Garden Design  - The New Garden

Moving into a newly built house can pose entirely new opportunities and challenges of its own for  all, from those with luxuriant green fingers to those with fingers the same color as when they were born.

As well as giving you a beautiful extension to your living space, a well designed and planted garden can give you privacy from your neighbors (using trees, screens and a trellis extension to the top of the fence for example) and help to sell your house for you when you eventually come to move on.

New House Problems

Builders tend to scrape the topsoil into a big pile when working on a new development, build the houses and then scrape the soil back again for the gardens. Despite the fact that you should be better off afterwards (what used to be under where the house should now be on the garden), it never seems to work that way.

New homes topsoil is generally difficult to work and uneven in quality and quantity.

Imagine a digger driving over wet ground, squashing in everything from nails and bricks to cement bags and wheelbarrows (I know some-one who dug an intact one up once) and leaving large ruts.

 This is then leveled by the application of topsoil of dubious quality. A profile gives a soil depth of between 2 and 30 cm, frequently (though not always) this is what you are up against.    

If you are in the happy position of having large quantities of good quality evenly spread topsoil (it does exist apparently), then consider yourself very lucky indeed.

Go to Soil types  to find out how to deal with this.

The lawn

Frequently seen as “negotiable” by builders, i.e. an area where they can cut costs and boost profits. If a sodded rear garden is not offered as standard, then ask for it. From the sales manager if the representative in the show house isn’t helpful. Do this before you reserve the house and don’t be shy! “Negotiation” often simply means “don’t ask doesn’t get”. laying a sodded lawn

The fun planning bit

There’s no need to be too detailed at this stage, a simple plan will suffice to mark approximate size and positions of features.

As time goes on you may decide to have a rose bed or house your National collection of Euphorbias in a particular place rather than the original idea of a herbaceous border. You may go for a patio instead of decking, but at least you will have a good idea of the kinds of things in each area. Think in terms of the use of the surface of how you will move around the garden and of vertical height.

Once you have an idea of what goes where, then prioritize the work. The order to aim for is;

1 - Hard landscaping - patio / walls / rockery / path  / water feature / decking etc

2 - Planting

3 - Turf, laid as carpet up to the edges of 1 and 2.

If the time scale is longer, then I suggest that you prioritize the planting of trees and shrubs (so that they can start growing away) and laying down a lawn so that at least the garden space becomes useable.

A lawn becomes essential if you have children and / or a dog. But avoid June / July and August if possible to plant trees or lay a lawn, they will need lots of water and attention if they are to survive over the summer.

If you are going to pay some one else to do the work try to avoid the spring and early summer months, as this is when every-one else wants the work done too. While you may be looking forwards to a new patio in April, it could well be into May or even June before you’re able to sit out on it. Try to get the work done over the winter months so that you can appreciate it as soon as possible.