The key required to design your own garden is in the planning stages. And while it's easy to create a garden (and anybody can), it requires a tremendous amount of forethought to bring all the required elements together.

Much like an artist starting their first strokes on a blank canvas, the ideas required to fill those blank portions need to be mapped out. Otherwise the resulting picture becomes unbalanced and the individual elements lose their relationship with each other.

When designing your home garden, plants need to relate with structures; colours with textures; and, foliage with flowers. As they are balanced they become a mirror of the gardeners imagination, creativity attention to detail. The garden proclaims the gardener's intent and will declare his or her's expression much like a bottle of red accounts for a vigneron's expertise and passion.

So, for the next two weeks (14 days) I will try to give some thought-provoking pointers to help you place the jigsaw, that is your garden, together.