Garden designer Nicole Wilson: How to plan your garden

#Garden #designer #Nicole #Wilson #plan #garden

Nicole Wilson is a garden designer and works with both large and small gardens, for private individuals and for large companies. Sometimes she gets to design a garden room right from the start, with a generously increased budget, but often the situation is different: To get an already existing garden in order with limited finances.

Here are her best step-by-step tips for a beautiful and easy-care garden.

1. Dream! Start by thinking big. Look for inspirational images in books, magazines and online and try to analyze what it is you like and what feeling you want to have.

2. Call in your needs. Formulate for yourself what you want to use your garden for. What different rooms and functions are needed, for example a kitchen garden, a place to drink coffee, or a surface to play ball games on?

3. Do a site analysis. Find out what the conditions of your plot are, is it a villa garden with a square lawn or a hilly mountain plot? What houses are there on the plot and do you want the architecture in the garden to be period-typical? Also consider the surroundings. For example, is the garden in a densely built-up area with many neighbours, where you want to screen it? Or should it feel inviting and welcoming? Don’t forget to think about the view, is there perhaps water or other scenic surroundings to look out over?

Garden designer Nicole Wilson. Photo: Karin Hasselström

4. Investigate the location. Habitat is the plant location and what affects the plants’ conditions to thrive. This includes, for example, cultivation zone, soil and whether it is windy or wet. How many hours of sun there are in the garden is also good to keep track of, and keep in mind that it can differ between different places in the garden. If there is zero to three hours of sun, it counts as shade, three to six is ​​partial shade, while six hours and above is sunny.

There are probably also already plants, shrubs and trees in your garden to take into account. Trees can soak up a lot of water and have a lot of roots, while some border plants can be very competitive and easily take over. Pines and firs can also affect the ph value in the soil, it becomes acidic due to the needles that fall down, which determines which plants thrive there.

5. Location and movement patterns. When you have mapped the conditions for your garden, it is time to start thinking about where the various functions, such as a kitchen garden or patio, should be placed. In addition to taking into account, for example, sun and shade, you should also think about how you move in the garden, not only between the entrance and the house, but also around the house and between the different “rooms” in the garden.

Should the kitchen garden be close to the outdoor kitchen and how far can you have between the water tap and the greenhouse? And what do you want to see if you look out the kitchen window?

6. Create spaciousness. A garden becomes more exciting if you create different rooms, than if it is just a lawn with flower beds. The “rooms” are created by thinking in terms of floor, walls and ceiling, and you should preferably have two of these to create a feeling of spaciousness.

Photo: Karin Hasselström

A kitchen garden can be framed with currant bushes as “walls”, and a large tree can function as a “roof” over the patio. Pallet collars on a lawn can be turned into a grow room by replacing the surrounding soil material and framing them with wood chips or gravel. Differences in level can also be used to break up and create spatiality.

Feel free to name your rooms, such as “the Japanese moss garden”, “the dahlia room” or “the kitchen garden”. It makes it easier to talk about them and also easier to think of them as separate rooms and to dare to work with the spatiality. Passages can also become rooms with names, such as “lilac passage” or “woodland path”.

7. Choose materials with care. A garden is more than plants and cultivation, and different materials can give a completely different feel. Shape and color can be used to create rooms that contrast with grass and flower beds. A gravel path can be straight and tight with gray mottled shingle, or romantic and undulating with natural shingle that tightens red. Walking out barefoot on a wooden balcony on an early summer morning gives a different feeling than stepping out onto a paving stone.

It’s also about function. If you want to build a seat under a cherry tree, it is easy to wash off if the surface is paved, while gravel easily gets muddy from falling cherries.

If you are going to make larger and long-term installations, it is good to spend a little extra time thinking about what function and what feeling you want the material to have.

Photo: Karin Hasselström

8. The right plant in the right place is A and O. Now it’s time to choose plants. There is a lot to think about here for those who want to. Location is the most important thing, so that the plant thrives.

Before choosing color schemes, it can be good to consider what function the plant should fulfill, both practically (should it provide shade, be bee-friendly or frame a room?) and aesthetically (should it be soft and undulating or tight and architectural?). Also think about the final height the flower, bush or tree will have when grown. If you work with color themes, you can have several color scales per season, and distinguish between early and late spring bulbs, and early and late perennials.

Also think about the seasons, so that there is always something nice to look at, that makes you happy. They can often be divided into late and early periods, in spring, for example, you can have both early bulbs such as snowdrops and tulips that bloom later. Even shrubs and trees can flower at the beginning of the season.

Perennial plants, perennials, have different flowering times. If you have a small discount, you can choose varieties that have a long flowering period. Complete with annuals, and you can have something bright pink one summer and yellow the next. Autumn can also offer beautiful colours.

Don’t forget that the garden can be beautiful even in winter. Green plants and trees with beautiful trunks can be placed at the entrance where people move all year round or so that they can be seen from the window.

9. Other constructions in the garden. In many gardens there are also other constructions, such as planks, planter boxes or trellises. These also contribute to the overall impression and a grow box in rusty corten steel gives a completely different feeling than an unpainted pallet collar. Think about how the house looks, what style and color it has, and think about how the constructions should relate to this.

Fakta.Nicole Wilson

Make: Garden designer with a previous career in fashion where she designed shoes and creations worn by, for example, Lady Gaga, Robyn and Rihanna. Designs gardens and green outdoor environments for private individuals, condominium associations and companies.

Current: Presenter in SVT’s “Drömträdgården”, in the podcast “Trädgård, trädgård, trådgaard” (together with Linnéa Dickson) and with the book “In the head of a garden designer” (Nature & Culture).

This is how the interest in cultivation arose: When Nicole Wilson’s mother passed away, Nicole inherited the garden as well as seeds and tools. Managing the garden began as a therapeutic act but quickly developed into a great interest.

Show more Show less