Garden Design

HAVE YOU EVER SAT—just sat—in your garden, thinking, looking around, taking in the view? Not really looking at anything in particular, but thinking about anything and everything to do with your garden, asking yourself, “what if I planted a tree there? ”, or, “if I moved those slabs, what would I put in their place? ”. Whether you were aware of doing this or not is, in a way, immaterial because what you have been doing is visually making this piece of land your own, and coming up with thoughts and ideas for improving your outside space. Welcome then—whether it be for the first or fiftieth time—to the world of garden design. The concept of garden design is nothing new: when Man first cultivated land, and enclosed his arable crops and livestock, he was delineating usable space to its best advantage. This may not be design as we understand it now (obviously, aesthetics were of no practical value then), but he was making spatial relationships based on need. He was designing his environment to suit his individual daily, monthly, and yearly requirements. Since that time, the process of creating a garden has evolved according to style, fashion, prowess, skill, aptitude, wealth, travel, experimentation, and history, but it can all be distilled down to that first need. In essence, it is all about a human being exerting some level of control over his or her own surroundings. And, really, that is all garden design is today.