Garden design made easy - New build gardens

ABOVE (click on gallery image to view larger picture): This town garden was designed as a year round space for relaxing and entertaining. The planting consists of Ligustrum, Buxus hedging, Magnolia grandiflora and Ateli chathamica. A bespoke fireplace is combined with a large outdoor dining table and Dedon all-weather furniture dedon.de.

Matt James Garden designer

A new build garden provides a blank canvas that offers many exciting possibilities, but it can be daunting too as the challenge is slimming down all the features you’d like into something that will work in the available space.

You need patience with a new garden. It takes time to evolve, so draw up a definite plan to help the project move along.

Start by identifying your family’s needs. Make sure you get the opinion of everyone who will use the space, including children. Once everyone’s had their turn, organise your jottings into what’s most important and then play around with ideas. You need to be mindful of money at this stage, but don’t let a tight budget stifle your creativity.

Click on one of the options below or scroll down to find out more...

• Choosing the right design
• Marking out the layout
• Drawing up a plan
• Cultivating your lawn
• Dealing with yellow lawns
• Creating planting schemes

Choosing the right design

A cottage-style garden usually looks out of place with a new build house, while an ultra-modern design seems slightly self-conscious. Instead choose a look that is contemporary with subtle traditional elements. For example, use paving materials in a modern way, such as uniform sawn sandstone pavers rather than random rectangular slabs with irregular edges. Concrete and cement render materials might seem too much in a new build space, but they can work, particularly if they have a delicate, textured finish. Contemporary natural cedar decking is appropriate too. Essentially it’s all about hints and nuances rather than adhering to every principle of one particular style.

Get inspiration for planting and design details by trawling through books and magazines. Try to find case studies with houses that are similar to yours – it’s all well and good collecting photos of classic cottage gardens, but consider how it will look against brand new red brick.
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Marking out the layout

Create a scale outline of your garden on paper and see how different size shapes work, allocating a role to each one as you go – for example, one for the lawn, another for a seating area. Square or rectangular shapes work best and make great use of space in smaller, boxy gardens. Oval shapes are good too. Avoid fiddly curves as they create unusable corners and are difficult to mow if they’re in a lawn – plus cutting materials to fit them is tricky.

If you’re not keen on the look of the first layout you design, or you don’t think it will be practical – for example, if your space is too small for some shapes to work in the area available – try again with another layout, perhaps twisting the shapes through 45 degrees, making one bigger or cutting one out entirely. Keep testing different options, recording what you’ve done each time until you’re happy. Once you’ve found a solution, mark out the actual size in your garden, using marker paint or a bottle of dry sand to see if it works in situ.
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ABOVE: (Before) The gardens to the rear of this row of new build homes had been designed to form small square spaces, which were reached via steep steps up from a back yard behind each of the houses; (After) The owners of this house removed 20 tonnes of soil to create a gentle slope on three levels, which are each paved with Chinese granite slabs – for similar paving, try visionnaturalstone.co.uk. Landscaping by greenstonelandscapes.com.

Drawing up a plan

If you have a large new garden, don’t tackle it all at once, especially if your budget is tight – do one area at a time. The temptation is to have something – anything – to show for a garden, hence the common mistake people make of adding out-of-proportion island beds in the middle of lawns and narrow borders hugging boundary fences. Hold back and stick to your master plan.

Invest in the hard landscaping first: walls and fencing (especially if they’re retaining walls), the patio, then primary paths – in that order. Features such as pools and pergolas come next (or at the same time if they’re integrated). Leave accessories like sculptures and shade sails until the end, unless you have privacy problems.

The hard landscaping creates the layout of a garden and helps to form its structure. Don’t scrimp here, as making changes later is annoying (and expensive) – when a garden’s full of plants you might compromise its usability and, in the worst case, safety.
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Cultivating your lawn

Lawns are budget-friendly and serve the need for play space as well as being adult territory. Bear in mind that your garden has been the stomping ground for builders at work with machinery – the result is exposed subsoil mixed with bricks and rubble under the lawn, all compacted like concrete. In order to remedy this, property developers often import new topsoil and spread it thinly over the surface, laying the turf on top, but you can also solve this problem.

Digging over the entire garden is impractical and usually unnecessary, so concentrate your efforts where the lawn, beds and borders are planned. Cultivate these areas, removing any rubble and forking in plenty of compost to improve the soil’s structure. It is back-breaking work, so take your time – it doesn’t need to be all done in a weekend.

You can re-lay the turf – but if some spots look particularly bad or all that digging sounds like too much hard work, create a ‘container corner’ with pots instead where you can choose the perfect compost for your plants, no matter what’s underneath. Raised beds made from oak sleepers or rendered blocks are worth considering for larger spaces – they make an interesting design element and provide a good opportunity to grow your own vegetables.
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ABOVE: (Before) This new build detached property’s back garden was an uninspiring space with a lawn that was patchy and full of weeds; (After) The homeowners chose to lay artificial turf, opting for LAZYLAWN by Evergreens UK from lazylawn.co.uk. It looks like the real thing but is low-maintenance and remains lush all year.

Dealing with yellow lawns

If you’ve just moved in and are struggling with a patchy, yellow and weedy lawn, your problems are almost certainly down to the rubble buried beneath. If you don’t want to replace the lawn with gravel, there are three options open to you.

You can relieve the compaction by spiking deeply every foot or so with a fork (or a wheeled spiker from garden hire specialists), then rake hard with a metal spring-tine rake to remove dead grass and moss before top dressing with a thin layer of compost. Next, sow a super-tough grass seed blend over the top of the compost, raking in the seed lightly with a rake – all good garden centres have lots of different seed to choose from. Scatter seed over the top of any remaining good grass.

Alternatively, dig out all the rubble and polluted soil, then incorporate plenty of good compost, or import quality topsoil and re-seed (a back-breaking job if you want a large lawn).

Your third option is to lay all-weather artificial turf. Artificial turf can be simply plastic matting, but many examples on the market now look really natural with ‘blades’ of grass in different colours and sizes to mimic the look of the real thing. Artificial turf isn’t just low maintenance – it’s useful for children’s play areas and perfect in gloomy gardens where real grass struggles to grow. Unlike traditional grass, you can use it all year round too, whatever the weather.

Expect to pay between £20-£30 per m² for an authentic-looking artificial turf, depending on the colour, pile, height and texture. Installation costs vary, depending on the ‘foundations’ – you can’t lay artificial turf on bare soil or over an existing lawn. Visit artificiallawn.co.uk, evergreensuk.com and asgoodasgrass.co.uk for their ranges.
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Creating planting schemes

New build gardens tend to lack character. There are no plants to create that mature been-there-for-ever look – so should you buy large specimens to start with? And when and what should you buy?

Most new build gardens don’t offer any surprises – everything is visible at once. Introducing semi-mature shrubs will create interest immediately. Shrubs, particularly evergreen varieties, are structural plants, packed with plenty of form. I think of them as big, solid, reliable anchors in a garden, defining one space from another and helping to knit the whole picture together.

Make taller varieties your first choice for year-round privacy and screening. The Strawberry tree, Eucryphia ‘Nymansay’ and stately Magnolia grandiflora are evergreen heavyweights that work well.

Not all plants are worth buying as big specimens, however. I’d only choose evergreen trees, shrubs, conifers, palms, hedging and tall bamboos for instant screening. Don’t waste your money on huge roses, annuals, ferns and herbaceous perennials like geraniums, heucheras and sedums because small ones bulk up rapidly. The same applies to most climbers that tend to roar away in a season or two.

Prices depend on many factors, including origin, maturity and how difficult they are to grow. As a guide, a 3m (10ft) bamboo will cost £60-£80, while a 1.5m (5ft) standard screening shrub like Photinia, Aucuba or Olearia should cost no more than £60. They need more TLC to establish well, so choose a good nursery, preferably one that specialises in big plants.
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WORDS MATT JAMES; MAIN IMAGE A HYDE PARK GARDEN BY KATE GOULD; COPYRIGHT PETER BAISTOW; PHOTOGRAPHS REPORTAGE, EVERGREENS UK (evergreensuk.com)
All prices and stockists correct at time of publishing
Featured in the January 2012 issue of Real Homes