Whether your garden is your pride and joy or you own grounds that have to be practical and look good, planning any landscaping project comes down to the Who, What, When Where and How principles of most design projects.

Our team of landscaping experts talk you through here step by step to planning your landscape design project in 5 easy steps.

Who?

The first thing to consider is who the design is for. Is it your own garden that needs to fit into your family life with a seating area, easy to maintain plants and a vegetable plot at the end?

Maybe it’s a community garden that needs benches, a water feature and disabled access?

A shared garden in a plot surrounded by domestic properties that needs trees, a play area and an off lead dog walking area?

Or the gardens of a tourist attraction needing picnic areas, areas of interest for wildlife and plenty of wide open but pretty space?

Once you’ve worked out who the landscaping project is for, and have listed the things that you would like, you can move on to…

What?

Grab a blank piece of paper and start a list of the things you will need. If you need a picnic area, write it down. A butterfly garden? Write that down too. A small pond or paddling area for dogs? Add it to the list.

Write down everything that you can think of, whether it be varieties of plants, focal areas of interest or more practical things like paved walkways and / or stepping stones.

You can always add or remove things from your list as the project progresses, so nothing is off limits here!

When?

The answer to the questions ‘When?’ is of course always ‘Now!’ but good landscaping projects take time to bring to fruition.

You’ll need to make a timeline to plan everything from laying turf and walkways, planting specific trees and shrubs, through to if and when you cement in your picnic tables and litter bins.

If you want that aforementioned butterfly garden, then you know that the plants and flowers need to be blooming late Spring. Which means that all of the preparation for that area; the digging, mulching, shaping and planting, needs to follow a certain timescale.

Are you going to put in the seating area first and plan your planting around it? Or see how much room you have left when you’ve planted to see whether you can fit in a pizza oven or barbecue?

Your timeline will move around but it will become your bible, so it’s worth putting the time in.

Where?

With the best will in the world, we can’t fight Mother Nature and so a lot of your plans will be based around the area in which you are planning your landscaping project, the type of soil you have, the weather facing areas and things that you can’t change.

When planning your planting, consider where different types of trees, shrubs and flowers will thrive best. Plan everything else around your surroundings so you don’t find your guests holding onto their canapes at the picnic table because you didn’t consider that the seating area of the garden was a bit of a wind tunnel in September!

How?

This is the nitty gritty of your project – how are you going to bring it to fruition?

If you’re a dab hand at DIY, love getting your hands dirty and have a reputation for being the green fingered one of your friends then by all means get stuck in! It may take longer to achieve your dream garden, but you’ll have fun doing it.

If, however, you want to leave it to the experts who can come in, build and plant everything in place, and then just get on with looking after it, planting the odd annual and sipping Pimms in the Summer, it’s worth considering bringing in the people like us.

Any experts in landscaping projects will walk you through the whole process from the Who to the How, leaving you with a gorgeous looking space to enjoy and show off.

Why not give our team a call and let us show you how we can transform your space?