How to Design a Garden Part 4: Designer Tips and Techniques

If you're struggling to put your finger on why your garden design ideas don't look quite right, this article will help! From focal points to balance and privacy to lighting, find out how to transform your garden from mundane to magnificent.

In this section of the guide, I'll talk about techniques you can use to elevate your design and create balance in your garden. These tips will help you avoid many of the traps less experienced gardeners fall into when designing their gardens. Use these ideas to tweak the rough designs you created in the previous step or come up with something completely new!

 

Consider focal points and sight lines

Focal points are attractive features that draw your eye and invite you to come closer, drawing you deeper into the garden. They can also pull your gaze away from parts of the garden you don't want to focus on, such as the wheelie bins or an overgrown bed you still haven't got around to weeding.

A focal point could be a seating area, an impressive tree or shrub, a statue or water feature, or an archway or entrance to another part of the garden. Small gardens, like the one in the photo above, may have one focal point, but larger gardens will likely have several, including hidden focal points that reveal themselves as you move through the garden.

When deciding where to place your focal point, you need to consider the sight line (or sight lines) from your main viewing point. This will usually be the room in your house in which you spend the most time looking out at your garden. A sight line is the direction you look from that point. Go and stand there now and observe the view. If, like me, your gaze falls on the dilapidated shed at the bottom of the garden, you need to create a different focal point.

If you have a secondary viewing point, for example, a side gate that you frequently use to access your garden, or a seating area or home office at the back of the garden, carry out the same exercise from this spot. Draw these sight lines onto the rough sketches you created in the previous step and make sure that your gaze will fall on something beautiful, not something you want to hide.

 

Create a journey and a destination

Garden designers often talk about creating destinations and journeys in a garden. If your eyes glaze over at the jargon, let me explain these concepts and their purpose. 

A destination is an invitation to step out into the garden and explore its depths. Destinations are often (but not always) focal points in your garden, and they're usually located towards the back of a garden. If you have a very large garden, you may have multiple destinations or "rooms". 

A journey is the route you take to get to a destination. Ideally, the journey through your garden reveals different views as you meander through the space. It's possible to create this effect even in small gardens with careful planting. For example, planting a lateral border incorporating small trees or tall shrubs close to the house creates a hidden area behind, which only opens up as you walk deeper into the garden.

The purpose of a destination and journey is to draw you out into your garden and encourage you to interact with the entire landscape rather than just observing it from inside your house. It can make small spaces feel bigger, larger spaces feel more manageable and turn even the most boring garden into something magical.

 

Choose a cohesive style

Planning your garden around a style or theme helps you create a cohesive feel. It limits your choice of landscaping materials, plants and design, which is a good thing, as too much choice is overwhelming. 

There are many different styles of garden, but most lean towards either a formal or informal look.

Formal gardens typically have a clear structure with a geometric, symmetrical layout, clipped hedges and topiary, a limited colour palette (often focusing on white and pastel colours) and a high proportion of evergreen plants. Although you may think of the grand gardens associated with National Trust properties and other country houses, formal gardens can work well at any scale. Many tiny Japanese gardens are formal in nature. Most modern or contemporary gardens have a formal feel.

Informal gardens have a much looser structure, with curving pathways, archways covered by climbing plants and generous beds packed with flowering perennials. These gardens have more of a naturalistic planting scheme and suit a variety of styles from classic cottage gardens to wildlife havens and woodland gardens.

If you're struggling to settle on a style or theme, look at the landscape and gardens around where you live. What types of plants thrive and which seem to struggle? Consider the information you collected in Part 2 and choose a style that works with your garden's environment, not against it. If you have thin, sandy soil and an exposed garden that often suffers from drought, you'll struggle to grow plants that need rich soil and moist conditions. A Mediterranean or prairie-style garden would look wonderful in this environment, and you wouldn't have to worry about your plants dying every time you go away for the weekend.

 

Create a balanced landscape

If you're struggling to pinpoint one thing that sets a designer garden apart from your run-of-the-mill family garden, I'd suggest it is likely to be balance. Balanced gardens feel "right", even if you can't put your finger on why that is.

There are two things to balance in your garden:

• Hard landscaping (e.g. patios, paths, walls) and soft landscaping (lawns, borders, trees, raised beds).

• Mass (plants and structures that add height and volume) and void (flat areas that create space, such as patios, lawns and open water).

The tricky thing about creating a balanced space, particularly in small gardens, is that it usually involves compromise. Let's dive into these two aspects of garden design in more detail.

Balancing mass and void

Garden designer Pollyanna Wilkinson recommends that 60% of your garden is made up of borders, structures and things that add mass, with the remaining 40% being flat patios and lawn. Many designer gardens err more towards a 70/30 ratio. One of the most common pieces of advice you see in articles written by garden designers is to make lawns smaller and borders bigger.

This is one area when you may need to balance perfection with practicality. After all, you're creating a garden to wow your family, not the Chelsea Flower Show judges. Your garden may look a little more balanced if you turned more of the lawn into a flowerbed, but if your kids don't have enough grass on which to kick around their football, your carefully nurtured dahlias may end up getting trampled underfoot.

The key is to try to avoid those narrow 30 cm beds that often surround lawns or patios in gardens where the owners are trying to maximise open space. If you have a narrow garden, a large border on one side will look much better than two thin borders. Trees are an excellent way to add mass to a garden without taking up too much space.

When thinking about the balance between mass and void, it's important to consider how the garden will look in winter as well as in summer. Incorporating evergreen shrubs and trees of varying heights helps ensure your garden looks balanced all year round.

Balancing hard and soft landscaping

Once you've figured out your balance of mass and void, the hard and soft landscaping features tend to be easy to fit into place. Hard landscaping adds structure to your garden and shapes its layout. It can be costly to install, so it's important to get it right. Soft landscaping adds colour and personality to the garden, as well as softening hard lines. 

If the balance shifts too much towards hard landscaping, you end up with a garden that feels sterile and out of proportion. Go too far the other way and you end up with an overwhelming mass of plants. There isn't a precise ratio to follow here, as it very much depends on the size of your garden and what you want to achieve.

Have a look at the garden design plans you've created so far and the balance between hard and soft landscaping. If you have a vast patio taking up half of your space, perhaps consider making this smaller or softening the edges with large planters or beds.

 

Create privacy where needed

Privacy is one of the most common challenges in UK gardens, particularly in towns, cities and on new-build estates. Most gardens are overlooked to some extent, and many are overlooked on all sides. If this is the case in your garden, then creating privacy will be one of your top priorities.

You may opt for increasing privacy across your entire garden or focus on creating a secluded area in one corner. Here are some ideas for how to improve privacy in your garden:

• Install tall fences or add trellises and climbing plants to existing fences to raise the height. The maximum height for a fence in the UK is 2 metres (without planning permission) or 1 metre in front gardens that face a public highway or path.

• You don't need planning permission for tall trees or hedges, though if your hedge blocks light from your neighbour's property, they may not be too happy. Pleached trees are ideal for creating privacy above a fence without taking up too much space at ground level.

• A sunken patio can feel secluded and intimate, as well as creating a sheltered area in an exposed garden.

• Use screens to section off part of your garden. Screens can either be made of hard landscaping materials (e.g., fencing) or soft landscaping (plants) or a combination of both (e.g., climbers up a trellis).

• A pergola creates maximum privacy and is particularly useful in gardens that are completely overlooked. Train climbing plants up and over it to soften the hard lines of the structure.

• Garden shades are a temporary, low-cost solution that can add privacy and shade to a small part of the garden.

Privacy isn't just about whether you can be seen. Noise, whether from a nearby road or overly loud neighbours, is also something to consider. Water features can help mask lower levels of background noise, but for more intrusive noise, consider installing acoustic fencing.

 

Figure out how to hide the ugly bits

Personally, I think a well-made set of compost bins is a thing of beauty, but it's not really what you want as a focal point in your garden. You need to think about the practicalities of your garden and plan these in at the design stage. Things to consider may include:

• Where the bins go.

• What you need to store in the garden and how accessible it needs to be (for example, if you cycle to work every day, your bike needs to be somewhere handy).

• The best location for a water butt or compost heap.

• How to incorporate larger structures, like a home office, while ensuring they don't dominate the space.

• How to include the trampoline your kids are desperate for, but you'd really rather not have.

Sometimes, you can remove these issues from the garden itself. For example, we have a narrow space on one side of our house between the house and a fence, which is a bit of a dumping ground for anything we don't want out on show in the garden.

If you can't remove the issue, then look at how you can minimise the impact on your garden. Shaded corners are ideal for tucking away compost bins and sheds, especially if you can use plants to screen the area. There are plenty of clever seating options that incorporate storage, which may be sufficient for your needs, particularly in a small garden.

As for the trampoline… If you can't find somewhere out of sight to locate it, then consider sinking it into the ground so it doesn't dominate the garden.

 

Add light and water

Lighting is essential if you want to use your garden during the evenings or winter months, and is an important safety and security consideration for many people. Unfortunately, garden lighting isn't great for wildlife, so use it sparingly and make sure it's on a timer so it doesn't stay on all night. Warm, low-intensity lighting is more wildlife-friendly. Site lights low and point them down, especially if you're using them to illuminate paths.

Water features add tranquility and space to a garden, as well as being beneficial to wildlife. How much water you include in your garden will depend on your personal preference and practicalities, such as maintenance requirements and the safety of small children. This is an area where you may plan for your garden to evolve over time. For example, you might build a sandpit area for your kids to play that you can later turn into a wildlife pond.

 

What's next?

Go back to your initial drawings and see what you may need to adapt or change based on the tips above. Hopefully, these ideas and techniques have helped pinpoint any issues you had with your initial designs and have given you some solutions for anything that didn't feel "quite right".

In the final article in this series, Part 5, we finally get onto the plants! I'll discuss how to coordinate your planting and landscaping materials and how to plan out your garden beds.