The Final Plan

Having incorporated all the things to consider as you plan your garden or part of it, I hope it is culminating in a final design.

I played with the north facing theoretical garden from numbers 4 and 5 in this series and came up with two quick designs, one curvilinear and the other linear. This is what I considered in this example garden.

• the ugly view at the end of the garden
• the sunniest spots, seating areas
• flow and paths
• mowing the grass or clover lawn, no pinch points or awkward corners
• an out of the way place for compost
• keeping balance of hard landscaping, planting and lawn

Because the end of the garden is the sunniest area, the row of tall confers will provide a year-round screen to block out the ugly stuff in the lot to the rear. It will also provide a fine back drop for flowers or shrubs. I left room for a patio with a hard surface where sitting would be pleasant in spring and fall when the deck will be cooler as it is the shade. The front and west side of the house will be hot, so a shade tree could be planted by the front door and possibly outside the window on the east side for winter interest. Depending on views from the front windows, more trees might be planted for summer shade.

I moved the vegetable garden to the east side so that is more out of the way. A vegetable garden is very attractive when in full production but a lot of the time it is not. The shrub or flower border can be designed to provide winter interest visible from the house windows.

These planting areas can be made as simple or complicated as you wish and how you plant them and add planters around the garden will reflect your style even further.

The curvilinear design already looks less modern and formal than the linear design and depending on plant selection, the style will further come together.

I hope readers are having fun with this. There are oodles of internet sites for garden design but I hope this is short enough and easy enough to provide some inspiration. It is well worth spending time looking at ideas on all these sites. Please let me know in the comments how you are doing or what your thoughts and questions are.

We can now get down to really fun part of choosing plants and how to plant them.