Design Your Dream Garden

Intelligent Design—Guidelines for Creating Your Dream Garden
by Joan McDonald

As a garden designer and design teacher, I spend a lot of time looking at, talking about, planning, creating, and correcting other folks' mistakes in gardens. I find that many people think about garden design only in terms of plant choices. But picking plants is the last and often easiest part of putting a garden together. There are a half dozen or so important steps I suggest you take before even setting foot in a nursery. Follow them and you will save time, money, and energy on the road to creating your dream garden.

Evaluate Your Site

Every gardener, every year, should evaluate his or her garden, no matter what its stage of maturity. Start with the bare bones. Whoever said that a successful design is evident when the garden looks good in winter was right. Seeing only the permanent forms and features of your garden will give you a good idea where there are holes to be filled or repairs to be made.

All major construction work (such as new fences, paths, decks, patios) or repair jobs need to be taken care of before you start planting. I was once called in by a client to develop some perennial beds in her backyard, only to be told halfway through our interview that the back of the house was soon to undergo major renovation. I told her to call me back in six months.

Calculating wind exposure, light patterns, and drainage is another important part of site evaluation. In addition to being influenced by regional climate, each garden has its own microclimate, determined by the hardscape, dominant plant species, and topography. Only careful, year-round observation will enable you to figure it out. A client of mine once planted rosebushes in what he thought was a nice sunny spot. Problem was, he based his conclusion only on what he saw during winter and early spring. By summertime, a large deciduous tree nearby had leafed out and drenched his rosebushes in deep shade.

Determining the condition of the soil is also a vital part of site evaluation, as it plays a major role in the health of your plants. Is the soil poor or rich in nutrients? Is it dry, moist, or wet? What's the pH level? Most people I interview don't know. And that's why they sometimes make bad plant choices or provide incorrect soil amendments. I always recommend having soil tested by a professional laboratory. (Contact your local cooperative extension service for lab locations.)

Assess Your Needs

Do you see your garden as a playground, an outdoor dining room, a place to interact with nature, a picture window, or all of these at once? Figure out how you and your family want to use the garden space—now, and in the future.

A client of mine had a long, skinny garden in the back of a Brooklyn brownstone. When she first moved in, she hastily set it up as a haven for her two golden retrievers by placing faux-brick pavers over much of the garden floor and constructing narrow raised beds along the sides that allowed ample room for a dog run. The back of the garden, a bark-chip mulched section with a maple tree and wisteria arbor, was designated for, well, you know what.

All this was great for the dogs, but she neglected to consider her own and her husband's needs. She likes to garden, and they both enjoy sitting and dining out. But a yard designed exclusively for dogs is hardly conducive to that. Also, this client soon regretted using the pavers, which clashed with the beautiful worn brick of the house. Most of all, she regretted not taking into account future needs—as she is now the proud mother of twin boys.

She and I put our heads together to find a solution. The first order of business was to hire a dog walker, so there would be no more unchecked running or pooping in the garden. We then widened some of the garden beds to allow for more plants and divided the remainder of the garden into four sections: two children's play areas and two family dining areas. Everyone's happy now. As for the faux bricks, I ended up removing some of them and planting creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum) in their place. I sprayed others with a moss and buttermilk mixture to give them an aged look.

Draw Up a Budget

Most homeowners never add garden design and installation into their mortgages or home-improvement costs, even though real estate experts consider a garden to be 10 to 15 percent of the total property value. Unless they are avid gardeners, most of my clients turn their attention to garden projects only after the house is finished, and they are always surprised at the price tag. The good news, I tell them, is that costs can be defrayed by implementing a plan over a period of years and by doing much of the work themselves.

Pick a Style and Stick With It

Choosing a style is both the hard and the fun part of garden design. Pick one that fits the architecture of your house, your personality, and your needs, or you may end up with a mishmash for a garden (unless that's what you want). Usually, the main decision you have to make is whether to go formal or informal. Formal gardens, such as Mediterranean gardens, consist of symmetrical compositions balanced about a central axis. Informal gardens, such as wildlife gardens, are inspired by nature and use soft, flowing curves and shapes.

If you don't know what kind of style you want, do some research. Look around your neighborhood, visit display gardens, and read books or magazines to discover what your options are. Also, write about your garden—how it looks today as well as how it will look a number of months and years down the road. This will make it easier to envision your final masterpiece and start working toward it. A student of mine originally thought she wanted an informal, bird-friendly design. But after doing some research and visualization exercises, she realized she also liked geometric shapes and topiaries, which aren't particularly attractive to birds.

We decided a compromise was in order: formal architecture and topiary softened by less formal plantings. We built a circular brick patio with an angular path leading to a wooden arbor and bench. At the entrance to the patio, we planted two flanking boxwood (Buxus) topiary shrubs. We used dwarf varieties of such evergreens as holly (Ilex) and bayberry (Myrica) to give structure to the surrounding beds. We then added native shrubs such as American cranberry bush (Viburnum trilobum) and perennials like goldenrod (Solidago) and black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), along with a water feature, to make the garden more natural looking and palatable to birds.

Make a Plan

I draw up design plans to scale, using pencil on vellum over graph paper (four squares per inch). I then use tissue over the vellum layer for idea sketches before drawing out the final plan. For one of my clients I once made five different color-coded tissue overlays. The final design and drawing was a combination of elements from each of these tissue sketches.

Your plans don't have to be so elaborate, however. After all, a plan is simply a map for you to follow in your garden. As long as you can understand it, that's all that matters. Some of my students make enlarged photographs of their gardens and use tissue overlays to sketch new designs on the photos.

Keeping a journal is one of the most important, and most often neglected, details of garden design. A written history of your garden allows you to see what's working and what isn't over extended periods of time.

And while planning for spring, summer, and fall glory, don't forget to add plants with winter interest—beautiful bark, texture, form, or color. Use conifers and broad-leafed evergreens that retain their needles or leaves all year round, as well as ornamental grasses, winter-blooming trees, shrubs, perennials, and bulbs. Plant shrubs like firethorn (Pyracantha) and beautyberry (Callicarpa) that keep their stunning fruits late into the season.

Right Plant, Right Place

Far too often I see lilacs growing poorly in the shade or hostas frying in the sun. I had a client who once asked me to "fix" her 'Nikko Blue' hydrangea, since it was producing pink blossoms instead of blue. I simply transplanted it to another spot where the soil was more acidic, and now it's doing just fine.

It's sometimes the case that my clients are fully aware of a plant's growing requirements, yet they continue to expend time, energy, and money adjusting the soil, pruning, and fertilizing in the hope of success. Trust me: It's better to put the right plant in the right place in the first place. And if the right spot isn't in your garden, just forget about it. There are too many beautiful plants out there to fret about the ones that don't quite fit.

*Joan McDonald is former manager of BBG's Gardener's Resource Center and current owner of Gardens by Design, a private garden design, installation, and maintenance business.