Drawing The Garden Plan 

What we have just been looking at are some of the principles of design. What you now need to do is combine these with your own ideas and translate them into a finished plan. The materials you will need to do this are a copy of the site plan that you prepared earlier on tracing paper, pencil, rubber, ruler or set square, and a simple child's compass.  

The grid you used to work out the site drawing can also be used to work out the design. Stick the grid down and lay a copy of your site plan over this so that the graph paper shows through the tracing paper and lines up with the house. It can be sensible to start the design of a paved area from the corner of the house or the edge of the French windows or patio doors.  

Thus for a terrace area you can work out the paving pattern over the grid by allocating one, or a number of squares, to each slab depending on your scale. In this way you can build up a pattern of different kinds of paving, say a combination of precast slabs and brick, as well as other features such as raised beds, built-in seating, a barbecue or a pool. 

There is no need to always think of a patio being square with the house, you can sometimes turn the whole pattern to an angle of, say, 45°. This will immediately lead the eye away from the shape of a rectangular plot and by using diagonal lines (the longest distance across a rectangle) you help to provide a greater feeling of space. 

As I said earlier, do draw the design roughly to begin with, allocating space in general terms. Don't try to finish the scheme right away, leave it if you get stuck, get the family to look at it, and slowly the positioning of features will become firmer as the composition is honed down to a clean, sensible pattern that will work in both visual and practical terms. 

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