Let’s Get Drawing, invoking a few math skills for a thoughtfully designed garden.

This exercise will be the basis for everything from now on.

It is easy to sketch out a design that you feel might work for your garden but it is so much easier if it has actually been planned and sized before you start so it is time to get drawing.  Whether you are designing a vegetable garden, perennial border, annual planters or planting some trees, it is beneficial to have a whole lot plan on paper.

If you have a lot plan with your house on it, great, that will help with measurements but if you don’t, no worries, we will start from scratch. Get the pad of squared paper I suggest you go and buy and draw a rough outline of your lot and house placement. It does not need to be accurate at this point as it is the place to record your measurements. Make it large enough to accurately write measurements on.

Get a clipboard and head outside to pace it out more accurately.  If you measure the length of your stride, heel to heel, you can calculate the measurement afterwards. Small inaccuracies will not matter too much. Large ones will. So let’s say your average stride length is 18”( I am short), you will record your measurements in strides and then multiply by your stride length. 66 stride lengths X 18” = 1188inches. Divide by 12inches = 99 feet . If you have a builder’s long tape measure, great – do it in sections to make it easier or get a fellow gardener or someone with patience to help.

If you are working with a metric scale, follow the same procedure. Stride length will not change but your math will. Don’t forget to measure your stride in cm.

On your rough drawing you will need measure and note down these measurements in strides or in your chosen unit of measure, feet and inches or meters. if you are using a long tape measures. Start with:

• The length of your lot
• The width of the lot – if it is triangular or wedge shaped, measure all sides. Then you will need to measure the width and length in several places to be able to plot its shape.. Record where you took the width measurements from either by paces from a corner or from an existing feature. You will plot all these points on your drawing before joining lines.

To accurately place your house you will need these measurements.

• The distance from your front property line to the front wall of the house. If your house is L shaped you will need to measure the 2 distances and the width of each house section.
• The distances from the edge of the property/fence to the side walls of the house. They will likely be different each side.
• Measure the depth of your house walls front to back. If each side is different measure each distance.

Calculate all distances into feet or meters by multiplying your strides by your chosen unit of measure. inches or cm. Divide to get a simpler larger unit of measurement. If your measurements are in inches, divide by 12. If your units are in cm divide by 100. You should now have either measurements in feet or meters. Now get this accurately drawn to scale on a fresh piece of squared paper. If a measurement just does not seem right, go and measure it again.

A soft pencil works well for drawing, erasing and redoing mistakes. You will therefore need a ruler, soft pencil and eraser.

SCALE

If you are using the regular squared paper purchased at the dollar store or Staples, the squares will be ¼ inch by ¼ quarter inch. This means 4 squares = 1 inch. We will let each square represent 5′. We will use a scale of 1:20 where one inch will represent 20 feet. Start by using pencil dots on the corners of your lot so you can double check measurements. If things look ‘odd’ go measure again!

Draw out your lot and then place the outline of your house on it. Plot all corners first.

If you are using metric and not imperial measure your scale will be slightly different as the squares are each 1cm X 1cm.  To keep it simple, let one centimeter represent 2 meters. 1cm represents 200cm. 1:200 Centimeter squared paper is very conveniently marked for smaller units, so the .5 mark in each square is 1meter. Don’t forget to measure your stride in cm.

Now mark the windows and doors on the house plan. Again measure – you can do this from the inside! If you have an existing deck or patio mark it in. In the drawing below the lot size (to the 100ft mark) is three and 1/4 inches by 5 inches which represents 65′ by 100’ 

Once you have done this and are satisfied it is as accurate as you can make it, make a few copies ( at least 6 for now) but keep your original. This is important – you will need them all.

You will be using the copies for different purposes and plans but that was enough work for today! We will go through how to accurately map existing garden features next time. We will use much larger scales for designing vegetable gardens and perennial gardens!

Last but not least find out your aspect. Look at a City Map, go to Google Earth, ask your car. We will add that next time. Also make note of the prevailing winds – look at the weather apps. or look it up.

I hope this all makes sense to you! If you are reading in western Canada or the U.S. now is the time as we still have so little snow and the job will be much easier.