Please can you help with design ideas for my new garden

[honeylou42]

Please help, we are due to move to our new house soon, and the garden is a blank canvas. We would like to keep it modern but low maintenance. The garden is south facing and is straight along one side but on a diagonal at the other. Please see pics attached

What a lovely big garden!

I can’t stand seeing other houses so i’d make it a woodland style garden to block the view of the neighbouring buildings with lots and lots of tall flowering shrubs pruned in tree form so they look like trees rather than bushes eg lilacs, buddleja, ceanothus, cotinus/smoke bush etc with some tall silver birches interspersed within, birches are tall but they are very ‘airy’, not at all dense.

I’d plant lots of long flowering flowers underneath with tonnes of spring bulbs in big wavy borders.

I’d have a ‘rustic’ seating area somewhere with a log style table and chairs or bench.

Bark chip paths.

Maybe a willow tunnel or archway somewhere with willow or a flowering climber like roses.

I'd wait until you are living in the house and decide how you want to use the garden space - where you would like to sit and read a book and where you'd like to have a BBQ.

I like the idea of dividing up the space with a trellis or archway. I've always loved the look of arbour seats with roses or honeysuckle trailing over them.

Thank you guys, some really lovely ideas. We enjoy having a barbecue, and fancy putting a pergola up though not sure where. Also fancy some raised beds with easy to care for plants and perhaps a couple or small trees which won't grow to big.

Try to stay away from having everything round the outside with a lawn in the middle.

How about having an s-shaped design which divides the garden into two halves with a winding path with beds either side of it, and the pergola in the centre. A small tree would be better in the middle too - you don't want it right near the house, but it will block out the view of other properties better if it is closer to your house than right at the end of the garden.

Maybe get a large piece of paper and draw a plan on it; make a list of all the things you need (washing line, shed, bins etc) and everything you'd like (seating area, outdoor toys, barbecue, pergola, trees, herbs and so on), and see where it could all go. Bear in mind which way the garden faces so you know which parts get more or less sun. Draw shapes on paper, cut them out and move them around till it looks right. Try and imagine what it will look like not just when you are outside, but the view from indoors too.

That's a good point about the washing line. I love the garden rescue type programmes, but they rarely mention washing lines even though drying washing is an important garden activity for most of us.

Those tv programmes always use a load of gravel & slate chippings too - no good at all for hauling your wheelie bins across, and a right nuisance when it gets into the grass and damages your lawnmower blades. Too much attention given to 'instant garden' planting too, which looks lovely for the cameras, but incredibly expensive to do all at once.

I love these ideas! I've also just moved into my new house and I have been looking for inspiration on the internet. I ended up finding this useful article which has saved me loads of time - www.gardenbenches.com/blog/low-maintenance-garden/. I thought it might help you out :)

definitely plan for a tree (or several). crab apple & rowan are nice & won't grow too big.

and include a shed in your plan to store your mower & garden stuff.

Have a look at the rose press garden on Instagram. It's a small business selling flower seeds but the woman behind it shares lots of photos of her garden. She started with a blank slate and now has a beautiful garden. I'm sure if you asked for before and after photos she'd send them.