Planning a garden landscaping project — sequencing, seasons, and what to decide first

A garden is rarely one job. It is levels and drainage and stone and lawns and planting and light, and the gap between a garden that holds together and one that disappoints usually comes down to two things: whether all of it was thought through together, and whether it was built in the right order. Landscaping is the largest part of what we do, so this is how a project actually comes together, and what is worth settling before the first square of turf is lifted.

Start with how you actually use the garden

Before levels or materials, the useful question is how you want to live in the space. Where the sun falls at the times you are actually outside. Whether you eat out there, or the children play, or it is mostly a view from the kitchen window. Whether you want somewhere sheltered for the cooler months. A garden designed around real use tends to get used; one designed around a nice drawing often does not. This is the decision everything else hangs off, so it is the one to make first.

The order the work runs in

Landscaping has a natural sequence, and getting ahead of it is how gardens go wrong. Broadly, the work runs in this order:

1. clearing and groundwork, taking out what is going and reshaping the ground
2. levels, with any retaining or terracing and the drainage that sits behind them
3. the hard landscaping: terraces, paths, walls and steps
4. lawns, once the heavy work that would churn them up is finished
5. planting, worked around the structure that is now in place
6. lighting and irrigation last, threaded in as the garden is completed

Run in that order, each stage protects the one before it. Run out of order, and you end up lifting a new terrace to reach a drain, or laying turf that gets wrecked by the machinery that should have finished first.

The part you never see decides the rest

Most of the value in a garden is buried. A terrace lasts because the sub-base under it was prepared properly and the falls were set so water runs away instead of sitting. A retaining wall holds because the drainage behind it has somewhere to go. A lawn roots because the ground was cleared, levelled and fed before a single roll went down. None of this shows in a photograph, and all of it is the difference between a garden that still looks right in ten years and one that quietly comes apart. It is why the groundwork, the least glamorous stage, is the one worth getting absolutely right.

Where the seasons come in

Timing matters more in a garden than in most building work, because part of it is alive. Groundwork and hard landscaping can carry on through most of the year, though a wet winter makes heavy machinery messier and access harder. Planting has its better moments, since most things establish best when the ground is warm and damp rather than baked hard or frozen, and turf takes differently depending on when it goes down. None of this needs to hold a project up. It simply means the programme is planned with the seasons in mind rather than against them.

One scheme, or several trades in turn

A garden can be built as one project on a single programme, or assembled from separate trades brought in one after another. The first tends to hold together better. When the same team sets the levels, lays the stone, builds the walls and puts the planting in, the terrace is designed for the drainage and the planting is designed for the light, and nobody is left interpreting someone else's drawings. It usually means less disruption and a more coherent result, which is why many families have us take the whole thing on.

What to decide before you start

A few things, settled early, make everything downstream easier:

• how you want to use the garden, season by season
• how much to take on at once: the whole garden, or a strong first phase
• the level of upkeep you actually want to sign up for afterwards
• roughly where the effort and attention should concentrate, so the priorities are clear

The takeaway

Decide how you will use the garden, respect the order the work wants to run in, and put the care into the stages you will never see. Do that, and the visible garden more or less takes care of itself.

If you are planning something for your own garden, our landscaping and gardens page shows the range a scheme can include, and we are glad to walk the garden with you and work out a sensible order for it.