It's time to design your own dream garden. Planning your outdoors is great fun, and if you marry your ideas with some of those in our design guide you'll create a unique style for your own space.

We all dream of having the perfect backyard. And it seems every time we turn on the television these days a team of landscape experts is transforming some lucky person's garden. But designing a garden isn't a mystery reserved for the few - anyone can have a go. Let this DIY Garden Design Kit help you begin and complete your yard.

You'll find a fantastic selection of landscape symbols and a piece of graph paper to help you start turning your ideas into reality. After a bit of cutting and pasting, the result will be a professional-looking garden plan which will help you see your future dream landscape from above! Whether you decide to build it yourself, or seek out a professional designer lo refine and execute your plans, it's absolutely the perfect way to make sure you get what you want.

What to do

Our fabulous downloadable DIY Garden Design Kit lets you create a professional-looking garden plan of your own. It's as simple as cutting out the symbols and moving them around on the graph paper to create a garden design you love. Here's how to get started.

Step 1 Download the garden symbols and graph paper here:

• Garden Design Kit garden symbols
• Garden Design Kit graph paper
• Here's an example to get you going

Step 2 Measure up your backyard and draw the outline onto the graph paper. Sketch the back wall of your house at the bottom of the plan. Use a scale of 1: 100 (where 1 metre on the plan represents 1 metre of garden).

Step 3 Draw in existing features, such as a swimming pool and shed, that will be retained. Unattractive features such as the clothes line can be moved to corners or screened off with lattice.

Step 4 Arrange the landscape symbols on the graph paper and play around with your design. Only when you're entirely satisfied, use a glue pen to glue the symbols to the graph paper to create a permanent garden plan.

Starting hints

Everyone has a favourite style in everything they do, from clothes to interiors, and gardens are no different. Here are a few ideas to set you on the right track.

Take a lead from the architecture of your house. Is it relaxed or formal, modern or old-world? Think of the gardens you've been in that inspire you or just make you feel great. It might be a fabulous hotel resort you've visited, or a particular garden area within a grand display garden.

Think about incorporating some of the signature features into your own.

Make sure the garden serves your various needs - outdoor eating, family playing, quiet reading, growing vegetables, little-to-no mowing and so on.

Top tip: To help you get your ideas together, sketch rough concept plans on a separate sheet of paper as you go.

Source: Better Homes and Gardens, May 2005