Creating a new garden design or redesigning garden with new ideas

Planning your garden begins even before your house is built. You can decide yourself how much space you will have in your back garden by saving on the frontage. When redesigning a existing garden you should plan around any treasures left behind by previous owners.

  • Try by all means to leave older, healthy trees for shade and always plant young trees before getting rid of a dead, old tree.

  • Prune your older deciduous hedges and keep them rejuvenated in this way.

  • Be careful not to remove valuable old varieties when taking out old fruit trees or rose bushes.

  • Remove old climbing plants carefully from your small garden wall while renovating work is done. Remember that even the odd preserved shoot can create a new green curtain within weeks.

  • Remember that vegetable beds are very fertile after years of composting or applying manure and can be retained to grow vegetables, perennials, soft fruit, roses and summer flowers.

  • Keep indestructible materials like paths, steps, walls, fences or posts made of natural stone and avoid artificial replacements that are not so durable.

Working out what you want

Be realistic and set limits for yourself. Not everything that you would like would be possible to do in a very small garden. Start with your most important goals and consider using the others by making clever use of empty corners in your garden. Spend time to plan your most important goals carefully ( a place to sit , a grassy play area or a vegetable garden.)

Use shrubberies or fruit trees as boundaries between different areas of the garden. If these not enough space for a garden pond replace that dream with a water trough surrounded by plants beside a garden seat. A screen of espalier fruit trees will provide privacy to a lawn used for both a play area and for sunbathing.