What's up, plant lovers? I'm Devon Walleen, and I just got finished designing a garden with my
little sister, Stephanie, and we have documented the entire process of designing the garden from
scratch. And this video is intended for maybe you're a budding professional garden designer
and you want to learn the steps to create a garden design, or if you simply want to follow
the way, follow this method to redesign your own personal garden. So in this video, we're going to
go through all the steps that you should undertake in order to create a professional-looking garden
design. So our friend reached out to us because he wanted to redesign his entire garden. It was
already full of plants, but he wanted to create a new energy, a new vibe in his yard, and so he asked
us to help him come up with a design. So the first thing that you should do before getting to that
site is consider going to Google Earth, printing out some screenshots of the property that you're
going to be designing. This is going to help you tremendously with taking measurements of the property, which
is really the first step that you will need to do. But actually, before that, you should talk to your client, ask them what they are looking
for in their design and if they have any specific requests with their design
What were their requests? Yeah. So, you want to go into it with a list of questions, the first being like kind of, yeah, their
special requests. So this client asked specifically for no red flowers. They don't want pink flowers in the fall time
They do want to keep some of their pre-existing ground cover. They want to repurpose some of their shrubs that are actually pretty big already
So moving those around, it'll be nice for us because we can use them sort of as a like foundation plantings or something like that
What else did he say? Wants to keep his like tropical cannas that are on the side of the house
Otherwise, we're pretty much given free reign. So now we are about to arrive and start taking our measurements
Yep. All right. So I have a 100 foot long measuring tape, and this is super essential to get an extra long one
You're going to want to have someone help you do this. It's going to be way faster, way easier
And you want to just start taking as many measurements as you possibly can
everything you can think of. We spent about 30 minutes taking measurements. We thought we had
everything and we still had to return another day to fill in the gaps of some of the things that we
missed But this is an essential part to creating a good design taking every measurement you can think of And while we were taking the measurements my sister was basically drawing just a rough sketch
and adding in the dimensions that we found. So we're trying to take as many photos as we can, documenting each area that we are taking measurements of
This will give us just some documentation in case we need it at a later point
And after we had the rough sketch along with the photos, we're going back reviewing all of those photos
We put some just numbers on those photos with dimensions and we are filling it in on our rough sketch as you can see
All right, so after we took all the measurements, Stephanie started to make the initial drawing by hand
And then when we had the measurements, that's when we started to actually draw it to scale
You want to explain how we drew it to scale? Sure. I don't know how to say it in the most technical way
but basically we had this rough sketch of all of our measurements
from being at the house, and I basically just went through and started drawing them out
At first I started with a six scale and realized, admittedly, I just didn't have the paper to fit that
So I scaled down to four. What's a six scale? So one inch equals six feet
And so now we're doing a four scale. So one inch equals four feet
And we just barely fit it on the piece of paper, thankfully. So basically, we use this thing called, what is this called
A T-square. A T-square. With this. With a straight edge. With a flat piece of wood
Straight edge. You know, most often you would use a drafting table, but of course we don't have one
So this is making one at home, basically. And then our architect's ruler
Engineer. Engineer's ruler. And basically just ensuring that everything is as straight as possible
Then once we got all of the lines figured out and the actual property drawn, now we're going back and drawing circles that represent all of the plants that we have been researching and the ones that we've chosen
So here you can see all of the outline of all the plants and some of the plant names
We don't have all the plant names on here just yet. Yeah, for the final draft, we'll have a little key
But one thing that really important when you making these designs is you want to use a roll of vellum or tracing paper So underneath here we have the base plan that you never touch You draw that once and then you just you can use as many you know rounds as you want on the top of that so
that you can continue to make up new designs. Now thankfully we're kind of going to stick with our
first one but that just ensures that your base plan remains clean and you can always use it for
reference. So yeah t-square, engineer ruler, vellum paper, straight edge table. I think those are the
checklists to really get you going in the right direction. And then once we had all of our plants
on the map, we changed the shape of each species so they would be more discernible. And then we
colored in with basically a corresponding color for each individual kind of plant that we were using
So now let's go through the plant list and the different areas. So we're going to start with
the walkway plants, which is very important for this garden. Now he's already had this
Lysomachia numularia, so we kept this. It provided a nice foundational first plant to go off of
I love sedges. I think these add awesome texture, and this one has some blue to it
which is really great. Then the Coreopsis solar mellow will help to elevate that yellow look
with that Lysomachia creeping jenny. This Royal Candles veronica, it's a small diminutive plant
with lots of color impact complementing those yellows. Then the Allium atropropurium
as well as the Allium nigrum will add a little bit of vertical interest, which I think will be
great along the walk. So next we want to talk about this bed, the very central bed. We think
a specimen tree will be great and we really had to be considerate of that patio, not planting too
high. So this is a specimen tree that we went with this awesome Japanese maple, great fall color
as well as this Let's Dance Lovable as the hydrangea that will be planted along that
foundation. It's a re-bloomer, doesn't grow too tall. In front of that will be Aitea virginica
little henry with more multi-season interest and some other drought tolerant plants to fill in that
front bed section including this Achillea terracotta, great color. And moving on, the pre-existing
hydrangea, we removed one of those and for this little side corner of the bed we're going to be
planting, this Physocarpus tiny wine nine bark, lovely dark foliage and flowers in the summertime
And then this Mount, Dwarf Mount Airy father gilla, another great shrub with multi-season
interest. And then finally for some spring flowers would be the Syringa bloomerang lilac
And then at this little section by the front door we think a vertical juniperus tailor will be an awesome choice to fill in that little section with an under planting of some dark cultivars of heuchera
Now in the world of landscape design, there's a few different ways that the projects are actually
completed. Sometimes the designers will simply create the designs and pass that on to the client
the client then has their own crew that will implement those designs, source the materials
and plant those plants according to the design. Or other landscape firms will actually create the
design and do the implementation all in one. It just depends. We are the former, so we just create
the design. We handed that design after going through the plant list with our client. Now he
has the design in hand with his crew. He gives them the design and then they source the plants
and we'll go forth and plant them according to where we have placed each plant on the design
All right, so let's take a look at what the garden looks like after getting everything planted and installed
Of course, the plants are beautifully small, little babies for a little young juvenile garden
and that's exactly the way we like it. We want to enjoy watching our gardens grow, so I always like to start with some smaller plants
And then as the time goes on, you can see how things are intermingling
You can find gaps to fill with other plants that you love. But overall, I would say that the garden design is looking pretty good
Definitely cleaner. I think the plant material is going to be a lot more cohesive
Of course, the garden crew, they had to substitute some plants that they couldn't find
like the Japanese maple. They went with a different cultivar, and that's A-OK
They also had some extra plant material that they planted in some slightly different locations
but that's to be expected as well. And that front area just in front of the porch looks so much nicer
Those hydrangeas and that Aetia virginica are going to grow in beautifully, creating
lovely mounds. And this section over on the corner also is looking so much nicer
I can't wait to see some of those shrubs in bloom in these coming seasons
So overall, I would say it looks pretty good for a young garden
And we will absolutely document how his garden is evolving from one season to the next
So you'll be able to see if our garden design has lived up to a multi-season interest garden
here in Westchester, Pennsylvania. Anyways, thank you for joining me and my sister here on Plant Vibrations
We'll catch you guys soon. Ciao