I maintained this garden for a year before I was asked to redesign and rebuild it.

The father suffered from hayfever and was greatly affected when cutting the grass. Part of the existing path/patio area was edged by broken sections of concrete which came above the lawn area. This meant that a strimmer had to be used to cut the lawn at these edges, which raises the grass seeds to be breathed in!!

The 2 daughters wanted to play football and his wife wanted a vegetable garden.

There were a fair number of mature trees/shrubs in the garden, so I prefer to keep these and design with them rather than remove them. When the garden hard landscaping, followed by the soft landscaping and finally by the lawn is completed, then the existing mature trees/shrubs give a feeling of maturity to the garden straight away.

Because of the trellisses at the end of the top lawn and the trees/shrubs below it, the existing view from the house was only of that lawn and it's immediate surroundings. The only practical patio was immediately outside the house and 3/4 of the garden was not being used.

The existing plan below shows the following CAD layers: hard landscaping in black, the paths/patios in red hatching, the existing shrubs and trees in green and the lawn in lighter green.

Now we put a grid on it, which was a square grid based on the width of the French Windows at the back of the house, but now uses the diagonals of those squares instead. This is so that the units of area used for each of the 3 sections, Hard landscaping, Soft landscaping and Lawns can be related back to the house using one of John Brook's Design ideas.

The resulting structural design shows how the lawn can be cut by the father by mowing in circles, including over the paths, thus reducing his hayfever. THe 2 areas of lawn can provide 2 football pitches for the girls, and the path through to the vegetable garden behind the wood will provide access in the winter as well as it being unlikely that the football will enter the new vegatable garden. The patio at the end of the garden will be in sunshine for most of the day and will provide 2 different views for looking back up the garden. The existing trees/large shrubs have been mostly included and incorporated into the flower beds.

The Old Lawn Area = 515 square yards = 41%. New Lawn Area = 533 square yards = 42.5%
Old Path Area = 232 square yards = 18.5%. New Path Area = 107 square yards = 8.5%
Old House Patio Area = 44 square yards = 3.5%. New Patio Areas = 96 square yards = 7.6%

The new garden will then have 16.1% Hard landscaping, 8% Vegetable Garden and 33.4% Soft landscaping, with 42.5% Lawn.

Showing the existing plan with the proposed to the client demonstrates how much is being retained and how simple is the new layout, but far more practical for all concerned.

The back door is normally used for entrance to this back garden. The cook would find it usefull to have a herb garden as close as possible to the kitchen back door; it would be usefull to stop footballs hitting the windows at the back and to prevent the lawn immediately outside the back door from being worn away.

A raised herb bed was then proposed and built. A further idea from the owners was at some point in the future that they were considering having a Conservatory built outside the lounge French Windows, so I suggested the following foundations would be appropriate for the new patios for that proposed building. The subsoil was clay. The new patios were subsequently created.