New house with a field garden

[FridayForever]

We're moving in July, and the house has a really big garden, which currently is basically a field with a small patio.

I am not really a gardener, but would like to become one. Where would you start?

Our current house has a big garden with flower beds that has been well cared for over the yesrs, but less so in the last 5 years, so it's overgrown but we keep getting surprises of lovely new flowers blooming in different seasons. I love it, and am a bit sad to go to a very grassy, plain garden. But also excited to be able to start from scratch as well I suppose.

I think I'minterested in any book recommendations, or websites or something to help me know where to start.

If you're interested in learning about garden design, have a look at your local colleges - they sometimes run short evening classes that can be quite good.

I would consider asking your buyers if they want to keep the plants in the garden you're leaving - they may have plans to astroturf everything, so it would be a shame to lose the plants.

Go on Instagram and follow Pollyanna_wilkinson she offers loads of garden design advice. Then follow who she follows, follow the hashtag #gardendesign. You’ll get so much inspiration from Instagram.

I’m a landscape architect. So hopefully can give some good advice.

Start with layout (spatial master plan) and think about negative space/ positive space.

I don’t know if you did the negative space drawing at school. So instead of drawing a vase you would draw the space left over by the vase. If you don’t know what I mean you can google negative space drawing.

The reason I’m talking about this is that most people design by randomly drawing borders, adding patios or features.

You don’t want to do that. You want to create spaces. So get your garden and draw a giant circle in the middle or a square. Or whatever space you want. The left over is the borders.

Now do that again with different shapes and look at the relationship to one another. How do they connect, are they linked etc.

This sounds so simple. But honestly just this simple mindset change and an awareness of negative/ positive will help you a lot. Give it a go.

Goodluck

There are fields and then there are fields.

A friend of mine has recently moved into a new place which is just like that but the plot is around 2.5 acres in size (just over 100m by 100m in a square shape). It is literally just the house in a field with trees around the boundary. Dealing with that really will be a challenge.

If your garden is a little smaller than that then there is a really helpful Youtube channel (and website) I've come across called The Middle-Sized Garden:

https://www.youtube.com/@TheMiddlesizedGarden

The presenter moved into a house with a 100 ft by 80 ft (30m x 24m) garden and deals with everything to do with gardening with a large (but not acre plus type) garden.

I am so envious

There's a good book called Making a Garden by David Stevens that I suggest quite a lot on here. Step by step guide and written by an expert. The main advice I would give is 'fools rush in where angels fear to tread' so take your time, the land isn't going anywhere! Have a look at Monty Don's Longmeadow garden on his website for inspiration - that was a blank canvas when he got it.