Garden Guru: Luck of the draw

An upstairs perspective helps. Photo / Supplied

When I was younger and inclined to go at things like a bull in a china shop I would often hobble home from the park with my cool new shoes and the blisters they'd caused.

A blister is hard to leave alone. My mum always used to warn me about popping them but I always did. I would prod and fiddle and worry them with scissors until my eyes watered and my wimpy sister screamed for me to stop.

Today I rarely move fast enough to get a blister but I do have something almost as fascinating; my garden. And, like a blister, a garden is a thing, which if you are at all serious about it, you will poke and fiddle with until they take you away in a box or just sling you on the compost. What exactly is my motivation? Mastery over nature, visual perfection or simply a retreat from having to do jobs indoors? We all have our reasons but tinkering with gardens is addictive.

And winter, when everything is laid bare, is the perfect season for us prodders and fiddlers. We have more time on our hands with growth in a slumber and most plants can be moved about. The bones of the garden and all its worst faults are laid bare, crying out to be fixed.

Gardeners fall into three categories. There are those with not a visual bone in their body, their focus and pride is entirely in what they produce, be it edible or pretty and often they haven't changed the layout since moving in.

In contrast, the over-ambitious sophisticates read far too many glossy magazines and never miss garden safaris or shows. These people are not always concerned about plants or growing anything per se - they approach design with clinical, cold efficiency and precision.

Then there are the passionate all-rounders who love plants but also have a store cupboard of good ideas and snippets of information about design which they want to try. The trouble here is that when they reach into their mental ingredients cupboard it's as if, at the prospect of being asked to cook up a meal for four, they end up attempting something on the scale of a medieval banquet. Sometimes, halfway through the process they have a nervous breakdown or flee the scene of the crime. But most often they end up making the one dish they can get right - a sort of tasteless kedgeree.

If design is not your forte, or if you flirt with it but can never decide how to approach things, or you are the sort who just doesn't know when to stop, then seriously consider seeking professional advice or at least inviting a trusted friend around.

The outsider who is worth their weight in gold will be painfully honest and will cut through all your worst biases and blind spots. The first thing to be clear about is to understand what conditions you have on site. These are the unchangeables you might as well embrace rather than fight. Identify which parts of the garden are in heavy shade all day and which parts have plants cooking in baking sun. Boundaries facing east and west will receive a bit of both on the average day.

Light levels will fluctuate greatly under deciduous trees. We tend to be wildly optimistic about light, assuming parts of our plot to be brighter for longer than they really are. But the performance of your plants will not lie.

Most smaller gardens are predominantly shady, especially at the edges, so by choosing a tailored plant palette you will instantly raise your chances of success. Coupled with light is the soil condition. This can usually be improved by the addition of grit and organic matter but it pays to identify where will be the boggy hollows in winter and the dustbowls in summer.

Every garden should by nature evolve and change to stay fresh and alive. Tweaking as your menagerie of plants ebbs and flows is an essential part of the fun and next week we will look at how best to go about it.

Could do this week:

* Try measuring and plotting your garden on paper. You don't need to be excessively accurate - even pacing the distances might be enough. It can be surprising how a seemingly square plot can often have forgotten tapers and kinks where you never knew they existed.

* Put your plan on paper and include all the main garden features. Sometimes looking at a basic plan will instantly suggest how you can make the layout more agreeable on the eye.