Designing a border part 1: plan your border

Have you recently moved in and want to put your own stamp on the garden? Or maybe you just fancy refreshing your borders. Now is a great time to get planning and planting.

In this blog series, we’ll walk you through planning your border, choosing plants and planting up.

We’ll share our top tips for creating a border that’ll give you something to enjoy all year round.

Part 1

In this post, we’ll share everything you need to know to plan your border and avoid expensive mistakes later on.

Plan your border

Measure the space
It’s no good planning a border if you don’t know how much room you’ve got to play with. Get it wrong and you risk squashing plants together, or being left with big gaps.

For a square or rectangular border, use a long tape measure to work out the length and width of the space you want to plant up. Draw out the space on a sheet of paper with a ruler, marking out 1cm for metre (or 10cm if you’ve a smaller area).

If you’ve lots of areas to plant, or they’re unusual shapes, you could get a professional surveyor to help you measure up.

Check the soil
It’s vital to know what your soil’s like before investing in any new plants.

Soil has different levels of acidity ranging from acid, through neutral, to alkaline. 

Planting something that loves acid soil when yours is alkaline means your plant will not be happy. A soil testing kit will help you work out what your soil type is.

You should also check whether your soil is heavy, light or somewhere in between.

Heavy soil like clay will hold onto moisture, meaning you’ll need to choose plants that don’t mind their roots sitting in wet for a long time.

Lighter soil, like sandy soils, drain freely, meaning you’ll need to choose plants that can cope in drier conditions.

Many new build gardens have very poor soil full of builder’s rubble. This makes for a great base for meadow-style planting as these plants need few nutrients.

If you’d like to grow anything else, you’ll need to improve the soil over time by mulching or adding compost when planting.

Check light levels
Just as important as your soil is light. Is your border shady, sunny or a mix? There’s little point choosing plants that love being in the sun when your border is in the shade most of the time.

Look at the border at different times of day and see where the sunlight hits. Bear in mind the sun is still fairly low in the sky at this time of year, so you might need to consult photos of the space in summer to get a better idea.

Anywhere that gets less than 6 hours of sunlight is full shade. More than 6 hours is full sun. Anything in between is partial shade.

Check plant labels when buying (or ask us) if you’re unsure what light levels your plant needs.

Work out what’s worth keeping
Now you’ve got an idea of what your conditions are, it’s time to look at what you’ve already got in the border that you might want to keep.

If you’ve inherited a garden, it’s worth being patient and waiting to see what pops up through the year. Take photos throughout so you don’t forget where things are.

Look out for part 2 of this series helping you design a border - choosing plants.