How to Create a Landscape Layout (real narrow garden example)

👉️ Plant Perfect Activity Book: https://www.prettypurpledoor.com/plantperfect

In this video, I’ll show you how I’d implement a client’s wishlist into their landscape design project by just drawing over a photo of their backyard. I’ll talk you through all of the steps and considerations I’m making as I design for peace, privacy, play areas, focal points and garden beds.

I’ll walk you through the whole process of turning a client’s dream backyard into a reality. And get this – we’re gonna do it all by doodling right on top of a photo of their actual space. It’s like backyard magic!

I’ll be your guide as we dive into each step and share all the stuff I’m thinking about as I design a property. We’re talking creating a serene escape, setting up cozy nooks, making sure there’s plenty of privacy, throwing in some play areas for good measure, and of course, jazzing it up with eye-catching focal points, fire pits and lush garden beds.

By the end, you’ll be itching to grab a pen and start scribbling your own backyard masterpiece. Can’t wait to hang out with you in the video!
—–
🌷Helping you create a vibrant, manageable 4-season landscape that is uniquely you.🌷

I’m Amy and I help home gardeners design design landscapes that are uniquely you.

3 Gardening Secrets Revealed (Free Training): https://go.prettypurpledoor.com/secretrevealyt
Free Plant Pairing Guide: https://prettypurpledoor.com/guides

So in the last video I showed you exactly how I’d assess a real life property for privacy issues and function in this video I want to take that same example and go further so we’re going to go through all of the items on the wish

List and I’m going to show you how I would Implement them I’m not using any fancy programs of just drawing on my iPad and just talking you through all the steps as I go if you haven’t watched the Privacy video yet you don’t need to

Watch that before you see this one but I do recommend you check that one out too after you’re done with this one so let’s just get right into it because it’s gonna be really fun okay so we’re taking a look at this real life property and

This is a photo that was taken from the inside of the home looking down on the property we also have another picture here of the upper deck area and in the last video I showed you different ways that we were addressing privacy so privacy is always number one on my list

No matter what the clients list is so I always put this I create a wish list I have the client create a wish list on the very top is a privacy hiding ugly views and in this situation there are no views to keep but if there were particular views that were really nice

That they wanted to leave open like oh I really enjoy looking at the tree that is in my neighbor’s property or I really like the view of the mountains from like the west side of the house you would also make notes of those things and

After that I kind of go through and come up with a wish list and from there I’ll actually take that wish list and sort of make it into a an order a number order of how important these things are so first was privacy and hiding those ugly

Views the second we came up with was the utility area or some kind of storage for outdoor items third was a water feature really interested in a water feature focal point the fourth was a dining area kind of secluded a nice area to eat outside another one was sort of a lounge

Space to relax with friends maybe a fire pit it or something like that another important thing was definitely kids play area I mean this could probably bump up the list if you do have young children you’re gonna obviously need to keep play areas open for those children would be

Nice vegetable garden and it would be nice garden beds and beauty and I know this is number eight is probably on the top of a lot of your lists but I’d encourage you to sort of really think about that like obviously we’re going to include garden beds obviously we’re

Going to try to make it beautiful um so it’s sort of like a this is gonna happen no matter what but the more important things about designing a landscape are the things up here like I really need privacy I really need storage I really want to eat outside I

Really want this water feature that might not be on the top of your list but for this particular project we’re gonna go with the water feature being really important so now we have this property here and I just want to show you how I would start to lay some of this stuff

Out so in in a situation like this where you have a long and narrow backyard so the the backyard is all very long and narrow there’s a little jut out here and then there’s sort of a walk out say right here from the the downstairs so if

You have a long and narrow space like this the tendency that I see a lot of people have is to create garden beds along the left and right sides and really all this does is make it feel a lot more narrow and a lot more constrained so this is kind of pushing

This in and it’s emphasizing the fact that this is pretty narrow this is a pretty narrow property so we don’t really want to do that in this in this type of property what I would do is I would almost take this outside area that we’re working with

Right I think it count right here and we have the walk-in I would I would try to divide it into like different spaces horizontally so now instead of a very narrow yard we have this huge space here that’s almost a square like from here all the way around and then we have

Another one that’s kind of almost like a rectangular space and another one here and it really breaks up the property in a nice way it makes it feel more expansive wider and easier to kind of wrap your head around so if you’re dealing with a really long narrow space

Try cutting it into two or three blocks along the way so now that we have that figured out I’m going to kind of try to go with that as I’m designing here and we don’t want to forget about the privacy and hiding the ugly views so obviously we have the ugly view here

That we need to get rid of and then we have neighbor issues over here where they even have this upper deck and it’s kind of looking down so the first thing that I would probably suggest to hide this area and this telephone pole is maybe some kind of

Feature tree actually let me like reduce the opacity just a little bit so it’s easier to see what I’m drawing on here so if we had a larger Tree in this area again very sloppy very messy you don’t have to be an artist to come up with

Stuff like this you just have to think about function and form and how you want the space to actually function so if you did a very large shade tree in that particular area I think you would be in a really good position to block out the majority of this garage here and the

Other thing that we’re probably going to need like we talked earlier about doing this deck up here with some kind of lattice or something so that’s already in the works and from down here we’re going to need probably a little bit of a privacy tree or screening in this area

Here because of the neighbors and that’s still because they’re above it’s still not going to handle everything for them because their dining areas here people from up here can watch them eating so we kind of have to work on the Privacy situation and all of that too we also

Need some kind of screening for this back area where it’s kind of ugly potentially so we’re just coming up with like some ideas now here and trying to work things out so one of the big things on their list was a utility area so

I want to put in a utility area for them and I think in this back area here would be a perfect area for uh potential utility area and something more so let’s just say we’re going to do a shed in this particular area back here to store some of their things and we

Still have some space to play with here but what if this whole thing was actually fenced off from the rest of the property so we have a little bit of a fence here and we just have sort of a separate area so they would go in to

This area through a gate or something like that so that would give them the storage they need and also kind of hide that area the next thing they want like water feature or focal points of some kind so in order to determine that usually I’ll do that near the end

Because I want to make sure I’m strategically placing them so a lot of times I’ll put a focal point at the end of the path so let’s just say that there’s the walk out here and they do have to get up to here somehow so we’re

Going to have a path that’s going maybe this way and then maybe from here we’re gonna kind of jut over and then have the walkway turn like that and this can change this is just me kind of trying to come up with an idea here if

That’s the case then we would have a focal point that could go right here so we’ll put like a little circle there for the focal point in that situation and maybe we’ll move this up a little bit more and we’ll work around with that so next we have to figure out how to

Seclude the dining area so they have the dining area here and that’s all well and fine but maybe we need to kind of move it a little bit more into this area here so what if we had this area here that is almost like below the deck or next to

The deck but down it’s a little bit hard to see here because of the Dead deck is in the way but they do have the space down there and then what I would also have to do at that point because we have the neighbors is come up with some kind

Of screening here to screen this dining area off from other things so the next thing on the list was a lounge space and I think a lounge space would would make a whole lot of sense here in this area here right when you walk out of the back

Walk so maybe we have the dining area and then we have this lounge space kind of right next to each other on the property and they also need the kids play area so right now the kids play areas right in this area where I put the

The trampoline is right where I put the focal point so what if it moved to over here where this little house is and then we just had a big kind of like a lawn space for the kids here and this is kind of play so we’re getting we’re going

Down that list again and another would be nice would be a vegetable garden so you have a couple options there depending on the um aspect or which direction the property’s facing for vegetable garden you would want a lot of sun so we’d have to find a full sun area

So vegetables could either be like in this area potentially or maybe they could even go in this back area where the uh utility area is because that would make a lot of sense if there was like a shed here and then they could do a little Greenhouse or something or just

Have a place to kind of care for these plants so either over here or back there and then obviously the garden beds and the beauty of the whole thing will come after so what I like to do with garden beds and stuff is I sort of design it

After I get all of like the main things in so we have this dining area and this Lounge area here and then we have the play area so all along here we could potentially have garden beds and I just have this whole area here we have this whole area all along here that

We could put garden beds so you can always be able to fit those garden beds in as you design you could even have some here so they walk out and then they have some nice plants right when you walk out or maybe these are some herbs

That you can use for eating and then you would need some sort of path for them to get from there to there but this whole area could be plants as well and then all along here and again if you do have areas with wind you want to make sure that you’re

Blocking the wind um trying to reduce that sound reduce the road noise things like that and we do have some bigger uh sort of privacy trees going in in this area too but these could be almost like mixed borders with different um plants along with those maybe

Arborvitae or something like that so I just wanted to take you through that process look how messy and sketchy and ridiculous this looks but this is sort of the process I don’t think you need to be an artist I think you just need to come up with a wish list and then you

Need to go down that wish list and start drawing and for some clients I will actually take something like this I’ll do it 10 even 20 times sometimes with just bubble drawings and just putting little circles in and trying to make everything fit sort of like an Etch A

Sketch or a lounge here I have another picture that’s a little bit more drawn out for for this situation where we have the shed in the back with the vegetable gardens we have the play area here we have that focal point here’s the lawn we’re hiding this view remember we’re

Blocking the neighbors here we got the lounge we got the dining we got the fire pit so we had everything in we’re blocking the road noise we’re blocking the wind we made considerations for all of that and from here on out you’re ready to start planning um picking the features picking

Um what everything’s going to look like picking all your plants and sort of laying out the garden beds I have a course for that I have lots of books about different parts of this process again plant perfect activity book I have a book about focal points all that stuff

I’ll leave links to in the description below and I hope this was helpful just to see like a real life example of how you could lay out a property in a very simple but messy way and just sort of play around with that if drawing over

The photo isn’t helpful to you like this like I did for this you could also just draw it on a flat piece of paper like I did here and just draw it to scale like measure everything get the right dimensions out and then you can start drawing everything into scale On the left hand side of the screen I just have a modified version of what’s going on in this landscape and then on the right hand side I’m drawing a scale plan starting to lay out the different positioning of the dining area the lounge space the lawn and I’m making

Little notes to myself about that wind and the road noise so here you can see I’m doing the garden beds and I’m starting to draw out some of the furniture even for the dining area just to get a feel for how everything is going to look together and where the

Paths are going to go and now I just sort of eliminated all of the noise so I could draw in where the plants would go so now I’m kind of developing a planting plan not choosing specific plants but where the plants will go and you can see

I got my water feature in there now next to the lounge space and the fire pit area and I have a little area for the children to play I’m starting to add some textures I want to use brick or different kinds of stone and here I’m doing little dots for grasses and things

Like that so I’m really just trying to bring this design to life so that if a client looks at it they can kind of understand what I’m thinking for the design and this is how I would take that really messy drawing and clean it up a little bit make some notes and then

Actually turn it into a real landscape design project and if you liked this video and you want a bit more guidance as to how you can really do this yourself I have an entire book it’s called the plant perfect activity book and it takes you through all different

Activities and exercises so that you can create a functional space that is planned for peace and privacy it complements your style and beautifies your neighborhood so if you’re interested in that plant perfect activity book I’m going to leave the link to that in the description below so

You can grab your copy today and I’ll see you over in the next video Thank you