Planning hard landscaping and designing a garden

[ElizabethinherGermanGarden]

I'm moving in with my partner and he is very happy to hand over the responsibility for gardening to me. His garden's huge - much bigger than anything I've ever managed before and very neglected, design-wise, although it's tidy and mostly plain lawn. The fences all need replacing and I want to have a bit more of a plan. At the moment the two patio areas are in the two dingiest areas of the garden and there's an enormous dying pine tree that needs to come down. It definitely feels like there's the need for a digger to get rid of the random tree stumps and old concrete footings of a long-gone greenhouse/air raid shelter. Because of these big jobs, it makes sense to me to do a proper design now and sort out paths, patios, borders etc and sort planting once the structure's in place. I'm just a bit overwhelmed.

Any suggestions for where to start? Have ordered a very long measuring tape and a big pad of graph paper but that's as far as I've got!

What do you want the garden to do? Define that and the plan will start to flow.
Do you want lawn, borders, vegetables, orchard, wildflower, greenhouse / potting shed, seating areas, entertaining area, place to kick a ball about. Remember to factor in boring bits like bins, washing line, compost heap.

Where does the sun hit the garden? - that helps with the definition. Do your favourite thing in the sunniest bit.

What I love in terms of the look of the garden (and enjoy planting) are cottage-style deep borders. What I want to be able to do is entertain friends and sit out with drinks, cook over a fire etc. I guess that means that I need the patio in the bit that stays sunny latest in the evening, which is by the big brick wall.

I know I'm always over ambitious whenever I set out to buy/plant and don't necessarily have the time to do the work for the kind of garden I really want. I've never wanted to grow veg, but I'd love a cutting garden.

It's north facing but so long that there's a good area that is sunny at the far end. Last year I planted out a deep border against the eastern fence and that has been pretty successful.

Are there any hard features that are really worth planning in? Eg would you recommend raised beds around a patio?

I like the idea of the patio by the brick wall. It will reflect heat back at night. If you can build another wall or a fence at right angles to it then it could be quite a cosy, enclosed corner (with a bonus feature of a 'surprise' area behind the wall/fence). If you did this then you wouldn't need raised beds as you would have quite a lot of hard surface already.
Would you fancy a water feature?

I think the trick is to fill at least 30% of your beds with evergreens which will give winter colour and cut down your workload.

Cutting down the workload sounds good!

Thinking some more about your design for this huge garden, do you need to put in services like electrics or water? You may want buried cables so you might think about that groundwork at the same time as grubbing up tree stumps.

Another thought. Have you considered the edging to your lawn? If part of your hard landscaping includes lawn edging (eg brick, stone, metal, plastic) then it will save you labour in the long-term.

When you get down to the detailed planning, have a look at
www.pavingexpert.com/

Written by a guy who used to do a lot of paving at heritage sites. It will tell you most of what you need to know if you're doing it yourself, and give you the knowledge to tell whether your contractor's doing a good job.

Do you have a budget in mind? This could dictate what you do.

Thank you all so much - these are really helpful suggestions. I think electricity for a new shed would be very useful, as would a plug point for lights. Goodness, this is going to be expensive!

We are moving to a house with a large garden so I am thinking along the same lines. I'm loving Your garden made perfect and Love your garden with Alan Titchmarsh as they both discuss garden design for people who don't know loads already. My problem is I don't know whether it's worth it to invest money into it, hard landscaping can cost tens of thousands of pounds which I don't think we have.

We don't have tens of thousands either, although we might manage £10K between us for phase 1. I know that felling the trees and digging out the stumps will be at least £1K. If I can get some income from my house, that will be helpful and allow us to add to the budget.

Create spaces which you turn into places. Ie. rather than cutting a random bed. Draw a big shape on your paper - that is your space 'your room'. All the surrounding area is planting bed 'your internal walls' - decorated in a coherent planting scheme. Like a room in a house and you paint the walls to match or complement.

Everedge for edging.
Mulch
Shrubs are not low maintenance
Boundaries - consider these as your external walls. Have a big impact on a garden. You can have the most incredible modern country garden but if its surrounded by a wooden fence it is going to draw your eye out and really let the garden down.

I assume this is what you want... www.charlotterowe.com/

Oh yes! LemonSwan that is exactly what I want. Beautiful! I will have a look at the pictures and spend some happy time with my sketch pad. Thank you.

Also, sounds as if you know what you're about: what are your thoughts on boundaries? We have a 6' brick wall all along the western boundary, a fence along the east and the south used to be all thickety but the neighbours over the back had a bit of a slash-and-burn, love-the-smell-of-napalm-in-the-morning gardening moment during the first lockdown and put up an absolutely godawful temporary fence made out of strips of brown plastic. It didn't survive the winds this winter and now looks like a scrap merchant's yard. After I muttered a bit, it turns out it's actually our boundary so we're getting it sorted. I was going to put a fence, but you've made me wonder now. Is there another good option (that's not as expensive as a proper wall)?

I would get a sturdy fence and then either get hedging or ivy wall to screen it. You could change the treatment depending on which space its in IYSWIM. If you look at how Rowe wraps spaces you will see what I mean.

Say for example thicker hedging lining a side and then where a patio is you could put ivy green screen so it offsets the patio slightly.

If you go on her page and look at Town Gardens and Barnes Common their is a picture which shows you something similar. Here she is using thick Hornbeam hedges and thinner Star Jasmine Climber (Trachelosperum)

A cheaper way to do this could be to get Climbing Hydrangea. Its self clinging to wood like ivy is.

www.green-tech.co.uk/green-roofs-and-living-walls/green-walls-and-ivy-screens

And keep the brick wall as brick! With just a couple of sparse climbers to soften. A brick wall is very Charlotte Rowe :) Very jealous