Planning your outdoors is great fun. The ideas in our Austral DIY Garden Design Kit will help you create a unique garden space.


Everyone has a favourite style in everything they do, from clothes to interiors, and gardens are no different.

• 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 and feel great. It might be a fabulous hotel resort you've visited, or a particular garden area within a grand display garden. Think about copying the signature features.
  Make sure the garden serves your various needs - outdoor eating, family playing, quiet reading, growing vegetables, little-to-no mowing and so on.
  To help you get your ideas together, sketch rough concept plans on a separate sheet of paper as you go.
  Whether you decide to build it yourself, or seek out a professional designer to refine and execute your plans, it's absolutely the perfect way to make sure you gel what you want.

A professional-looking garden plan is as simple as cutting out the symbols and moving them around on graph paper ...

THREE steps to designing your own garden

Step 1 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 lemon the plan represents I m of garden).

Step 2 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. Download the kit.

Step 3 Arrange the landscape symbols on the graph paper and play around with your design. 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! Only when you're entirely satisfied, use a glue pen to glue the symbols to the graph paper to create a permanent garden plan.

Download the kit in sections here:

Grid

Shrubs and trees

Pavers and structures

'''Trees & Shrubs

Visit www.australbricks.com.au

Source:Better Homes and Gardens May 2005