The most common mistakes made during garden planning

A number of mistakes that you can make during planning is considerable. Apart from typical mistakes as improper plants selection with regard to their position, the mistakes resulting from lack of practice, habits or ordinary omissions are common.

1. Avoid chaos

When planning a garden always take a whole plot into consideration; that is, areas in front of and behind a house. If your funds are not enough to carry out a whole project it is better to divide it into stages than create impractical places just to fill in an empty space.

2. Predict changes

Remember that a garden is never finished, and similarly to human being, is subject to a constant change. Therefore, a space should be planned so that a garden will be aesthetic and practical for years. It is worth to consider now how we will change a football area in the future, and whether we would like to cultivate vegetables or plant fruit trees in the future.

3. If you force things to happen you may regret it

Do not try to include all the components at all costs; especially, if you are the owner of a small garden. Try not to exaggerate with diversity of species, since you can create chaos in this way. You get the best result by using several species in greater clusters than several dozen species that are hardly visible.

4. Improper surroundings

Already at the stage of planning you should be aware of your future plants’ dimensions. It often turns out that in order to achieve quick results specimens are planted with too close to each other.

You should not put plants of extremely different growing strength together – expansive plants can suppress other specimens in the future, or of extremely different requirements, (e.g. heather near allium moly which likes calcareous soil).

Some plants have an ability to secrete certain chemical substances which serve as a form of defence against competition (e.g. common walnut contains juglandine). However, this phenomenon is of greater importance in case of herbaceous plants.

What is more, close vicinity of different species of different types and of the same or similar leafage is disadvantageous.

5. The most important is a project

Never start garden works without a plan. Plots’ owners often plant single specimens just to give their gardens “a decent look”. These are often gifts of neighbours or friends. Planting without any conception is not a source of decoration; additionally, it will only clutter a space.