Here we go, everyone …. it’s time to get drawing! I’m going to go over this in the Zoom meet up on Tuesday, but in the meantime, we can make a start.
There are so many thought-through aspects to designing a garden, and I’ve touched on the most important ones for me in earlier posts, all stored here in the Small Garden section.
(If you haven’t done any or all of the below, please, whatever you do, don’t worry. As ever, this is meant to be fun rather than a chore, so just go with the flow. You can always catch up later if you want to).
You’ll have worked out already that whatever the size of your garden space, WHERE it’s situated is for me one of the most important factors in getting a small garden space just right.
By now, if you’ve had time to do your homework:
you’ll have that photo
you’ll have a rough outline of your space
you’ll have gathered some images on Pinterest
you’ll have noted down your wish list
you’ll have a list of descriptive words, either in your lovely Small Garden Design notebook, or, as is more likely in this household at the moment, scribbled down on the back of a receipt which you then put in a ‘safe’ place, and absolutely knew for sure that you’d never throw it out it in a sudden fit of sweeping all the rubbish off cluttered kitchen counters.1
But don’t worry about that: the very exercise in itself of studying your space is enough to get you thinking, to remind you that an appreciation of where you are is one of the foundation stones of good design. ‘Sensitive to place’ is a phrase that’s long been applied to what I do; that basically refers to everything that I’m writing about right here.
By the way, going back to those two lists of words we’ve been examining, I wondered last time whether some of you might share your experience of doing this, and Carol (well done, Carol!) came up trumps:
“Thanks Jo, this was a very useful exercise. Quite hard to pin my words down - especially inside my garden which is long and narrow, and gives a completely different set of words depending on which end of it you stand! But here we go....
Beyond: River Thames, water, urban, buildings, rail bridge
Inside: green, plants, natural, high fence boundaries, river wall railings, copper swing seat
I want: foliage, flowers, beauty, naturalistic, peaceful, socialising
This led to an interesting trawl through Pinterest - funnily enough your Chelsea garden 2016 came up Jo! Along with 2 of Andy Sturgeon's gardens that are also on my road.
And the idea to look through our own photos of show gardens etc was great. I have added some of my own into the Pinterest board - good place to collate them.”
I’d really love it if you might be prepared to share your lists too: this is going to make for a very interesting conversation when we meet. Can I tempt anyone?
When I was putting this course together, every subject related to garden design was originally in it. Unity, scale, harmony, the kitchen sink… everything. But I decided that I’d strip out some of those things which will come up in different future courses, as although I want to teach you everything, I realise that if I start delving into the realms of unity, harmony and scale, for starters, then we’ll be here forever! Which I’d be happy about, but I know a lot of you are absolutely itching to get going. So there will be elements of these notions popping up here and there, but we will be looking at them more closely as other courses develop.
So let’s get down to it.
We’ll be going over all this in our Zoom on Tuesday, and I will have a much better go at recording it this time. Therefore, you honestly don’t need to do any of this now if you don’t feel ready, and if you’re anything like me, the combination of a written explanation and then a verbal one helps to make it all sink in, and also means that it shouldn’t be so daunting when you come to actually do this, whether it’s after Christmas or whether you even grab a minute this weekend: