Where To Find Inspiration for Your Garden Makeover
Quite possibly the most exciting part of planning a garden makeover is finding inspiration for the design. Here are our top tips for seeking ideas and turning your garden dreams into a workable design.
-
Visit as many outdoor spaces as you can. Try to evaluate each one in terms of how they look and how they make you feel.
-
Watch TV Garden Makeover programmes - be warned though, very often the pricing on those shows is inaccurate, still, they’re great for generating ideas.
-
Read books and magazines. Not just gardening related ones either. Your favourite novel may well summon up a mental picture of your favourite garden. This blog lists a few examples of literary gardens. https://arapahoelibraries.org/blogs/post/8-famous-literary-gardens/
-
Look online at portfolios of work from your local landscapers and garden designers.
-
Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook are great places to find ideas for your garden makeover.
-
Art galleries and museums are surprisingly inspirational. Not just for their representations of actual gardens, but for styling ideas too (minimalist, traditional, art-deco, colourful, muted, oriental etc etc etc)
-
Dig out your holiday pictures from through the years. Is there a particular place that you’d like your garden to evoke memories of?
Visiting Outdoor Spaces Can Inspire Your Garden Makeover
A private garden should be an amazing space tailored precisely to suit your own likes, dislikes, hobbies and interests. It’s rare that a personal paradise is an exact copy of some other garden, however, there’s no reason why it cannot be inspired by somewhere you admire and enjoy.
Narrowing your choices down however, can be quite a task. Working with a garden designer is a great help but there’s no substitute for gathering as much information as you can before briefing any landscaping professional.
Visiting other gardens is a great start. Try not to be influenced by modern trends, after all, they will change several times during the lifetime of your new garden. Look instead for enduring features that will adapt well to your own plot.
-
Do you prefer organic curves or geometric shapes?
-
Bright, hues or carefully co-ordinated neutral tones?
-
Classical features or modern additions?
-
Many plants or minimalistic, architectural planting?
-
Would you like your garden to reflect a culture you admire? Moorish gardens are beautiful, as are Japanese style gardens and Mediterranean gardens.
Remember, stately homes are not the only gardens that are open to the public. It’s usually easy to access parks, landscaped town centres, roof terraces, tea gardens, seaside promenades…the list goes on.
Try to spend some time in a variety of spaces. How does each one make you feel? Are you most at home when you feel immersed in nature, or do you prefer the clean lines and predictability of paving and decking. How do you feel about being near water? Perhaps a garden pond or a pool would be a superb addition to your own plot.
Your next important job is to record all of your thoughts and feelings so that you can evaluate them.
Creating A Garden Mood Board to share Ideas with Your Garden Designer
A garden designer is someone who has a talent for turning inspiration into practical garden plans. They are trained in presenting plans in such a way that landscapers can accurately bring a vision to life.
Garden design involves much more than drawing maps and pictures. It’s important to consider things like soil type, topography, drainage, building regulations and planning laws so that the finished garden will be both durable and legal. Think of a garden designer as an outdoor architect. You wouldn’t consider building a house without architects plans, and you shouldn’t consider building a garden without calling upon the expertise of a qualified garden designer.
Before your garden designer can begin to think about the layout and styling of your new garden, they need to know what you would like your plot to look like and how you would like to spend your time outdoors. For that, a garden moodboard is a very helpful tool.
A moodboard is essentially a collection of images that encapsulate the way you’d like your space to feel. They’re super for interior design as well as for garden design and creating them can be wonderfully insightful.
Pinterest is a wonderful tool for creating boards that can be shared with your garden designer, or, if you prefer a more hands-on approach, why not spend an afternoon cutting and sticking into a notebook?
A smorgasbord of garden ideas
RHS Flower shows offer an amazing opportunity to see a really diverse range of gardens all in one place. But if you’re not one for crowds and you want to get a good view of garden designers’ work, there’s one webpage that we highly recommend for inspiration.
The APL is a trade association that quietly champions the creation of real gardens for real people. APL Garden Designers and Landscapers are some of the most talented people in the land and in order to gain and retain their APL memberships they MUST work to the highest possible standards of craftsmanship and integrity.
If you are seeking inspiration for your garden makeover, we highly recommend taking a closer look at this webpage.
You may also like these articles