About landscape design

Although we converse freely and exchange ideas and concepts through language and text, this can be limiting, particularly when explaining or describing more complex shapes, patterns and forms. For designers who work in three dimensions, visual communication is often more efficient descriptive and easily accessible. The visual or graphic communication of design ideas enables the designer to work quickly and effectively, using measures or scaled drawings for accuracy. Garden designers use two broad categories to communicate ideas: technical or architectural drawing, and freehand or sketched drawings.

For client, freehand drawings are more readily appreciated and understood. Often in sketch form, such drawings seem more realistic, perhaps communicating the mood or atmosphere of a garden more effectively. However, technical drawings have their place in creation of successful gardens.

Scale
Even the smallest garden is larger than the largest sheets of paper that a designer might use! The use of scaled, or scaled down, measurements allow large dimensions to be reduced in proportion to fit onto workable and practical sheets. Small gardens, perhaps those in urban areas, will usually be drawn at a scale of 1:50, meaning that the drawn will be 1/50” of the size of the actual garden.

For larger suburban or country gardens, designer might adopt a scale of 1:100, 1:200 or 1:500

The plan when garden designer create his work, the plan drawing is the focus of the design process. To be able to understand these drawing one has to imagine being able to float above the garden looking down, as a bird might when flying overhead. This enables us to see the space laid as pattern.
The designer finds this useful as objects can be placed with great accuracy within the boundaries of the garden, an important consideration in recreating the design in reality. However, for the lay person, this view is often difficult to understand as is not the way in which we would normally perceive and view garden.
The plan is two dimensional, communicating length and breadth. The use of scale enables these dimensions to be read and understood accurately. The information on heights is missing in these drawings, and designer need to consider other means of communicating the third dimension.