The thought that counts

We have this no man's land round the back of the garden shed. You probably have one too. Ours is a lumpy bank that stretches from the clothesline down to the stream, and it has thus far defied our design skills, planting plans and varying amounts of back-breaking work (his, not mine) to try to turn it into something that looks as though it may be part of an overall landscaping design.
In desperation, he planted it with some hydrangea cuttings given to him by a friend, some miniature toe toe I bought off the internet, a few grasses that hadn't found a home elsewhere, and a miniature kowhai because he likes yellow and I don't and he thought I mightn't notice it round there.
Every now and then he attacks the wide-open spaces between the plants with the weed eater, but the other day he admitted defeat.
"I need an idea," he said forlornly.
Fortunately, we're never short of those in our family. It's the dosh to make them a reality that's usually the problem. If we had a million dollars we'd rent a bloke with a little digger, sculpt the surface, get a nice builder to create a series of small offset decks going down to the water's edge, commission a local Maori carver to make us a couple of tall timber sculptures and pack-plant layers of arum lilies, large reeds, rushes, sedges and grasses.
Elegant timber screens would camouflage the garden shed and provide a framework for a tecomanthe, or perhaps serve as a backdrop to a row of tall, skinny trees, possibly cordylines or lancewoods, to give height. A small pontoon hanging over the water would allow us to dangle our feet while sipping champagne on a summer's evening. I can see it all now, clear as a bell.
"I need an idea we can afford," he said mournfully.
"Well hey, this is the ideas department, not the finance department," I replied.
People are always asking me where my ideas come from, both for the garden and the columns. Happily, ideas are never a problem. They live in landscape design books, garden magazines, on the websites of garden designers, in civic landscaping, and in other people's gardens. You'll also find them by taking walks around flash suburbs and looking over fences, or by checking out good-looking gardens in the local real estate papers and then visiting the open homes. Cheeky, yes, but very helpful.
The trick, of course, is to adapt someone else's idea to your own climate, environment and budget. But actually, that's the easy part. Keep your mind open to any design, no matter how expensive or elaborate, analyse its different elements and then replace them with what will work for you on an aesthetic and financial level.
You may not be able to afford a bespoke schist wall curving around the garden, but you can probably create a similar shape and the same feeling of enclosure with a timber, plaster or even corrugated iron fence (with enhancements) at a fraction of the cost.
A professionally laid tile terrace or paved path can be replaced with an area of shell or stone chip edged in timber, and a stunning avenue of $30-a-pop magnolias will look just as amazing if you use a grevillea. (A wee bit of skiting here - my favourite salmon-pink grevillea has been flowering rampantly since April, while the magnolia has, after an entire winter and spring of sulking, reluctantly produced three flowers.)
When you're looking for ideas to steal, choose those which have some basic commonalities with your own property. A similar slope is a good start - no point choosing something designed for a flat Christchurch section and trying to translate it to a Wellington hillside.
It's also wise to avoid scaling down a really huge idea for a small section - it'll lose something in translation. But in terms of shape, function, materials and plants, you should be safe enough if you apply a lot of creativity and a little common sense.