1. We wanted many garden rooms that mingled together

   My biggest dislike of some gardens is the way gardeners mix different plants together in a randomness that is devoid of explanation. You may find flowering petunias sitting next to an aloe vera, pelargoniums almost covering both as a small eucalypt tree shades all three. All four plants have different watering requirements; different soil needs and look so unnatural that you just wouldn't find them in a natural setting.

   I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to gardening so I like creating garden rooms that can be very different from one another and yet allow me to play with different plant types. My rationale for this banal philosophy is that unless the plant groupings occur naturally then they won't happen unnaturally in my garden.
   

2. It had to be useful for both the children yet aesthetically pleasing

   Deb and I have four children who were aged seven to two months when we moved into this house. So their playtime had to be a major consideration in drawing up the plan. Step 1, creating garden rooms, was still a big part of this as I remember as a child the fun we had when romping through gardens that could suit hide and seek, chasey and other young people games.

   We designed a cubby house that towers above the garden but depending on which part of the garden you see it from may be totally obscured to completely visible. Under the cubby is a large sandpit which the toddlers love to play in yet you need to be in that 'garden room' to see it.

   Lawn was another big factor in achieving this. I know there are many gardeners who despise lawn due to its maintenance requirements and need for vast volumes of watering and fertilising, but if you are going to have children play in your garden lawn needs to be a consideration. Therefore many of our garden rooms, especially the ones we wanted to encourage our children to play in have central lawn patches.
   

3. The garden needed to look bigger than what it actually was

   Our total land package is 690 sq.m (7,427sq. ft) which isn't huge. Especially when you consider our prior rental was 1200 sq.m (12, 916sq. ft) and we felt like we didn't enough room to do everything we would have liked there. However the way of he world is to go smaller for more money so we live with this. We're blessed because many of our friends have smaller blocks than this now.

   So, to make it look bigger than what it was we had to implement a few tricks to play with our eyes.
   

   
   
   1. We grow vines and creepers on the fences. This hides the fact that there are walls and can actually lead the eye beyond the fence line creating the effect that the block doesn't actually finish.
      
   
   
   2. The use of borrowed landscapes. We took into account what our neighbours were doing and tried to tie this in with our garden design. One of our 'garden rooms' is based on Australian natives and this backs onto a neighbour who also has Australian natives. When this finally matures, you also want be able to tell that our property finishes where it does as it will seem to continue through to the next-doors yard.
      
   
   
   3. Creating 'explore-lust'. By hiding parts of your garden from the eye can create the sense that your garden continues on and doesn't finish and therefore looks much bigger than it really is.
      
   
   
   
   
4. I wanted people to be blown away by it.

   As your average egocentric gardener I actually desired people walking into my garden and finding it hard not to positively comment on what we were trying to achieve. We have, and continue to, pour copious amounts of time and effort into the garden so we wanted people to appreciate it as our sense of reward.

   I wanted people to be inspired by it as well so that they could take away some idea thinking that it might be possible to achieve in their gardens. What I enjoy the most though is when self-appointed non-gardeners will stop and discuss a plant that caught their eye or a design feature that they were intrigued by. This gives me the most satisfaction.
   

Thanks Kim for inspiring this post and getting me to think through what I have been trying to achieve. If you have some goals for your garden take a moment and share them through the comments or link us back to a post you've done on your blog or web space.