How to Create a Garden Concept Plan

When designing a concept plan for your garden consider how you can make the transition from garden to house as smooth and pleasant as possible. If you have French windows or patio doors and you are not able to change the door, you can design the garden so that the view from the windows is enticing. Consider a concept plan when working with natural features or obstacles to make a garden seem natural and enticing.

Things You'll Need
Paper (Graph is suggested)
Colored pencils
Camera

Instructions

1. Experiment with ideas on paper. Make lots of copies of your initial survey sketch and tryout ideas in pencil. Decide on the most important of your requirements and sacrifice the others, allowing a few generous spaces in your garden rather than too many tiny ones. This will make the garden less fussy and ultimately give more pleasure.

2. Use photographs. Your sketch plan is useful for getting a feeling of the balance of the different areas within the space, but will not give you a picture of the three-dimensional reality of the garden. For this it is useful to look at your photographs and try out some of your ideas on them.

3. Plan for plant growth. One of the most difficult things is imagining how the plants will look when they have matured and grown, particularly trees and shrubs. This is where your overlay and photographs can help. If you know a shrub is eventually going to become 7 ft (2 m) tall, you can see what effect this will have on the garden plan in a few years' time

4. Alter existing features. You might want to move a path nearer to a fence, or further from it, to provide a wider border, or take it diagonally across the garden to create two separate spaces. Diagonal lines across a narrow garden can make it look wider. You can move a small shed, instead of getting rid of it, to a place where it is less obtrusive and can be concealed by climbers or shrubs.

5. Create a feeling of space. Small gardens can be made to seem much more spacious by designing in diagonals. A path running diagonally from one side of the garden to the other and then back again at an angle will divide the garden into three. The spaces made in this way can be separated by tall or low planting and will make the garden seem larger because the eye cannot see exactly where the garden ends and is intrigued by the planting between. Arches create a feeling of space by implying that there is more happening beyond them. A small gate under the arch will enhance the feeling of entering into a different domain.

6. Plan ahead. If your basic framework works well, later on you will be able to change how you use it. For example, if you build a brick sandpit, butting on to a brick-edged lawn, as the children grow older, you will be able to exchange sand for water and have a garden

Source: http://www.ehow.com/how_4460854_create-garden-concept-plan.html