Garden designers can be invaluable allies in creating the outdoor living space of your dreams. A good garden designer can bring your ideas and inspirations to life using various design techniques they are trained in.
Personal recommendations can be an excellent starting point when searching for a garden designer Adelaide based, while further exploring courses offered through colleges, universities, and private education providers like National Design Academy can also be very beneficial.
Designing a garden
When planning their garden design, clients should begin by considering what sort of space they envision for themselves – for instance, do they envision brightly planted pots by the front door or perhaps sprawling borders full of perennials? Additionally, it’s important to consider how their desired garden should appear during different times of the year.
Garden designers should conduct a site survey of their client’s outdoor space, measuring dimensions and identifying existing structures, access, and drainage needs. Knowing about the soil type in a garden will allow the designer to select plants best suited to its climate.
Some garden designers offer a design-and-build service in which they take full responsibility for the design and build projects, including finding contractors to execute construction. It can help keep costs low; however, you must find someone you can work well with – finding an experienced designer may make all the difference here!
Layout
As part of any garden layout design, it’s crucial to consider the space and light requirements for plants. Most vegetables need at least six to eight hours of full sun per day for optimal growth – although this can be challenging in an urban space with limited light exposure. A garden designer Adelaide journal is an effective way to track pest infestations and crop successes or failures.
Your garden should serve a specific function. Zoning is key in ensuring it can fulfil multiple purposes – clever sloping garden ideas may even come in handy here! It will divide your outdoor living spaces into areas for vegetable production, flower gardens and outdoor living spaces.
Aim for a ratio of 1/3 hardscape elements (paths, patios and deck ideas) to 2/3 softscape elements such as lawns, beds and borders. Also helpful is including a sun map in your site inventory to show which parts of the garden get sunlight throughout the day.
Planting
Garden designers can assist in choosing and planting various species of plants, creating structures to support or frame your plantings, and adding textures, colours, and scents for an immersive sensory experience. Furthermore, they will consider your USDA hardiness zone and local climate conditions before conducting site analyses to see how much sun or shade the garden gets.
When designing a garden, starting early is key to ensuring its success. Starting early allows plants to flourish before summer heat sets in and helps avoid working in wet weather that could damage equipment.
Some designers prefer to start designing structural elements like retaining walls and paths before planting to keep costs under control and decrease stress levels. It would also be wise to save costly projects like deck installation after creating the garden.
Maintenance
Professional garden designers take an objective approach when considering the outdoor spaces of properties, using ideas and preferences of their owners but adapting them in ways that improve the overall design of gardens, often by making hard choices the owner would rather avoid.
Before undertaking any landscape works on a new project, an excellent garden designer will conduct a full site survey and analysis. This process involves inspecting the existing site and surrounding area in terms of geology, soil type and moisture content and considering geologic features like genius loci. Furthermore, a review of local climate conditions is conducted, as well as an evaluation of how best to adapt proposed designs for durability, ease of care and maintenance purposes.