Finding your style

28/03/2010 Plant Sense 2010

0310Should someone walk into your home today, would it reflect your style? The décor in our home, the clothes we choose to wear and our favoured choice of transport all give a viewer small clues to understanding your own personal style.

It is amazing how quickly you can build up a picture of someone’s preferences with a quick glimpse of their home and some well-chosen questions. It is one of my favourite aspects of garden design – analysing someone’s style then creating a garden that will suit their needs and tastes.

Before jumping in and remodelling a new garden it can be helpful to take stock and see what plants pops up where, how they fare and how much you like them. It is a useful time to collect valuable information about your garden’s microclimates, often difficult for a garden designer to gauge in the short term, without observing plant growth and year-round health. Understanding microclimates is especially important if you want to grow plants on the edges of their comfort zone.

Mood or concept boards are one way of conveying the overall feel of a project, using a selection of pictures of plants, planting styles, materials and design details to suggest to a client how their garden could look. It is always helpful when a client has collected cuttings of ideas they like. Garden magazines don’t often illustrate a huge range of garden design and planting styles. For this type of inspiration it is best to visit your local book store for a browse to see what whets your appetite. Here are some of my favourite appetisers. They contain enough gems to justify their existence on my book shelf.

Inspiring reads:

Published in ‘at Home’ a supplement of the Scotland on Sunday on 28 March 2010