For when I was putting in new shrubs along both property lines of my house I did a plan of where I wanted what. Now my mixed perennial annual gardens are a whatever . If I see a plant I like at the garden shop I buy it and then stick it in any empty space I can find. There is no rhyme or reason to them.

Very precise and detailed drafted plans for clients....not so much for myself :-) Planning for myself is far less graphic and far more mental but it still involves planning!!

I don't think there is a right way or a wrong way to plan for a garden. Some people like formal, some like semi-formal and people like me like informal. Some people coordinate the textures and colors just so and some haven't meet a color or texture combo they didn't like. Sometimes it depends on the style of house you have and how much time you have to devote to the garden. I do appreciate all the different garden styles though. With all types of gardens you have to keep in mind your rain level, soil and sun exposure. So I think there is always going to be some form of planing involved. I think the best thing is to have fun and enjoy your gardens.

^^ I meant the planning process, not the actual garden plan itself :0)

I usually develop a mental image of the look I want (it sort of pops into my head when I look around at what else is in the space around where I'm going to plant.... This whole garden is based on a reference mental image of where I grew up - a large former-farm rural property so my mental image for this suburban version just tried to capture the 'feel' of Grandpa's property....) Once I have that mental image in my head, it leads me to specific types of plants. When I get those, I wander around with the plants in pots, trying out various placements. When I'm satisfied, then I plant them. Smaller plants get filled in as I find things that suit the feel of the garden. It's taken almost 20 years to create this garden, so I'd suggest that whatever you're planning to plant this spring is likely not going to be the final version :-)

I would be like GardenGal ... drawing precisely for others & casually for myself. If I'm going to install it myself, I know all the details so don't need to labor over drawing or specifying them. But for others, I don't necessarily know who's going to install so I don't want to give them room to create errors.

In drawing a planting plan, one mistake I see many novices make is to draw every little plant. It is far more important when designing to think of the larger shapes that are being created out of small plants, rather than thinking of the pieces themselves. After the shape is defined, then one would figure out how to fill it in from the pieces, none of which need to be drawn in. When placing the plants in the ground, one would space them back the proper amount from the perimeter, and the rest is infill at a given spacing. For calculating the quantity, instead of counting up small plants on a drawing, one calculates the square footage of the larger shape as defined by its perimeter, and then divides into it the square footage that a single plant would occupy. (To get that one multiplies the spacing of the plant, center to center, by the distance between row centers. This does not mean that during the installation perfectly straight agricultural rows will be used. They are easily massaged into curves that conform to the perimeter shapes.) When I see curved beds/shapes filled with razor straight rows, I think that "rule-followers" installed it without remembering to consult common sense. In the end, as the location of the individual plant disappears into a mass of solid plantings, it is merely the perimeter of the planting that defines its overall shape.

Trial and error! :)

I had no plan..aka backwards. Adding bones later, ugh.

....in between lots of plunking, moving, and dividing.

After all of these years, I’m just now seeing ‘visions/combinations’ lol.

Call me a late ‘bloomer’ : /

since I s*ck at precision when it comes to measuring stuff like this

====>>>>

plans smlans .. dig hole.. insert.. move in fall ... lol ...

that aside ... take your shovel ... and starting from the point... use tape to mark one foot increments ... and then use your shovel to scale.. according to your drawing ...

typical shovel is about 6 feet ... so when planting trees.. mine might be 6 or 12 feet apart .. etc ...

the spade width might be about 8 inches... so grouping might be that 8 inches apart ... etc ...

with this system.. you dont have to keep looking for some measuring tape or whatever ...

learned this.. back in the day .... when i had a hand trowel with one inch increments on it.. for bulb planting... then i just went large ... with the idea ...

you might add a 3 foot bamboo stake from some plant you bought.. for smaller scale.. also with the feet marked off ...

sooooo ... the moral of the story.. taking the plan from the table.. to the garden.. need not be some feat of engineering ....

the only thing i might fixate on .. might be things i dont want to ever move ... lets say some expensive JMaple ... then.. i would take the time.. to insure perfect placement .. in fact.. if it were in a large enough pot .. i might just set the pot out in the garden.. and spend all summer moving it around.. until i found the perfect site .. and then plant it in fall.. at the proper planting time ... [i would not do this with small pots.. as they could be hard to properly water all summer ...] .. this is sometimes called.. planting the backbones of your garden ... the trees and shrubs and whatnot ...

enjoy the process .. and dont sweat the details ... EVERYTHING can be fixed ...

ken

I'd say your pretty much on point. Think of the repeating elements, colors, and bloom times. Spacing can be off when you get down to it. Some probably over space and others don't plan for enough. I'm usually under in the spacing department and try to squeeze in as much as possible.

The one thing I definitely do before I pick plants is draw the area on grid paper and go out every hour and plot where the sun is/is not. I learned to do this because I've guessed badly and put stuff in places that had the wrong amount of light. I move enough stuff around for the sake of design--at least I can eliminate moving stuff because I put it in the wrong light condition to begin with. Otherwise, I have pretty bad design skills, so I wind up moving stuff that just doesn't look right and moving stuff again....this, to me, is gardening. Once I accepted that a garden is never done, I embraced the fact that I will never be able to make a plan and feel great about it on the first go-round.

This time of year I plan plan plan. Once it is warmer out and mail order plants arrive I’m pretty good at putting them in according to plan but as the season continues....it’s anybody‘s guess where things will end up :)

" I realise this is a minority view."

I'm not sure I'd agree with that, Camp. I think many hold that viewpoint :-) Once again, I think this is a conflict between terms....or maybe even philosophies - landscaping versus gardening. I prepare landscape designs for clients, most of which are not gardeners. Personally, I garden - I do not landscape :-) While there is always some contemplation and planning involved, it is nothing like what is involved with clients and even the plant palette is radically different. I push boundaries, experiment, trial various combinations and test out new-to-me plants. I receive plant gifts from friends (including a couple with some impressive horticultural connections), visit too many plant sales and nurseries to not acquire unexpected, impulse purchases and they all find a home somewhere at some point, planned or not.

There is absolutely no chance that my personal garden would be mistaken for one belonging to a professional landscape designer.......for any number of reasons :-)

People who come to my house do not ever comment about my garden, which used to perplex me, since I love it so much. I've come to realize that it only matters that it thrills ME. And, yes--overall, the design is not splendid. It's the little vignettes where two or three plants (by accident, mostly) look amazing together or the moment that some impulse purchase comes into bloom for the first time. I made one of those shutterfly books of my garden this summer and it was filled with those moments--there were no sweeping views of flowering vistas, just little moments that thrilled me and made it all worthwhile. And, as I get older, I appreciate what campanula said about limited stock of garden seasons and just enjoy the garden in the moment. Here's one of those moments: I wondered last year why I had never, ever tried growing delphinium. As soon as it just bent over from the weight of itself, I remembered why. I had a good laugh and figured I'd get a photo of me holding it upright as a cautionary tale for future me.

Yes, agree with above statements re: gardening vs landscaping, but the thing is, for me there's got to be some sort of rhyme and reason to it and cohesiveness.

I'm not stressing at all over the perennials, like I said I'll probably just rough sketch those in, it's the shrubbery and big grasses I really want to try to get right the first time out. Reality being what it is, I'm getting older --> still young enough to do some heavy work but old enough to know my limits and foresee what further limitations are coming my way. In other words, I'm trying to avoid having to do the "big stuff" again as much as I can.

When I finally get that patio built I'm sure they'll be some moving and changing of things, but that's what the checkbook is for -- if they can build a patio, they can move an established shrub and cut a nicer-looking border. I'm not doing any sort of hardscaping, front or back, I'm saving that for the professionals when finances allow.

Once the backbone design is in, that's when I'll start having fun moving smaller stuff around, I can never leave well enough alone - didn't someone around here once say that's the mark of a true gardener? No, it's never done, it can always be improved.

But I really do admire people who do those scale drawings and get everything just so -- most probably because I can't. I'm with Camp -- don't like the software. I can "see" it in my head, I don't need software to give me that visual; but, I'm not a professional, I can definitely see how CAD is necessary for some projects, especially when it comes to hardscaping and large landscapes.

" I can definitely see how CAD is necessary for some projects, especially when it comes to hardscaping and large landscapes. "

Helpful but not at all necessary :-) I am seriously dating myself here but I learned draftng long before CAD was remotely commonplace.....still pretty much in its infancy. So all of my design plans, regardless of size and complexity, are hand drafted. As Camp noted, extremely time consuming and not offering the flexibility of easy changes like CAD does but each is a work of art in its own right and nothing that one would ever consider as being spewed out of a computer.

I also harbor a very strong suspicion that actually putting pencil to paper (and not finger to mouse) encourages and promotes the design process - I work best when I am sketching out various permuations of a plan. And I also have a second strong suspicion that many of those design practitioners that do pump out computer generated plans and renderings site unseen and at the drop of a hat have no real concept or undersatnding of landscape design and their clients insufficiently aware enough to determine the difference between that and just some pretty pictures.

Hmmm, I think the design of my patio re-build at the other house was sketched out by hand because I recall having to approve the rough design/layout, but I'm not sure if he did the final design to scale for the installers using CAD. (the garden/plant design is all mine, though!)

In an ideal world the hardscaping would be done first but few of us as gardeners are willing to put off planting until money allows.

I plan on paper for others but rarely for myself. Graph paper is ideal for home use but I have used random scraps of paper just to solidify what my inner eye is visualizing. That you are able to "see" is a great asset.

Since you know all the basics from creating past gardens you are ahead of the game. Some would never think to leave access to the back of the border (this is the border that is against your home - correct?) for air circulation and maintenance to your home.

Some would not account for the ultimate size of shrubs to find later that they have blocked a window view or that the shrub may sucker. If any of your plants are scented, attract hummingbirds/butterflies you may want them by a window.

I would do exactly what you are doing placing shrubs and focal points first, then working in all the other plants. I think you know the look you are going for and are not giving yourself enough credit for being able to achieve it.

OMG, yes - those 'designers' who offer a generic plan with no site visit! How can that be - looking, walking about at different times, is the most important part of any design process. It used to take sweetheart and I, numerous site visits and meetings. We did all the building so had to have a fair idea of amounts of sand, gravel, aggregate, cement, bricks, paviours, timber, setts, lighting...and although we gave ourselves permission to make alterations to out original plans, those plans really did have to be very detailed indeed when paying out large amounts of someone else's money. Our most expensive garden was a former asphalt parking lot, turned into a garden with pond, rills, pergolas, sunken garden, vegetable plot, firepit and so on - came to around $80,000 and every bit of soil had to be bought in....but we also did many gardens with a much tinier budget. Money was always one of the major constraints on labour and materials and I pretty much expected customers had a figure in mind before so much as a single brick or plant was chosen.

garden is.. or was .. my aerobics and my therapy ... when i had a bad day at work.. i went home and dug some holes ... and the labor decreased the stress .. besides knowing i was going to take a long lunch the next day to go buy stuff to put in the holes ... take that you hitlerian boss ... actually the boss was ok.. it was the judges and certain other attys ... who seemed to find joy in trying to make my head explode for no real reason ....

sooo ... the end result wasnt the actual goal ... within that definition ...

when i bought my first house.. i took the mortgage map .. do they even provide those hardcopy anymore??? ... and blew it up ... and spent many a winter evening.. drawing all kinds of dream maps ... and by spring.. i was ready to go ... i cant say i planned down to individual locations requiring exact planting ... perhaps it was more of defined areas for certain types and size ...

and.. i bet i spent more time mapping out what i actually planted.. after the fact ... so as to preserve names of plants.. due to my collecting gene/sickness ..as i used to say.. a 100 dollar hosta.. without a name tag ... .. is just another 5 dollar hosta... lol ..

i think its a hole different conversation about presenting concepts to a client ... but i am fascinated by how it all works..

ken

ps: i did mention this elsewhere recently ... when i was in college.. there was a business school and engineering ... and i really learned the difference between an art ... and a science ... engineers are all facts and numbers.. and calculators .. blah .. blah.. blah .. lol ... whereas the other were more of an art ... a sort of wing it mentality ... to see how it all works out to the eye .. artists might start with a plan.. and a light pencil drawing.. but somewhere during the process ... it turns into something completely different ... its what the eye sees ... not what the plan was ...

pps: if your guests dont appreciate your garden.. you need a better level of guests ... lol .. guest specifically invited to tour your garden.. you have to do it ... its a real rush ... think about joining a local garden club to find your kindred spirits ....

ppps: even if you can get an engineer to visit your garden ... [usually a disinterested spouse ...lol].... he/she cant even see the aesthetic ... but if you mention the drip irrigation.. you might have to spend an hour discussing gpm... [gals per minute].. pump capacity.. how water flows thru a pipe ... fert injection.. how to dilute it.. etc..etc ... and then.. all of a sudden.. they respect you as a gardener.. not really for your garden .. but for the science involved in it ... and if they dont.. slyly tell the gardener to come back some time with a garden friend ... and to leave spousey at the big box store in the gizmo aisle.. lol .. but i d\igress ... what was the topic?????

I plan obsessively and then plant erratically. Well, that‘s not quite true. I plan for fun in winter. It also helps me remember there are limits on my space. Lately I’ve been playing with a screen shot of an aerial view from Google (Big Brother in the sky) and using it as a base to work from. Then I find I adjust on the ground. It’s a sloping lot and what looks great in plan sometimes looks a little “off” out in the world.

I create a drawing and follow it for the most part. Then later I insert other plants that I can't live without. For someone without landscape design training, I recommend the book, Ann Lovejoy's Organic Garden Design School. It's written for the northwest US, but many of the principles apply to other areas of the country.

Every year in January or February I draw up a new plan for the coming year. I usually draw it out in photoshop and it is pretty detailed. When I get out to actually do it, there is always something that I've forgotten (oh yeah, that peony is there!), or my spacing is off (the survey from when I bought the house is not very accurate), or I realize I totally underestimated the size of the plant or overestimated the size of the space in my winter dreamland. So many variables. So things get shuffled around. As time goes on, there is less and less shuffling and planting, and more and more maintenance. Then there is that spontaneous purchase that has to go somewhere, and those 8 roses that I needed for an older plan, but then I changed my mind. It's part of the fun.

The longer I do this the looser my planting plans have become. Hardscape and bed shapes are pretty much fixed from plan to install, as are trees and large shrubs - basically anything with a job to do. What I've come to learn though is that even after walking the site with homeowners at the initial consult, and spending a good bit of time there for the measuring and site analysis, opportunities still reveal themselves on install. So I usually plan on getting the big elements in and then going shopping and cramming my truck full. For clients who want every plant spelled out we do that, but most people hire us because they just want it to look good.

The CAD vs hand drawing thing... meh. CAD is just a drafting tool, no different than a drafting table with a parallel bar. For the first few years every drawing started on the drafting table with trace paper, I got the design about 80% done, and then drafted it all in AutoCAD and polished up the details. I do believe that was important because especially as a junior designer, it's super easy to get tunnel vision in CAD. You only focus on the rectangle of the yard that's on your screen and nothing flows together.

Nowadays I start in AutoCAD and pretty much do the entire design on the computer. If I get stuck, I'll print out what I have and work through it with pencil and trace paper. For my presentation drawings I do a hybrid. I print out a CAD drawing that has all the hardscape stuff on there, but the plant symbols are turned off and replaced with faint gray circles. I hand draw the plants and marker render everything. It still looks lush, but it's super clear what's being proposed AND it addresses the problem of my atrocious handwriting.

I think a lot of designers get overly precious about the drawings. A brilliant landscape architect who is WAY smarter than I am taught me that the drawing is just a step in the process - what we're getting paid for is what is created from the drawing.

O Noseometer - the yearly plan tends to go much the same as the yearly journal - start off in a great flurry of enthusiam and fizzle out after the first 3 entries.

If I am going to the trouble of making a plan, then I am going to do it exactly to scale (depending on size of area, can be anything from 12:1 up to 100:1) using graph paper. Obviously, I don't draw in every brick (but will draw in a dozen or so in a small section and extrapolate)...and as I design my own knitting patterns, I am used to using and making charts. In truth, having a bit more ability to use CAD would have been a definite time saver, Revo, but I dunno, I just don;t really get excited by colour pallettes on screen and feel, like GG, that the drafting tools (Rotring pens, watercolour pencils and even hand cut quills) are apart of a creative process. I love colour and style...but despise fashion.

The best thing about being precise from the off is being able to clearly estimate quantities of everything - from tons of top soil to numbers of paving setts, and as this estimating and quoting for jobs was always my responsibility, I rarely, if ever, over-order or have to deal with wastage. To be fair, I can eye a project and have a pretty good idea of how many square metres of York stone and how much block paving we need without doing a plan...but customers want and need the help of clear visuals so yep, it's all about finding common understanding.

I love being released from commercial constraints and simply going with mad whims when doing things for myself...and since I am not paying myself, no matter if things go a bit awry.

I have particularly beautiful handwriting. I know this sounds boastful but I actually worked as a calligrapher, labelling rowing photos with race title, name of university, team members, bow, cox etc - I do after all live in Cambridge and have a few rowing mates. When my eldest was born, calligraphy was a handy skill to do at home...plus, I am of that generation who did learn handwriting in school.

"I hand draw the plants and marker render everything" Hmmm... I don't know but wonder if you could open the drawing in MS Paint and do the same thing with electronic ink and marker. The tools do a pretty good job of mimicking the real ones and "Undo" is mighty handy. Can also add printed text in many fonts.

Umm, surely there's still space somewhere for me to plunk in what I just bought. Sadly, that is my style...it's more about what will do well where than what it looks like.

@Campanula one of the things I've come to appreciate in this industry is all the different paths that lead to a completed landscape. There was a designer several years back who said that she took her portable drafting table to the client's property and set up in the middle of the yard and hand drafted the designs, and anyone who DIDN'T do it that way is a garbage designer. I personally like working for myself because I can design in my boxers, blast my music, and talk to the cats while I work. Everyone has their process.

I *do* get giddy watching the design develop in CAD, but I've been using it for going on 15 years. It's the fastest way for me to get the ideas out of my head and refine them.

Shiny Object Style.

I'll have it mostly planned out, but have extra plants and suddenly it's like, Ooo, what if I put the extra over there... so I go over there and then I see something that I meant to plan better... so what if I??? And so on, and so forth. I do draw it out and germinate in anticipation. It does stay fairly close, but so many divergences when the actual plants grow. I have gardened long enough I don't have those "What was I thinking planting those two together?!" moments, so I feel like I am progressing.

I'm having more fun not planning much. I know my growing conditions and where I have sun/shade etc., and I start wtih plants that I enjoy, that fit a need, that I get excited about and then I find a place for it. I'll think about what will grow well with it, look well with it, can I add something for long bloom, etc., then I'll try to end up with a bed that pleases me visually and meets my goals. I'm constantly adjusting and moving things around and although it's labor intensive, I don't mind the labor most of the time and I enjoy the change.

I used to plan with graph paper and I found I'd have hours put into a plan, then have a hard time finding some part of the plan. Or I'd plant most of it and find that something I thought was going to like the conditions didn't, or a plant didn't look right with the rest, or two plants didn't bloom together like I planned..etc. That was a whole lot less fun. So, if I'm going to end up with all that variability, why put all that time into it in the first place?

Exactly so, Prairie.

However, what is obvious to me is the glaring discrepancy between planning (or not) for yourself and planning for someone else paying hard cash for your time, expertise (hopefully) and effort. When I knit for others, I swatch, check my gauge, test the fabric, customise with fittings, weave all my ends in, seam in immaculate mattress stitch and block the finished items.

When I knit for myself, I rummage about in the stash and use any yarn which I have in enough quantity, make it up as I go, finish ends with just a square knot and start wearing immediately...get the picture?

My eldest has more or less taken over my landscaping and design business (because of partner's health issues mainly) so I just do a bit of maintenance for long-term customers and barely consider the design process anymore...or do it ass backwards at the very least - planning follows the actual growing and acquiring stuff (including scavenged hardscape) rather than planning then shopping. And I kinda like the constraints as I find it a little bit terrifying, being confronted with a truly blank page (although that rarely happened since at the very least, the existing house was always there first).

I don't plan anything on paper. Ever. Thats no fun. I like to garden hit or miss and then edit. I try stuff and either like it or not and often get something for seed stock later down the road unless I'm in "thinning out mode" when I define things which is also fun to do. My method is to sit and stare at a spot and imagine different plants either by adding or subtracting , I will actually sit there and point with my finger, there, there and there---no maybe this, that and then that and maybe add a tall thing for contrast and take that big thing over there out because its too big and I'm tired of looking at it anyway.

I think in terms of texture, size and color. A lot of pink there and then some blue foliage low stuff next to it, yea, that would work + I could work in some white something or other. Then I wrack my brain to think of what fits into that color/texture/size category which usually involves digging up new starts from elsewhere to get that 'whatever' new idea I have going on in the new spot once I've amended it. My favorite thing is to weed the garden and while I'm doing it, find volunteers and then make them work somewhere or pot them up for future possibilities. When in doubt and I can't think of anything, I plunk in a cactus, that always works and its easy. Easy to plant, easy to subtract.

I garden on the cheap---- real cheap. Currently I've been in serious thinning out mode. I like the new cleaner look and plan for a lot of repeats this year focusing on low growing plants where there used to be grasses which the neighborhood cats insist on using as beds and toilets, especially adding lots of desert marigolds where I seeded heavily. New cactus starts are waiting under the carport to go into their allotted spots.

Ugh! This is too hard. I can see what I want in my head, but I can't get it down on paper. I penciled in some shrubs and grasses and pretty much gave up on the rest. What's making it especially hard, I think, is that I'm trying to make use of what I already have, and that's *a lot* --> I'm not starting from scratch with plant material, so trying to work it in is harder than having a completely blank slate and drawing in whatever I think will look good.

I think I'll just go back to what I'm best at -- putting it all together like pieces of a puzzle while I'm actually out there in it. :0)

Quite so, Mxk3.

I have never drawn a garden plan, and never say never, but I doubt I ever will. I do think about colors and shapes, but then I buy what’s on sale, or I take bunches of plants home from a swap, and I stick them in where I think they’ll look nice. They usually do look nice, I think.

Once a bed gets going, I watch for gaps (nothing between spring bulbs & summer bloomers, for example), and keep my eye out for something to fill it in from the sale racks or bulb catalogs. That’s about it for planning.

I did plant a big new bed this fall, and while I made lists of plants I wanted in it, mostly thinking about bloom times, I didn’t draw out where to put them. That happened in my head or looking at the bed.