I have a confession to make.
I am a garden designer and yet my own garden was never actually formally designed as such.
This is despite the fact that to all intents and purposes it appears today to have been created by design, to anyone looking upon it well over a decade since my wife and I purchased our current home. However, before you take that opening mea culpa statement as an endorsement of the proposition that well designed gardens can always easily be accomplished via an improvised ‘as you go’ incremental growth approach over time without embarking on a proper documented design process let me clarify a few things.
Firstly, not everyone has the horticultural and design expertise, nor the luxury of time, or the appetite for experimentation risk that I have had over these years in the course of designing my garden on-the-fly in the way that I have. And when I say luxury of time, I am referring to time in the sense of longevity rather than suggesting I have plenty of free time up my sleeve on a weekly basis – I do run a small business and am also a father of boys after all, so most of my time in our garden these days is actually spent on my hands and knees copping twigs in the eye as I search for all manner of lost sporting equipment!
Secondly, when my wife and I (or to be more precise, our chosen financial institution) bought our quarter-acre property all those years ago it was clear that this would be our ‘forever house’, if you will indulge me the utterance of that cringe-worthy phrase for a moment. And before you jump to conclusions by assuming that our place must have been immaculate with a stunning garden to begin with, you would be sorely mistaken. In fact, to be frank, the whole place was a complete mess, both inside and out. “A renovators dream” as the seller’s agent described it at the time – and yes we (i.e. our financial institution) did spend a good wad of cash renovating the house before we moved in too. The outdoor space was an unmitigated disaster zone too, full of privet and other weed trees completely blocking sunlight and views, not to mention that dreaded passionfruit-vine clambering everywhere (the invasive rootstock that is not the good bit otherwise known as the grafted fruiting scion!). The yard was also bereft of any decent landscaping to speak of. All in all the garden itself was a “renovators dream” as well.
But the place, as they say, ‘had good bones’.
Because if you were someone with an eye for design, you could see beyond all of these imperfections and problems and identify that the fundamentals were sound. First and foremost, the block had a great aspect. That is, both the house and the garden were north-facing with ideal solar access which would only be enhanced once all the pernicious weed trees were removed – unfortunately I’m still pulling out the blasted passionfruit-vine until this day but that’s another story which I’m sure many of you can relate to. I regularly plead with nurseries to stop selling these damn grafted varieties! Alas my protests seem to be falling on deaf-ears but perhaps the weight of numbers is required, so I implore anyone reading this who suffers the same affliction to be just as vocal in their complaints as I. Please, let’s slay this monster of a weed for all time, or at the very least prevent others from introducing it into their own neighbourhoods if it isn’t already there. And I say ‘neighbourhoods’ because this proliferating beastly triffid has absolutely no respect for boundary fences! But I digress.
In addition to the fabulous aspect, the other thing our property had in abundance, once the obstructing pest trees were lopped, was stunning views of the Brindabella Ranges which I have described in more detail in my other blog article Why Block It When You Can Borrow It if you’re interested in reading more on that.
The topography of the main front garden was also sloped downwards towards north, so I knew it would be absolutely perfect for that mini-fruit tree orchard I always dreamed of having, as well as affording enough space for veggie-gardens. It also possessed the ideal shaded spot in the back garden for a spacious chicken-run to boot. Plus some lawn space under deciduous shade trees which provided room for small kids to play and a pleasant spot to shelter from the summer heat. Although, our boys aren’t quite so small anymore and the lawn now has some permanent dead patches thanks to unrelenting cricket and footy action but that is easily fixed once the aforementioned progeny eventually move out of home!
So I knew I had plenty of time, but also knew I had to put practicality at the forefront of my design thinking by planting lots of hardy robust shrubs and groundcovers that could take a good daily thrashing from adventurous little feet. I was also resigned to the fact that I would have to postpone ideas of any significant redesign or new hard-landscaping (potential decks, pergolas etc) for a number of years until our front garden ceased being used as a sports-oval. Needless to say, after single handedly supporting Canberra’s entire glazing industry all through Covid, all of our windows are now protected by electric roller-shutters that I can deploy as an anti-cricket-ball-force-field at the push of a button now. And after shelling out a king’s ransom for those there’s no money left for any further landscaping until the boys move out of home anyway!
I also knew that my own blank slate of a garden would provide me with an educational opportunity that no degree or certificate in horticulture or garden design could ever supply. In a sense, my own place has been a ‘trial-garden’ for all sorts of weird and wonderful plants, many of which were rescued and transplanted from clients’ gardens so that I could really test the theories as to what will and won’t survive in Canberra’s unforgiving climate and, more importantly, what will and won’t survive my sons’ stomping feet. Occasionally the results surprised even me – I managed to keep an avocado tree alive outside for a lot longer than anticipated for instance and many plants that aren’t hardy groundcovers will happily recover from being trodden on by little humans whose eyes have yet to develop the discerning ability to differentiate between things that dad is relaxed about them treading on verses those things he’s not quite so relaxed about. Sadly that particular stage of development is still yet to arrive even into their teenage years, and the relative weight and destruction of said treading has of course increased somewhat too – but my plants are bloody tough it must be said!
This blank slate also allowed me to plant and grow a variety of shrubs and trees (both natives and exotics) from scratch which gave me full pruning control so that I could dictate the perfect heights required to balance privacy screening against the backdrop of the borrowed landscapes and solar access. Although still not a perfect garden by any means, this is the primary reason my garden can now proudly claim to be well-designed in spite of the fact that it was never actually mapped out on a computer or even sketched on a notepad beforehand. I just had the luxury of time to observe, grow and prune deliberately in such a way that this fine-tuning was able to be achieved with diligence and patience.
The main point I am trying to make here, and the point of this entire blog article to be truthful, is that a garden can still become a well-designed garden over time in the absence of a detailed documented design process – but this is no easy thing to do! To be fair, even I have made some mistakes along the way and have had to adjust things here and there by making hard decisions to remove or relocate certain plants and structures etc in order to ultimately succeed. And by conducting this longitudinal-study within my own garden I have essentially used it as a guinea pig for experimentation safe in the knowledge that whatever I break in the process I can fix. This has helped me no end in constructing designs for my clients, particularly when it comes to planting the right plants in the right locations and providing the ongoing care and pruning instructions in order to avoid mistakes and problems I have tested myself.
There is no substitute for lived-experience and no amount of book-learning or lecture attending will ever provide you with the weaponry one can only acquire from the hard lessons learned out in the field – whether that field be horticulture, garden design or any other vocation in life. That is why my garden designs are deliberately simple and uncomplicated with a focus on building upon the ‘good-bones’ of a garden with tried and tested plants which are proven to be robust enough for Canberra’s extreme climate and heavy soils (and heavy feet!). It is also why I provide ongoing pruning advice and maintenance because I know from my own experience that achieving that critical balance between blocking unsightly views or screening privacy exposure vis a vis inviting in that desired sunlight and those welcome borrowed landscapes requires more than a garden design that looks good on paper. It requires thoughtful plant selection and judicious and strategic pruning over years to actually realise that balance in the real world.
Therefore to return to the title of this blog, being of course a shameless misquote from the Great Bard’s eponymous play Hamlet, the answer to the question ‘to design or not to design’ is a resounding YES.
Always create your garden by design and if you don’t have the luxury of your own horticultural knowledge and design expertise along with the time, patience and appetite for risk to do so yourself then you would be wise to engage a human garden designer to advise and draft it all up for you properly based on their own training, education and actual ‘lived-experience’.
*I have underlined the word human, because I have also written another blog on AI and garden design entitled ‘Robots In My Garden’ which you might enjoy reading too as it highlights the limitations of this technology whilst acknowledging its usefulness as another valuable tool when paired with human expertise.