Painting By Numbers

With the garden set for planting, we need to recreate the 1m x 1m grid from your planting plan onto the ground using stakes and twine. Just like earlier, start out at your anchor point and mark out your primary line with stakes at 1m intervals. Then mark out your secondary lines and connect the stakes together using twine.

If you are working with organic lines, draw them out on the ground using landscaping spray paint (essentially creating a paint by numbers drawing). Go grid by grid, drawing what you see on your plan onto the ground. Writing some key codes from your plant list can also be helpful, particularly when placing trees and shrubs or identifying large perennial groupings.

Once done, you can begin laying out your plants. Again, refer to your planting plans and work from the largest plant material down to the smallest (trees, then shrubs, then perennials, and finally bulbs in the fall).