Hi,
I am Rachel Mathews from Successful Garden
Design.
In this short video, I am going to show you
the difference that design can make to a garden.
Now if you’re like most people, you’ve
probably been led to believe by books, and
magazines and garden centers that it’s the
plants and features that really make a garden
look wonderful, but that’s only true to
a degree.
Plants and features are the finishing touch
to a great garden, they’re no the starting
point.
Unless you have a good design structure in
place first, you can spend all the money in
the world and you won’t achieve really good
results.
In fact, I’d go as far as saying the more
money you spend on your things for the garden,
the more cluttered and disjointed the garden
is going to look.
Now as a professional garden designer, I am
bound to say that design is the most important
thing, but I want you to see this for yourself.
So I am going to show you some example gardens,
and then you can make up your own mind as
to just how much difference design can make
to a garden.
So let’s start by looking at a fairly typical
front garden.
But if we look at what we did with the design,
just a very simple, clean shape put in with
a few cobbles, has made a tremendous difference.
It’s transformed something that’s just
a regular shaped lawn and you’ve got something
to look at that is complimentary to the front,
it doesn’t need to be anything wildly fancy,
but just a simple shape makes a dramatic difference.
And then if we look at this property here,
it just got box standard paving.
If you put a little bit of design into it,
here is what you can achieve.
Now you know, if we just use decking or we
just use paving on its own it wouldn’t have
had the wow factor that mixing of the materials
in a design way achieves.
And then this garden in Spain, you can see
the wall is quite an angle here and that really
is the most dominant feature.
Now with a little bit of design put in, by
rendering the walls, and creating these planters,
it helps take your eye away from this wall
here.
And you can see a few years later when the
planting is established even more, you barely
notice the sloping side wall of the garden.
And then here is it from another angle.
And the design is what makes it interesting.
You know if we just pop the plants in, without
having the design shape in place, it really
wouldn’t have been anywhere near as effective.
Now if we look at this garden with the awkward
angles both on this wall and this wall, here
is the difference design makes to that.
So if we just put in a square deck or patio,
it really wouldn’t have achieved what putting
in a good design can do.
Now this garden very typical with just standard
paving, and lawn and a few plants.
Now the clients wanted a minimalist garden,
but even so, design does make a big difference
even with minimalist.
You can suddenly see it all comes together
just by the shapes we’ve used.
And again, when you’re dealing with changes
in level like this garden, it’s not very
exciting, but when you put design in, you
can actually change the shapes and positions
of the retaining walls.
And do all sorts of things with it.
Again this here comes to design shapes and
materials.
And in this garden quite big on two different
levels.
Someone had already attempted on doing some
landscaping with this path, but it didn’t
really pull the garden together very well.
So again putting in a design shape, a main
lawn, and then putting in the landscaping,
suddenly makes a dramatic difference.
And this simple cottage garden is nice enough
in the summer when the lavenders were flowering,
but the rest of the year it looked dull and
uninteresting, but once the design is done,
then it all come together.
And just the few little design tips and tricks
that are used to pull this together, makes
all the difference.
The long, narrow garden all lawn.
Now the client didn’t want any lawn, they
wanted completely low maintenance, and you
can start to see it’s getting more interesting.
And then a year or two later, when the plants
have filled up, it all really comes together.
But it’s coming together because of the
underlying design shapes that he used within
the garden.
You see it needs the design layout because
the planting is pinching in the key areas
which makes the garden more interesting and
wider.
And these clients wanted a modern look garden.
And they had a driveway running right the
way down the side here to get to the garages
at the back.
So it was important the we help screen that
and make it more interesting.
So these design elements that you’re seeing
here which i’ll explain more in the next
video is really what makes a big difference
when you’re wanting to create a stunning
garden.
It’s not all down to the planting, the planting
is the finishing touch.
So hope I’ve been able to demonstrate just
how important design is in a garden.
In the next video, I am going to show you
what you can do yourself without needing to
hire a professional garden designer.
