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Hi,
I am Rachel Mathews from Successful Garden Design. In this short video, I am going to
show you the difference that design can make to a garden. Now if you’re like most people,
you’ve probably been led to believe by books, and magazines and garden centers that it’s
the plants and features that really make a garden look wonderful, but that’s only true
to a degree. Plants and features are the finishing touch to a great garden, they’re no the
starting point. Unless you have a good design structure in place first, you can spend all
the money in the world and you won’t achieve really good results. In fact, I’d go as
far as saying the more money you spend on your things for the garden, the more cluttered
and disjointed the garden is going to look. Now as a professional garden designer, I am
bound to say that design is the most important thing, but I want you to see this for yourself.
So I am going to show you some example gardens, and then you can make up your own mind as
to just how much difference design can make to a garden. So let’s start by looking at
a fairly typical front garden. But if we look at what we did with the design, just a very
simple, clean shape put in with a few cobbles, has made a tremendous difference. It’s transformed
something that’s just a regular shaped lawn and you’ve got something to look at that
is complimentary to the front, it doesn’t need to be anything wildly fancy, but just
a simple shape makes a dramatic difference. And then if we look at this property here,
it just got box standard paving. If you put a little bit of design into it, here is what
you can achieve. Now you know, if we just use decking or we just use paving on its own
it wouldn’t have had the wow factor that mixing of the materials in a design way achieves.
And then this garden in Spain, you can see the wall is quite an angle here and that really
is the most dominant feature. Now with a little bit of design put in, by rendering the walls,
and creating these planters, it helps take your eye away from this wall here. And you
can see a few years later when the planting is established even more, you barely notice
the sloping side wall of the garden. And then here is it from another angle. And the design
is what makes it interesting. You know if we just pop the plants in, without having
the design shape in place, it really wouldn’t have been anywhere near as effective. Now
if we look at this garden with the awkward angles both on this wall and this wall, here
is the difference design makes to that. So if we just put in a square deck or patio,
it really wouldn’t have achieved what putting in a good design can do. Now this garden very
typical with just standard paving, and lawn and a few plants. Now the clients wanted a
minimalist garden, but even so, design does make a big difference even with minimalist.
You can suddenly see it all comes together just by the shapes we’ve used. And again,
when you’re dealing with changes in level like this garden, it’s not very exciting,
but when you put design in, you can actually change the shapes and positions of the retaining
walls. And do all sorts of things with it. Again this here comes to design shapes and
materials. And in this garden quite big on two different levels. Someone had already
attempted on doing some landscaping with this path, but it didn’t really pull the garden
together very well. So again putting in a design shape, a main lawn, and then putting
in the landscaping, suddenly makes a dramatic difference. And this simple cottage garden
is nice enough in the summer when the lavenders were flowering, but the rest of the year it
looked dull and uninteresting, but once the design is done, then it all come together.
And just the few little design tips and tricks that are used to pull this together, makes
all the difference. The long, narrow garden all lawn. Now the client didn’t want any
lawn, they wanted completely low maintenance, and you can start to see it’s getting more
interesting. And then a year or two later, when the plants have filled up, it all really
comes together. But it’s coming together because of the underlying design shapes that
he used within the garden. You see it needs the design layout because the planting is
pinching in the key areas which makes the garden more interesting and wider. And these
clients wanted a modern look garden. And they had a driveway running right the way down
the side here to get to the garages at the back. So it was important the we help screen
that and make it more interesting. So these design elements that you’re seeing here
which i’ll explain more in the next video is really what makes a big difference when
you’re wanting to create a stunning garden. It’s not all down to the planting, the planting
is the finishing touch. So hope I’ve been able to demonstrate just how important design
is in a garden. In the next video, I am going to show you what you can do yourself without
needing to hire a professional garden designer.