Many people assume that improving a garden means commissioning a full garden design. Detailed drawings, computer visuals, construction specifications, and an overhaul of everything already there.

For the vast majority of gardens, that is not what is needed. It is also not what most people are actually asking for when they use the phrase.

What a planting plan really is

A planting plan is, in essence, another word for a concept design.

When I produce a planting plan, I am designing the concept of the garden. Where necessary, that includes where paving, paths and walls should be positioned, and other hard landscaping elements such as steps, arches and pergolas. It does not show the detailed levels and construction drawings for those elements, but those are often better discussed with the contractor on site.

What the concept design, or planting plan, does show in detail is where the beds should be and what shape they should take. What the garden should feel like as you move through it. Where the eye should rest. What holds the space together in February when nothing is flowering. Where screening is needed and where openness matters more.

The plan then sets out every plant, in position, with quantities and sizes, so the thing can actually be built.

In other words, a planting plan and a concept design are far closer to each other than most people assume. The difference is largely in the name.

So what does a full detailed design add?

A fully detailed design adds the technical and the visual layers. Level changes and falls, construction detail for walls, steps and terraces, drainage specification and materials schedules. It can also include 3D renders of the finished garden, and a virtual walk-through if you want to see the space before any work begins.

That matters when retaining structures are involved, or where planning permission is required.

It matters not at all in a flat suburban garden where the patio is already down, the boundaries are in place, and the problem is that the beds have never worked.

Which describes most gardens

This is the part that goes unsaid in most discussions of the question. The majority of Irish gardens I am asked to look at do not need construction drawings. They need the space thought about properly and the planting resolved with real knowledge behind it.

For those gardens, a concept design with a detailed planting plan is not a compromise. It is the right piece of work, and the money goes into design thinking and into plants rather than into documentation nobody will ever build from.

When you do need more than that

I will tell you if you do. Some gardens genuinely require technical input, and pretending otherwise would waste your money rather than save it.

Where a project needs structural detail, level surveys or drainage engineering, those come from a contractor, engineer or other professional, and I am glad to work alongside them. My part is the design direction and the planting. Their part is making sure what gets built stands up.

What you receive

Whichever scale the project takes, the planting plan is what you end up holding. It is drawn to be followed by whoever does the work, whether that is you on a Saturday morning or a gardener who has never spoken to me.

• A scaled layout with every plant drawn in position
• The shape and position of beds and planting areas
• A full plant list with names, quantities and suggested sizes
• A photograph of every plant, so you know exactly what is arriving
• Spacing and positioning guidance, including mature sizes
• Notes on what to plant first and what can wait
• Optional plant sourcing, delivered to your door and labelled to match the plan

 

Many people find the photographs the most useful part. A plant list is a list of names until you can see what you are getting.

You do not have to decide this before getting in touch

You do not have to work out which you need. It is the first thing I work out.

I offer one service, planting-led garden design, and how far it extends depends on what the garden needs. Sometimes that is a single border. Sometimes it is every bed in the garden. Sometimes the layout is reconsidered first and the planting designed into it afterwards, and sometimes construction and level details are needed. The scope is settled during the consultation, when I have seen the space, rather than guessed at beforehand.

Where it happens

The work is the same wherever your garden is. What changes is how I survey it.

In Cork and the surrounding area I can visit, walk the garden with you and take my own photographs and measurements. That also means I can take on established gardens where the question is what stays, what goes and what gets replaced, a judgement that needs to be made standing in the garden.

Anywhere else in Ireland the work is remote. You send photographs, measurements and a description, and we go through the garden together on a call. I will tell you exactly what I need and how to photograph it.

The short version

A planting plan is not the budget alternative to a garden design. For most gardens it is the design, with the construction documentation left out because there is nothing to construct.

If you are not sure which your garden needs, that is the normal position to be in. Tell me about your garden, where it is and what is not working, and I will tell you what it actually requires.

Further reading: what a planting plan is and whether you need one, what a planting plan costs in Ireland, and Planting by Numbers, which sets out what the finished plan contains.