Your dream garden, one deck at a time

If you want a quick makeover to revive your garden after the dry spell, annuals may provide the key to getting exceptional results quickly and easily

When the Mutuas started working on their garden on a quarter acre property in Kitengela, the only landscape elements present were an old acacia tree and a rugged walkway of mazeras that led from the bare driveway to the front door.

After spending all their savings and a loan putting up the house, there were left with too little money to do any proper landscaping.

Every year - or as funds became available - they tackled a new area of the site guided by their landscape architect and a master-plan.

They started by creating a brick and mazeras walkway, flanked by generous perennial borders of native plants.

The next year, they put in a deck and added mazeras to match the earlier path and then, a few years later, built a pool off the deck and re-surfaced the driveway with cobblestones and expanded the planting beds.

Today, the Mutuas’ garden is the focus of admiration by the entire neighbourhood. It has matured into a beautiful and functional garden with a welcoming front yard and a backyard that feels like an oasis.

Cumulatively, they have spent over Sh5 million over the past eight years. But they never felt strained at any one point.

Phasing out a landscape project has its advantages.

Besides reducing the impact on your pocket, it enables you to think through every aspect of the design as you create your garden little by little over time, making sure that each change works with the ones that came before it — and anticipating that it will work with future changes.

Here are a few more tips to help you break down that overwhelming ambitious landscape plan into manageable bits:

 Make a master-plan

They say that if you don’t want to lose sight of your vision, put it down. A master-plan is a documented vision of your aspirations for your landscape. It defines your desired end game: the elements of design, the hardscapes, the plant materials, the finishes as well as the colour scheme.

A master-plan allows you to easily phase out a big project over a number of years without losing the cohesiveness of the whole.

When money is short, parts of the master-plan can be given priority, depending on the available funds.

Later on as funds become available, other parts may be added in perfect harmony with the previous phases.

It is an implementation tool — a map of where the landscape is now and where is can be over a pre-determined period.

Modules and priorities

Yet it is a living document, one that can grow and change with your family’s shifting needs. A master-plan is also important in giving the homeowner an idea of what a landscape project will cost ultimately.

It presents the possibilities on one hand and the estimated costs of those possibilities on the other.

This empowers you to plan, phase and budget appropriately.

In phasing, try and group the elements in the master-plan into modules of elements that complement one another and prioritise which module will have the greatest impact with the least spending.

When you see good results quickly, you will be encouraged to keep going.

— The writer is a landscape architect.