The Structural Design decisions used for the Broad Design on the Proposed Design Layer were:-

The Lawn was to be replaced with 1" diameter pea-shingle (1/3" pea-shingle will attach to your shoes if they are muddy causing one's better half to complain about them coming into the house) installed on top of Plantex ( a geotextile used to stop the pea-shingle from integrating with the sandy soil underneath) to provide a very low maintenance ground cover. Weeds that grow in that shingle can be easily pulled out by hand since they have no soil into which they can put their roots.

The first important design principle is that when the garden has been designed and constructed that the person or persons responsible for it's maintenance can then maintain the new garden in the time allowed per week or fortnight.

It is a corallory that they are also given the finance for hard or soft landscape repair/replacement each year.Two half circles (their edge retaining walls to be built of wood 18" high) were used to break up the view with the one nearest to have a tall plant at the drive end and low plant at the other end and the reverse for the other half circle. These tall plants and existing trees also provide the focal points for that design principle. This was to make sure that viewing the garden from either the road or through the house window - that

The second most important design principle of mystery could be followed -that not all the garden can be seen from any one point.

This then should tempt the owner to go outside to see the remainder; or the public on the road to shift their position to do the same.

The half circles would use the Area Shape design principle by persuading people to keep their eyes on the garden by following the curves from the left to the right and back to the front of the property.

The Low Maintenance Garden Style chosen was used in the whole of this Structural Plan for this front garden not just a part of it. In choosing a teapot, you would not have a georgian style handle on a modern style pot with an avant-garde spout!!!

Use of a single Garden Style in one area is the Third important design principle.

See the Garden Design section for further design principle information. The Diagonal Grid Layer was used to link the proposed structure in scale to the house by using the width of the front window for a square grid and these green lines shown were the diagonals of those squares.

The areas defined by these grids then obey a scale broad design relationship of the garden with the house; the lines can be used as edges and multiples of each area can be used for a bed/patio/pond/lawn/etc thus using the Fourth design principle of scale.

The Fifth Landscaping Proportion design principle of a 1/3 each for hard landscaping (raised beds) lawns (pea-shingle instead) and soft landscaping (plants)

has been aided by the use of ivy as a groundcover overflowing the raised bed nearest the house to provide ground cover between the beds.

It was decided to use the diagonals rather than the squares so that the focus of the eye from the public on the road would be deflected from seeing a straight line directly to the house and might persuade them to dwell their sight more on the garden rather than the house. Thus the use of the 2 half circles also helped with the

Sixth Area Shape design principle.

The 18 year old Pine tree at the top was pollarded to 6 feet, due to the fact that it's branches were starting to reach the house. The other trees were left to give some maturity to the garden immediately after the landscaping had been completed. These together with the tall plants in the raised beds provided the focal points for the

Seventh Focal Point design principle.

Proposed Design Plan Layer for the front garden.