Learn to draw to plan your garden. I often hear from beginning gardeners that they need to know how to draw to plan their garden. No, you don’t! A rough sketch is a tool for thinking. You can draw lines, circles, and text. You need to see where you will move, look, and sit. Remember that this sketch is for your eyes only, so don’t worry about it being perfect.
Sketch the footprint of the garden or yard on a piece of paper. This can be a rough shape and proportions. Include buildings, fences, large trees, or paths that you plan to leave as is. Otherwise, your elements will float in space. 3. Use little squares or circles to represent areas that you plan to use for seating, beds, or lawn. Move these around on the paper until you make a decision. You will get a feel for how elements placed in your space will make your yard feel larger or smaller.
Plan the garden from an aerial view and forget to think about how your garden will feel on the ground. For example, I once designed a square perennial border on paper that had perfect proportion, but the interior path was too narrow. To solve this problem, walk through your sketch on paper. Ask yourself if the path is wide enough or if there is enough seating. Do you turn a tight corner?
Struggle with scale in your drawing. Objects look the same size. One trick that you can use is to draw an area that you know the size of. For example, I want a seating area that will fit two chairs in it. Then compare all other elements to this known size. It is worth spending 15 minutes on your sketch to get scale right. This can save you from building something that is way too big or too small. Alternatively, if you are trying to decide between two designs, draw each on a separate piece of tracing paper. Place each over the original plan to see which one works better.
Assume that your drawing is an art form. Planning a garden takes time and iterations. As you work on your plan, you will begin to move beyond your initial ideas to refine your garden to meet your needs. Don’t worry if your drawing is not pretty. In fact, if you treat your paper sketch as a learning process and not a final plan, you will find that your confidence will grow. You will make fewer mistakes in your final garden build.