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When doing the actual drafting of your garden design, you can draw many different kinds of plans. If you are drawing them for your own use, perhaps only the crudest of plans will be required since you know what the final picture will be like. On the other hand, people who can develop an artistic skill at drawing landscape plans often get a great deal of pleasure out of a finished garden plan. Many home gardeners like to work from planting plans or rough working plans, but still go on and make their final landscape plan quite a work of art so that they can frame it and hang it in their workshop or den.

Garden Structures

Working drawings and specifications for pergolas, tool sheds, and other garden structures constitute another type of work that you might want to try. They must be drawn to an exact scale so you can transfer the information from plan to the actual ground by a simple enlarging process.

Planting Plan and List

The first result of your efforts at drawing will be a planting plan, a simple piece of work wherein individual plants are shown as plain circles drawn with a compass. Along with this should go a planting list which enumerates the plants to be used by both their botanical and their common names, states the quantity of each kind required, and, many times, gives the size of the plants at planting time.

Take pains to be extremely accurate in locating the center of each plant on the working plan so you will be able to find the exact spot for it on the property like growing bougainvillea on a trellis. Otherwise you might end up with too few plants for a certain situation and a too thin planting, or, worse yet, too many plants and undesirable crowding.

Garden structures often take up too much space in the average small garden. However, if you have a good basic knowledge of carpentry you should be able to design and construct them yourself. A competent professional carpenter should, of course, be able to translate your rough drawings into a finished tool shed or pergola that meets with your approval.

As an example of the importance of this sort of planning you need only look at some of the barbecues, fireplaces and summer kitchens found on home properties. Such a feature should never be built unless it is worthy of the prominent part it plays in the overall plan. Certainly, one built according to detailed specifications drawn up by a professional architect (plans for which can often be bought very reasonably’) is vastly preferable to the all too common result of amateur efforts in piling up a lot of rocks and holding them in place with mortar.

Kent Higgins frequently contributes to http://www.plant-care.com. The more you know the better decisions you can make, like the topic of bougainvillea on a trellis. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

Steps provide as much of an opportunity to beautify your yard as any other item on your landscaping agenda. They can be built from round-cut logs, concrete, brick or stone.

Use the same standard dimensions for outdoor steps as you would indoors, particularly in high-traffic areas. Your tread should be 10 inches deep, 1/4 inch lower in the front than in back to permit drainage. Risers should be about 7 1/2 inches. A good foundation is essential, especially for steps not made with round-cut logs. Your foundation should extend 6 inches below the frost line.

Concrete is a popular choice when building steps, though not always the most attractive. Construct a simple form using a series of boxes made from of lx6 or lx8 inch scrap lumber. Each box should be the same width but 10 inches shorter than the box for the step below it. Place boxes one on top of the other, and use lathing cleats to hold them together, bracing the corners well. Use 1 part Portland cement to 3 parts sand and 6 parts gravel. Pour the cement and level with the flat edge of a board.

To eliminate the need for forms use precast concrete blocks. It costs about the same as pouring concrete but is much easier, especially for a one-person operation. Take special care when bonding the blocks to each other and improve the appearance of your finished product by applying a thin coat of concrete.

Build your steps with landscaping brick the same as you would with concrete blocks. This may require some heightened masonry skills and the many joints can be a weakness, but the result will be more attractive.

The principle difficulty in constructing stone steps is finding the stone. This presents no problem at all in some areas, but where stone must be purchased these are by far the most expensive type of steps to build. They can also be the most beautiful.

If you can find adequately sized stones you can build your steps without masonry bonding by applying the principles of dry-wall construction. You will need to use mortar when working with freestanding steps. Prepare your foundation as you would for brick steps and place your concrete beds carefully to keep a good pattern. Be precise in your leveling (we recommend the string level) and clean spilt mortar from stones before it dries. If you do need to clean up hardened mortar, use muriatic acid.

Wooden rounds cut from large logs make a beautiful and easily constructed set of steps. Place the bottom round in the ground and position the next round partly over it. This will create a riser. Fill the space between rounds with earth and firmly tamp it. Follow this procedure to the desired height.

On long, steep slopes where there is no need for real steps use informal wooden steps. Ramp steps can be made with risers.

For a greater understanding on the subject of landscaping brick. Drop by today at http://www.plant-care.com/1530-landscaping-brick.html. Visit the Uber Article Directory to get a totally unique version of this article for reprint.