your garden. As simple as it is by just reshaping your lawn, it can bring amazing results. That’s assuming of course you get the right shape!

The Key To Success

Keep it simple. Simple geometric shapes work best, especially in small gardens. Larger gardens can lend themselves to free-flowing curved shapes, but even these need to work as a whole entity.

If you’d like to know more, download your free quick start guide to garden design. Click on the image below and you’ll get instant access to The Beginner’s Quick Start Guide To Creating A Great Garden.

Announcing The New Garden Design Course For Homeowners

I’m very pleased to announce that the Great Garden Formula Course is now available. Grab your copy now at the great introductory price. Click image or link below for further details.

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