Beware this post may be a rant…..however you have been warned so now I shall go on 😉 …
I basically love drawing, I love being able to put my ideas on paper in an organised manner which then can be referred to as a ‘Plan’ not just a Garden Design Plan but a ‘Plan’ of action. This is how many clients use my drawings, they can see what is being communicated and we break it up into an action plan to create a garden, this I love. This means I have been successful in passing on my knowledge.

However sometimes I am not successful in this way, not everyone can read diagram drawings and some people become overwhelmed when they see all those botanical names. Others can read the one dimensional side to it but then are challenged when it comes to having a mental picture in their head of what the three-dimensional space can look like. I am lucky, I seem to be able to get excited about a square empty patch of dirt, I can see clearly what the empty space will look like in 5, even 10 years time, if it has been planted out. BUT I have failed miserably if I can’t communicate this to a client.
Lately I have taken a step back and tried to look at these pieces of paper I hand over with someone else’s eye. Someone who doesn’t look at plants all day long, someone who doesn’t mentally collate notes in their head about what is flowering where and when constantly….you get the picture. Anyway, this has made me think perhaps my drawings could look a little more exciting but more importantly have more information on them but at the same time appear more simple. Aside from drawing perspective drawings for everyone, this would be both too time consuming and expensive, I am going to try to use colour as an plant indicator and also put more information about each plant on the drawings.

This drawing above is a local garden I am working on at the moment, the clients like the Mediterranean look, so think lots of naturally mounded shrubs and tough foliage with a little productive fruit thrown in too.
I have done this drawing in CAD and then water colour over the top. The advantage of using CAD is that in the notes I can fit a lot more information in about the plants. It also is a fair bit quicker allowing me time to hand colour, which hopefully will make plant symbols more obviously connected to certain plants.

Apologies if this blog post has bored anyone, but it always halls to write these things down when trying to improve 🙂 and thats what I am trying to do!