Now that you've made an objective assessment of your needs and your site, it's time to think about what you want the garden to look like. Garden styles include English with flowers and lawns, bushland, Japanese, formal European, tropical or the stark lines of dry-climate plants.

Once you've decided on the look you want, it's much easier to plan the layout and contents and that's the time to start drawing. It doesn't matter how rough the drawings are, they will gather your thoughts together.

Decide which of your rough doodles you like best and either draw it up on a larger scale on graph paper, make an enlarged photocopy or lay a piece of tracing paper over your original and transfer the doodle to that. Work out your ideas in detail. Check the measurements and double check you haven't forgotten anything. Resist the temptation to elaborate the design - as they say, the art of all art is knowing when to stop.

Think of height
A plan can be deceptive, as it gives an exaggerated emphasis to things like paving patterns and flattens out the third dimension of height. We draw trees and shrubs as circles on a plan, but that's not how we see them in real life.

Tip: Simply tilt the plan at an angle and draw in the trees and structures at their measured height. This gives you a sort of bird's-eye view (it is technically known as an 'axonometric projection') and, though the heights tend to look a bit exaggerated, it can be a great help at all stages of design.

The rules of good design
Beautiful gardens are not created from rules but there are some general guidelines. A successful design is balanced and harmonious, neither so complex that it will seem fussy, nor so over-simple that it will be boring. Plants add beauty and so it's best to start simply - you can always add more features later.

A theme unifies a design
It always helps to have a theme or style.
These three design sketches are based on circles and straight lines (top sketch), rectangles (centre sketch) and triangles (bottom sketch).

Circles

Rectangles

Triangles

Making doodles on a small scale is the heart of the design process - if it doesn't look good small, it won't when it's built. And sooner or later you'll come up with an idea that seems to have all the things you want. Then you can lay tracing paper over your original site plan and transfer the doodle to it. The plan shown here is based on the circle theme. You still have a lot of choices to make to decide on the specifics but you now have a framework for your thinking.

Getting down to specifics
Now you can begin to think in terms of materials and specific plants. Decide whether the patio will be brick, concrete or stone and what those screening plants might be. Think about how the foliage colours and textures will blend. Ideally, ask yourself what is the best plant rather than where to put a particular plant.
There's no need to try to work out all your planting details on paper - half the fun of gardening is improvising, playing with planting schemes and changing things around, all within the overall design.

Design and planning checklist
Have you thought about:

• summer shade, winter sun
  windbreaks
  blocking undesirable views, providing privacy
  washing line, compost bin
  storage for garden equipment and furniture
  steps and/or retaining walls for changes in level
  lighting
  letterbox, house number
  drainage
  easements, overhead lines, drains and/or sewers
  widths of paths, gates and steps
  position of outdoor living areas
  size of paving and patios
  shape of lawns and ease of mowing them
  the ultimate size of trees and the effect of their shade on you and your neighbour's
  security, especially for pools
  space for children's games, vegetable gardens and other special projects
  access to the house, for the car and during construction
  enough space so that plants won't need constant cutting back
  council approval for fences, structures and pools, and street planting
  building the garden in stages, if necessary

Source:Gardening: A Commonsense Guide (Murdoch Books)