My Front Garden Design – Part 4

We have got to the exciting part of designing my front garden and that is to actually put all my thoughts down onto paper and to come up with a space that I am happy with and will create a lot of joy for other people too.

The first thing I needed to think about was the purpose of the garden and what kind of feelings I want to create when I spend time in it so here were some of those thoughts and conclusions:

1) Purpose of the garden – I want to create a show garden so that whenever someone walks past they will see the garden and maybe it will just stop them in their tracks. Even if they spend a few seconds looking at the detail and thinking about it means they will be transported into a different place in their minds and hopefully happy thoughts will be created. I also want to have many of these thoughts myself whenever I see the garden. When I have designed gardens previously I know how much I spend time just looking at the garden and smiling on the inside.

2) Creating mystery – I don’t just want a garden that you can look at for two seconds and that’s it, you have seen everything. I have put a lot of thought into the different views of the garden. It is only a small space so creating mystery is not as easy. I have thought about using raised beds of different heights and of different sizes so that your eyes are led around the garden. I wanted to make sure that whether you are looking from the pavement outside or from my front doorstep, there are different aspects to see so that came into my first drawings.

3) Developing ideas – After my initial thoughts, I was not happy with the level of mystery. I just felt like the pathway through the garden was straight round and all the raised beds were just around the edges. I knew that I had to have a path around by the front wall of the house as access would still be needed for doing the boring stuff like cleaning windows. This next stage involved me being a bit more daring with the raised beds (I love raised beds as they really help with low-maintenance gardening and bringing plants up to a higher level for viewing details).

4) Being brave – When you look at this design then it can look quite boxy and complicated but it isn’t. I tried to use the ideas of symmetry but also moved the focus around the garden. If you look you can see three long, thin flower boxes. It is always good to try and design anything in odd numbers so when I added a fourth smaller box near the bottom, I wasn’t sure it would work. I thought it would be good to have a hidden box that can only be seen from the path but it had to go. When we looked at the sizes then it just was not logical and then I went back to three. At this point, my husband and I literally took a tape measure and a few small sticks and roughly measured where everything would go.

5) Final drawings – After putting all that together I drew a scaled drawing with a bird’s eye view of the garden with the raised beds. I have got ideas for the details with fences, materials, lights and plants but I will talk about those in future blogs. At this point, I am happy with the initial ideas. I feel that there will be some mystery created in the garden, there will be a pathway that is not direct and the plants will be easy to look after and will be beautiful.

6) Design explained – You can see that by the front door will be the entrance to the garden and this will have a pergola of which I have a specific design in mind (I have adapted it from a design I saw on the Chelsea flower show). As you walk through the pergola and look to the left there will be flower boxes of different heights and they will step out as you go through the garden to lead your eye.

On the right-hand side the box you look at first as you go through the pergola will be sticking out and in your pathway. This is to make sure you have to move around the garden and cannot see all the plants until you move along the path.

The paving will be rectangular concrete blocks all laid in the same direction but staggered again to lead around the garden and then compacted gravel around them to tie it all together (and ensure no weeds come through).

One thing I will say is that this design is a guide and that when it is being built then there is a good chance that things will change and that is fine. I am really looking forward to the finished garden.

Thank you for reading this blog and I hope it has inspired you to think about ideas for your garden,

Pauline