Evaluate your garden

First things first...
The first step in designing a garden is to do an honest evaluation of the house and the grounds around it. Beside looking carefully at the style of your house and the surrounding environment you will have to look at sun exposure, soil, existing trees and walls, in other words, what will be the problem areas and which features can already be integrated in the design plan.

We have made a checklist you can use for this.

Describe the style and color of your house and the existing garden.

Describe the style, color and features from all that is in the nearby area.
The best thing you can do is draw up a big map with all the measurements of your garden and the structural features around and in it. Are there big differences in height? Make sure that you put that on the map too.

Hours of Sun Exposure check this for different parts of your garden when needed.

• Full Sun:

• 6 or more

• 4-6

• 2-4

• 0-2

• Partial Sun/Shade:

• 6 or more

• 4-6

• 2-4

• 0-2

• Shade:

• 6 or more

• 4-6

• 2-4

• 0-2

• Dense Shade:

• 6 or more

• 4-6

• 2-4

• 0-2

Time of day of full sun:

• 8 am

• 9am

• 10am

• 11am

• Noon

• 1pm

• 2pm

• 3pm [il]4pm [il]5pm [il]6pm [il]7pm

Determine the type of soil in your garden, check this for different parts of your garden when needed (there are great soil-kits available here )

• Sandy

• Sandy loam

• Loam

• Clay loam

• Clay

• Silty loam

• Silt
  
  

Soil pH:

• Acidic (<7.0)

• Neutral (7.0)

• Alkaline (>7.0)
  
  

Do you have access to water:

• Natural

• Hose/Sprinkler

• Irrigation System

Okay, this doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but it's the most important part of your first steps in garden designing. And when you have done it, you can only profit from it. Off course you can also do it the hard way, and just get started. But when your beautiful and expensive flower bush or tree dies because of the wrong position (full sun) or because of pour soil, you could think of kicking yourself and will probably remember this article. :-)

When you have finished the check list you know what your garden is like. You can either work with what you have or adjust parts of the garden to your needs. The latter one is probably more time consuming and will certainly cost more money. For example, when you have a spot in your garden were the ground is really wet, you can of course go for a draining solution so you can plant everything you like or you can just keep it wet and plant a shrub that likes wet feet.