How to create your own "Overall Design Objective"

Answer the following questions on a piece of paper and then combine your answers to create your own “Overall Design Objective”. Basically, these are ideas to help get you started designing your garden, and you can always change them anytime throughout the process.

1) Is this a full time or vacation home?

2) What is the overall function of your exterior design?

3) How much maintenance will you be able to handle? Will someone else maintain it?

4) Do you want lighting? Extravagant and colorful? Or simple?

5) Do you want water features? What size? Rushing water or calm?

6) Do you need parking or storage areas?

7) Do you want space for entertaining or a play area for the kids?

8) What is the overall budget and how can this be broken up into stages if needed? (different stages would be Front Yard / Side Yard / Back Yard)

Later in this blog, we will be going into detail about laying out the plans for your front, side, and back yards. The Overall Design Objective is more about creating a foundation and the feeling you want to create within your outdoor design. In the previous post, “Creating your Overall Design Object”, the first paragraph is an example of an Overall Design Objective if you would like to look at one. Enjoy and have fun creating your own design objective and look forward to the next posts about the steps for planning your Front Yard.