My Design Process
This site serves as a picture book of my work — a source of inspiration and delight. You’ll also find just enough practical information to help you understand what to expect if you’d like to work together. There’s a deeper dive into the type of design material you might receive and what it’s for, as part of your project, after the overview below.

There are two key phases in the process:

  • Concept Design, grown from the client brief and my creative response to that and the site.

  • Detailed Design, informed by the concept, shaping the practical and aesthetic elements of the garden; critical for accurate and efficient costing, building and planting of all projects.

Here’s an overview of the process in chronological order:

Site visit and garden talk

Development of the design brief

Design package & fee proposal

Concept presentation and discussion

A moment to digest it all (about a week)

Concept revisions progressing to a design master plan

Planting design & detailed design fee proposition

Delivery of all final design material

New Garden

A concept presentation typically includes a concept plan, one or more illustrations depending on the size of a project and a series of pictorial mood boards:

  • Concept Plan - A 2D plan view of the proposed garden concept, drawn to scale and overlaid onto a survey of the existing footprint of the garden

  • Illustrations - 3D views of key areas of the garden intended as a visual aid to look into the proposed spaces. Mine have a hand drawn finish, slightly abstract in that they are simplified impressions and not photorealistic

  • Mood Boards - collections of photo images designed to convey the mood of the material and planting palettes. It is important to note these are illustrative and not photo’s of your actual furniture or plants and trees but intentionally similar

The detailed design phase will contain some or all of the following design files. Used for accurate quantifying, costing and ultimately by the contractors on site as building or planting instructions to ensure design intentions is realised.

  • Setting out plans - A series of drawings with visible dimensions, alignment and location markers of structures and utilities. These ensure construction work aligns with intended design minimizing error and rework.

  • Construction Drawings - Macro, technical detail of specific construction elements, sometimes cross referenced to a written specification. For example the layering of materials and their depth building up to a finished surface for a paved driveway, designed to take vehicular load.

  • Drainage Plan - Fairly self explanatory but critical to the control of surface to underground water run-off, particularly during a extreme weather event (now increasingly common).

  • Planting Plan - A map of individual plants in their exact position in a planting bed. There would typically be a series of these plans so as to be at an easily readable scale for use on site by contractors. The plants are represented on plan at their mature size so we know the long term success of the numbers and arrangements has been considered in the context of the space they are allocated.

  • Lighting Plan - Similar to a setting out plan but specific to the lighting and will detail the position of the chosen lighting units as well as their infrastructure and power source across the garden.