Composing the Picture: Getting Your Plan on Paper

England winters played havoc with the rock landing, making it unsafe and requiring a new one. We budgeted for a concrete pad which my husband and a friend spent a weekend constructing.

Over time, the cold frame outlived its usefulness, was dismantled and replaced by what I envisioned as a simple design solution - a raised bed of vines, assorted ferns and perennials. The raised bed has never been very successful, however, mostly because of inattention, and is slated for removal this spring.

What will replace it? A loggia attached to the side of the house and covered with vines from the raised bed? Or the greenhouse that never came to the top of the priority list? Only time and the budget will tell.

The trick with a Master Plan is to avoid plant names and fussy details. Typical landscape design symbols drawn freehand are more than adequate Landscape Symbols. Details of the Master Plan can be drawn on other large sheet grid papers or done on translucent paper as an overlay.

Some of these detailed areas could include surroundings around entrance ways, deck or porch plantings, perennial beds or borders, vegetable gardens, play or recreation areas, and service areas. Colors, individual plants, and hardscape (manmade) materials can be experimented with on these expanded drawings. I will discuss these additions in later articles.

Once these first steps are accomplished in getting your plan on paper, climate and other environmental considerations will need to be examined. They need to be incorporated into the Master Plan because they ultimately influence plant and hardscape choices. We'll have more to write about these concerns shortly.

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