Garden Design Advice - Blank Canvas

sterling10

Hi all,

I am hopefully coming to the end of a new build in the next few months and we will be putting my 'garden' back together.

I am located in the Tipperary area and i am looking for advice on what way I should lay out my garden. I have an L shaped house and i'm thinking of putting in a large patio in the back, but a big square of patio slabs will look a bit bare.
There is also steep slopes on the side of the site, coming up to mature trees, i'd like to be able to reduce the steepness of these slopes while also incorporating the mature trees into my garden.

It really is a blank canvas of 0.75 acre of a 'garden', if anyone knows of anyone in the Tipperary region that is good at garden design could you please PM me, and any suggestions greatly appreciated. I can post up photos if it can help

ponddigger

hi .it would be a good idea to post some photos of your grarden.jack

sterling10

See some photos. I can easily get more, i unfortunately dont have any of the slope

Loweface

The third photo suggests you'll need to do something with drainage first. Sorry no help after that!

ponddigger

hi ,yes this would be a good time to drain your site ,before you start your garden.jack

paddy147

Thats a very nice house and plot of land.

Im sure it will be lovely in a few months/years when the gardens are done,settled and all plants up and growing up.

Id look at your lands ability to drain water away and then try to get a good bit of the bulding rubble out of the ground where you want to have grass and nice plants/flowers growing.

Make sure to try and have the land and any flow of surface water flow away from the house...(you dont want/need flooding around the door and edges of the house))


Again,lovely house and plot of land.and best of luck with it.:)

prospect

Hi there.

I did similar after a new build about 10 years ago.


The best advice is to plan.

Don't worry about specifics like what plants go where, etc. But consider how you plan to use the space available to you. Some thoughts would be:

- Are you going to build a garage/shed. If so consider where the driveway will be in relation to it. Alos, run power and water ducts to the location of the garage now, and possibly sewerage if you plan on having a toilet.

- I see two sets of double doors. There are handy for bringing large items in/out of the house. Will the driveway allow a delivery van/truck stop near one of these sets of doors.

- Outdoor eating, BBQ-ing. It would be handy to have water & power near here. You'll want it in a suntrap location, but also close to your kitchen to make it usable. Also outdoor lighting in this area.

- Outdoor / driveway lighting.

- Kids play area. You may want to consider having it located that it can be fenced in, unless you plan on having electric gates which will remain closed.

- Electric gates, you'll have to run Power & Comms to the gates

- Washing your car. You'll need power, water and drainage in this area.


Basically, I'd run power & water to each corner of the garden (you can blank them off and leave them unused).
You would be best advised doing this before the paths around the house are poured.
I would especially run empty ducts with fish cables under your driveway to avoid having to dig up in the future.



V.nice house by the way. Love the front door.

paddy147

prospect wrote: »

Hi there.

I did similar after a new build about 10 years ago.


The best advice is to plan.

Don't worry about specifics like what plants go where, etc. But consider how you plan to use the space available to you. Some thoughts would be:

- Are you going to build a garage/shed. If so consider where the driveway will be in relation to it. Alos, run power and water ducts to the location of the garage now, and possibly sewerage if you plan on having a toilet.

- I see two sets of double doors. There are handy for bringing large items in/out of the house. Will the driveway allow a delivery van/truck stop near one of these sets of doors.

- Outdoor eating, BBQ-ing. It would be handy to have water & power near here. You'll want it in a suntrap location, but also close to your kitchen to make it usable. Also outdoor lighting in this area.

- Outdoor / driveway lighting.

- Kids play area. You may want to consider having it located that it can be fenced in, unless you plan on having electric gates which will remain closed.

- Electric gates, you'll have to run Power & Comms to the gates

- Washing your car. You'll need power, water and drainage in this area.


Basically, I'd run power & water to each corner of the garden (you can blank them off and leave them unused).
You would be best advised doing this before the paths around the house are poured.
I would especially run empty ducts with fish cables under your driveway to avoid having to dig up in the future.



V.nice house by the way. Love the front door.

Yep,nice front door......Real wood or composite (paladio) thermal front door?;)

sterling10

Thanks for advice so far,

Please find two more photos taken yesterday about another feature of the site.
First two is picture from the roadway looking up, as we filled in the corners to level the site, we now have a situation where there is a large bank at the road leveling up to a flat surface where the entrance is. What I don't know, but maybe budget will tell me, is whether i should wall the entire boundary and hide the bank or just use the built up bank as the wall and just put different types of heather, flowers, etc to brighten up the bank??

Second picture is the side of the house going to where the trees are already. As you can see, this also has a bank on it but not as severe as the front. My idea here was to try smooth off the slope and bring it right down to the base of the trees, but not sure how easy this would be. One idea we have is there is a large branch of an ash tree will now be sticking out over the grass, and we hope to put a nice swing on this. Hope i don't exceed the maximum weight!

I would love to do something around the front door, but i don't know what type of stone, brick, feature to use. Its not a massive area so it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

The back has so much potential, it can be a big sun trap as its facing the south and L part of house protecting against wind, but then again, i'm not sure what type of patio to put down. 100M2 of concrete slabs maybe the cheapest option, but it would need a feature, but what feature. We have no creativity between us!

Re Front Door: We first saw green timber sliding sash windows and we thought they looked beautiful and how brave you would be to put them into a house. Anyway, we went to TJ Grady showroom in Maynooth and they had this green door on display. It was playing on our minds forever so we just went with it. I don't think they sell much front doors in this colour, but we love it, there was a mistake initially and they gave us a dark green door, but it just showed us the difference in getting a light coloured door to a dark one. Really stands out. We like it. Its a composite door.

paddy147

sterling10 wrote: »

Thanks for advice so far,

Please find two more photos taken yesterday about another feature of the site.
First two is picture from the roadway looking up, as we filled in the corners to level the site, we now have a situation where there is a large bank at the road leveling up to a flat surface where the entrance is. What I don't know, but maybe budget will tell me, is whether i should wall the entire boundary and hide the bank or just use the built up bank as the wall and just put different types of heather, flowers, etc to brighten up the bank??

Second picture is the side of the house going to where the trees are already. As you can see, this also has a bank on it but not as severe as the front. My idea here was to try smooth off the slope and bring it right down to the base of the trees, but not sure how easy this would be. One idea we have is there is a large branch of an ash tree will now be sticking out over the grass, and we hope to put a nice swing on this. Hope i don't exceed the maximum weight!

I would love to do something around the front door, but i don't know what type of stone, brick, feature to use. Its not a massive area so it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

The back has so much potential, it can be a big sun trap as its facing the south and L part of house protecting against wind, but then again, i'm not sure what type of patio to put down. 100M2 of concrete slabs maybe the cheapest option, but it would need a feature, but what feature. We have no creativity between us!

Re Front Door: We first saw green timber sliding sash windows and we thought they looked beautiful and how brave you would be to put them into a house. Anyway, we went to TJ Grady showroom in Maynooth and they had this green door on display. It was playing on our minds forever so we just went with it. I don't think they sell much front doors in this colour, but we love it, there was a mistake initially and they gave us a dark green door, but it just showed us the difference in getting a light coloured door to a dark one. Really stands out. We like it. Its a composite door.

Had a feeling it was a composite allright.:)

Looks very nice and really ties in well with the house.:)