Your Landscape Plan – How Well Have You Looked at Your Home Landscaping?
There are two ways to look at the landscape of your home. The first is to see them clearly as they exist; the second is to visualize them as you would like them to be.
The first view tells you where there are wet, dry, sunny or shady places; which existing plants are good, mediocre or worthless; which slopes are steep; where water drains; where the sun rises in relation to your house; which views are good, which bad – in short, you get to know both the weak and the strong physical characteristics of the land about your home.
The second view tells you where and how you want things to be: a parking area; a play yard; a patio; a vegetable, flower or rose garden; a barbecue; fruit trees – the things you will need now and in the years to come to make your outdoor living complete. This is also the view that tells you such things as whether you want a formal or casual atmosphere and whether you will entertain many people at one time; it is the view that gives you some idea of how much you can spend on your property now and in the future.
When you have taken a long look at your property in both these ways, you are ready to plan your grounds or make improvements.
Here’s How You can record your Plants on paper
Here are the drawing materials you will need.
- Pencils, ruler and eraser are obviously needed to record your plans on paper.
- Graph paper is convenient because you may allow a square on paper to represent a square foot of ground space and you do not have to set up a rule scale allowing, for example, a quarter-inch to equal one foot.
- Tissue-like drawing paper is laid over graph paper. You see the squares through it and after a rough layout is complete on the tissue, lay another sheet over it for your finished drawing.
- A T-square and triangles for drawing parallel lines and angles are helpful but not essential if you use graph paper.
- A drawing compass helps -you make symbols for trees and shrubs.
This Equipment will help you make a property survey
- A 50 or 100-foot tape measure gives you site and building dimensions; helps you locate existing paths, trees, etc.
- Two stakes, a mason’s line and line-level help you measure a slope so you know how high to make walls and steps.
- A shovel is useful for soil sampling.
- A magnetic compass gives you the exact position of north.
After making a scale drawing of your property, locating the house and existing features in their exact positions, indicate the major areas you will need by roughly sketching them in a series of ovals. Study the relationship of· the ovals to one another and to the rooms of the house. Change the position of the areas until you come up with the most logical placement.
As you work over this rough plan keep in mind such things as the position of the sun at different times of the day and where the soil is best so that you do not put a parking space in an area where the soil would enable you to easily grow flowers. Go outside and refresh your memory concerning conditions.
After you come to a final decision concerning the location of major areas, you are ready to think in terms of actual landscape objects: paths, fences, trees, shrubs, etc.
You will see immediately where a fence or shrub border is needed or where a tree should be planted to shade your house or terrace. You will see where major paths are required to connect a parking area or driveway to the front entrance to your house, and it will be obvious that a path should connect the service yard with the kitchen entrance.
Draw these things on your plan, using the symbols shown in the sketches at left. As you work your plan will begin to look like the one at the right. All the time think in terms of the three-dimensional appearance of things.
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