Draw your garden plan from above: patio, lawn, hedges, trees and sun

Most gardens grow bit by bit: a patio here, a hedge there, a tree planted one Sunday. Ten years later the patio is in shade by 5 pm, the tree blocks the sun from the vegetable patch and the lawn is cut into strips that are impossible to mow.

A plan seen from above, to scale, avoids these mistakes because it shows what you can't see from the window: distances, areas, shadows and the space plants will take once they're full-grown. This guide follows the order a garden designer would: survey what's there, read the sun, place the areas you'll live in, then paths, planting and boundaries.

Start from what's there

Begin with an honest plan of the garden as it is. If you're starting from scratch, the guide draw a floor plan of your house explains how to put the aerial photo down to scale and draw the plot boundary.

Then note what matters for a garden:

• The doors from the house to the garden: that's where every trip starts.
• Existing trees, with the real diameter of their crown. On the aerial photo the crown is easy to see: trace it.
• Special spots: a corner that stays wet after rain, a slope, very stony or heavy clay soil. A label is enough.
• Buried services: you don't plant a tree on a drain, and you don't drive fence posts into a cable. The guide mapping underground pipes and cables explains how to find them.
• Views: what you want to see from the living room, and what you want to hide, like a neighbour's extension or the bins.

Read the sun on your plot

In Architektor, north is at the top of the plan. The sun rises in the east, is due south at midday and sets in the west, higher in summer than in winter. What changes everything in a garden is the length of the shadows.

At the latitude of Manchester, Leeds or Dublin, around 53° north, here's how high the sun gets at midday and how long a shadow it casts:

These are midday shadows, the shortest of the day. In the morning and evening they stretch out, towards the west and then towards the east. Further south, in London or Cornwall, the sun climbs a little higher and shadows are a little shorter; in Scotland they're noticeably longer, and in December the midday sun barely clears the rooftops. The order of magnitude stays the same.

For your own plot, nothing beats watching. On a sunny day, photograph the garden around 10 am, 1 pm and 5 pm, and mark the shaded areas on your plan with a label or a light-coloured area. Do it again in another season if you can. The aerial photo shows shadows too, but you don't know the day or the time it was taken.

Place the patio

The patio goes near the kitchen or living-room door first: if it's 20 m away, you won't eat out there. Only then comes the orientation:

• South-facing: sun almost all day, very hot at midday in summer: plan some shade (pergola, tree, sail).
• West-facing: afternoon and evening sun: ideal for dinner.
• East-facing: morning sun, cool in the afternoon.
• North of the house: often in shade: a second seating area for hot days, rarely the main one.

For the size, start from what you'll put on it. Measure your table, then add room to push a chair back on every side. With 75 cm per side, a 2 × 1 m table already needs about 3.50 × 2.50 m, before walkways and the barbecue. A 6 × 4 m south-facing patio takes a table for six and room to move around. Draw it with the Area tool set to “Terrace” and choose the finish: wood decking, paving, slabs, travertine. The area is shown, useful for estimating materials.

Paths and getting around

Before drawing any paths, draw the real trips: from the back door to the shed, from the kitchen to the compost, from the gate to the front door, from the garage to the bins. Paths that don't follow those trips end up bypassed by a worn track across the lawn.

Plan the width for the use: a wheelbarrow, a lawnmower and two people side by side don't need the same space. Measuring your wheelbarrow is the simplest way. In Architektor, the Area tool set to “Path”, or “Driveway / parking” for a drive, with a material (gravel, paving, slabs) gives you the area to order.

The lawn: a simple shape

The lawn is often whatever's left over. Draw it as a shape you've chosen instead:

• Simple shapes are quick to mow. Avoid narrow strips and sharp corners between two beds.
• Gentle curves rather than zigzags if you want a free-flowing edge.
• The calculated area helps you order seed or turf, and the perimeter shown helps you estimate lawn edging or the boundary wire for a robot mower.

Hedges, fences and boundaries

The Fence, hedge, low wall tool draws boundaries: fence, hedge, low wall or gate. A hedge isn't a line: once grown, it takes up a strip of ground, often a wide one, that you need to be able to trim from both sides. Draw it at the width it will reach, not the width of the young plants.

Boundaries come with rules. In England, according to the Planning Portal at the time of writing, you can generally put up a fence, wall or gate without planning permission up to 1 m high next to a road used by vehicles, or its footpath, and up to 2 m elsewhere, unless the house is listed or the right has been removed. Hedges don't need planning permission as such, but a planning condition or a covenant can restrict planting, for example on open-plan estates. And if a hedge of two or more mostly evergreen trees or shrubs grows over 2 m tall and spoils a neighbour's enjoyment of their home, they can complain to the council once they've tried to sort it out with you: think twice before planting a row of leylandii on the boundary. The rules are different in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland: check with your council. Moving a ten-year-old hedge is a real job.

Trees: at their full-grown size

This is the most common mistake: planting a tree with its garden-centre size in mind. In the tree's properties, enter the species and the full-grown crown diameter, and choose the type: deciduous, conifer, fruit tree, shrub or palm. The plan then shows what the tree will really take up.

Think about three things before placing it:

• The shade it will cast on the patio, the vegetable patch, the neighbour's house, using the table above.
• The roots: away from foundations, pipes and any future pool.
• The leaves: a large oak or beech near a patio or a pond means raking every autumn.

If you live in a conservation area or the tree is protected by a tree preservation order, you may need the council's permission before cutting it back or felling it.

Fruit trees and the vegetable patch need sun: put them where the December shadow doesn't matter, but where the shadows from March to September stay short.

Vegetable patch, beds and practical corners

• The vegetable patch goes in the sun, near a tap, not too far from the kitchen. Use the Area tool set to “Vegetable garden”.
• Beds are drawn as “Flower bed” areas; their size helps you count plants and mulch.
• Practical corners deserve their place on the plan: shed, compost, bins, log store, and the rainwater tank, to be drawn on the underground level with the Tank / manhole tool.
• Irrigation can be drawn as a network in its own right, with its lines and valves.

Try out several layouts

Create a variant for each idea: “West-facing patio”, “Veg patch at the bottom”, “No hedge on the south side”. You can overlay two variants to see the difference, and go back to any version.

To picture it, a personal Gemini key lets you generate a photo-style render of the project, for example a view from the garden towards the house. It's a mood image, not an exact simulation: the dimensions that count are the ones on the plan.

When you're happy with the plan, share it with the “Garden and outdoor” link with a garden designer or your family: they open it without an account, measure and comment on the plan. For the work itself, export the garden level as a PDF to scale. And if a pool is part of the project, the guide where to put a swimming pool takes up the questions of sun, trees and buried services for the pool.