Plan your garden

The five steps

Planning a garden is five steps, and they only work in this sequence: measure the space, decide what goes where, get the quantities for each part, put the jobs in order, and phase the spend if it is going to take more than one season.

Each step below links to the calculators that do the arithmetic for it, and to the layout plans if you would rather start from a shape than from a blank sheet.

1. Measure the space

Walk the garden with a tape and write down the boundary first: the overall width and depth, then where the fixed things are. Doors, drains, manholes, taps, the shed, the greenhouse — anything you are not moving.

• Break an odd shape into rectangles and measure each one. Two rectangles you can add up beat one L-shape you cannot measure.
• Note the levels, or at least which way water goes. A garden sloping towards the house changes what you can put where.
• Note which way the garden faces and where the sun sits at midday. The RHS advice is to put fruit, vegetables and cut flowers in full sun, and to run long beds north to south for even light.
• Measure the access as well — the side gate, the shared path, the gap past the house. A bulk bag, a pallet of slabs and a 2.4 m sleeper all have to reach the work.

A rough sketch is enough, at any scale. What matters is that every measurement is written down rather than remembered.

2. Decide what goes where

Start with the things you cannot move, then work outwards. The parts you use most want to be nearest the house, and the parts that need sun need the sunniest corner.

• Put the seating where the sun is, not where there is space left over. A patio in the shade of a fence gets used twice a year.
• Decide the paths before the planting. The RHS figures are at least 450 mm wide for a wheelbarrow, and 1 m if a wheelchair has to pass.
• Keep a bed you work from both sides under about 1.5 m wide — the RHS width figure — and give yourself a path rather than standing on the soil.
• Start from a layout that fits the shape of your garden. The layout plans cover four of the shapes real gardens have, and every dimension on them can be changed.

This does not need design software. Graph paper and a pencil beat a 3D picture you cannot measure off.

3. Get the quantities for each part

Once the plan is in rectangles, each one goes through the calculator for its material, and the results go into one list.

• The garden hub lists all seven garden calculators — turf, topsoil, decking, fence, gravel, paving and shed bases — in the garden plans and projects hub.
• Every calculator has a button that adds its result to the project list, and so does every plan and layout on this site. They all go into the same list, in the same browser.
• Take the quantities to the merchant, not the plan: decide the material after you know how much of it you need, because that is the number that decides whether one bulk bag or three is the sensible buy.
• Where a figure cannot come from a calculator, the page says so and names the source — or labels it a planning assumption. There are no invented quantities anywhere in this section.

One project list per stage of the work is easier to handle than one giant list for the whole garden.

4. Put the jobs in order

Order matters more than speed. Things that go in the ground go in before the things that sit on top of them, and the order is almost always the same.

• Clear, level and drainage first. Levels and water are the one thing you cannot cheaply change later, and everything else sits on them.
• Hard landscaping next: patios, paths and edges. Everything else butts up to them, so they set the levels.
• Anything buried goes in before surfaces: drainage runs, ducts and a pipe out to an outside tap. Lifting a finished patio to add one is a fortnight of work you did not need to do.
• Structures after that: shed base and shed, deck, fence and gate. A base needs firm, settled ground and room to work around it.
• Planting last — soil, turf and beds. Plants are what suffer most from being walked over while everything else is still going on.

The plans say the same thing in their own words: turf has to be laid within about 24 hours of arriving, and a gate is hung on a fence that has already stopped moving.

5. Phase the spend if it takes more than a year

Most gardens are built over two or three years, and that is normal. What matters is that each stage leaves the garden usable.

• Phase in the order above, not by which part you would like most. A patio laid before the drainage is a patio taken up again.
• Split the project list to match the phases, so you buy the quantities for the stage you are actually doing rather than stockpiling.
• There are no prices on this site, deliberately. Take the quantities to your merchant and let them quote — a figure from a page goes stale, and delivery changes it anyway.
• If money is tight, spend the first year on ground preparation. It is the cheapest stage, and it is the one that cannot be done later without undoing something else.

If a stage has to wait, finish the edges. A stopped job with a tidy edge is still a usable garden; one without is a mess for a year.

What the plan needs on it

• The boundary, measured, with each part as its own rectangle
• The fixed things: doors, drains, manholes, taps, the shed
• Levels, and which way water runs
• Which way it faces, and where the sun is at midday
• The access width — what a delivery has to get through
• What goes where, decided on paper before anything is bought
• The order of the work, and which stage you are paying for now