The Pre-Design Checklist

How you will actually live in it

1. On a warm Saturday in June, where exactly are you sitting at 8 am, at 1 pm, at 8 pm? A garden is designed around those three chairs.
2. How many people do you host, and how often? Dinner for six every week changes a terrace more than a party for forty once a year.
3. Who uses the garden besides you: children, dogs, grandparents, staff? Each rewrites the plan.
4. What do you want to stop seeing, and who do you want to stop being seen by? Privacy is a design brief, not an afterthought.
5. How much gardening do you honestly want to do yourself? "None" is a respectable answer, and it changes the planting entirely.

6. Where does the sun fall in the morning and evening, in June and in February? Photographs at different hours are worth more than any first meeting.
7. Where does the water go in a downpour today? Standing water, damp basements and dying lawns are drainage questions before they are design questions.
8. Do you have a survey, a site plan or architectural drawings? Any of them saves weeks of measuring.
9. What is worth keeping: a mature tree, an old wall, a view? Great gardens are edited, not erased.
10. How does material get in: a side gate, an alley, an elevator, a crane? In the city, access can be a third of the budget.
11. For terraces and rooftops: do you know the structural load limit, and does the building require approvals? These two answers set the whole schedule.

12. What is the honest budget for the built work, as a range? A garden designed for the wrong number is wasted work for everyone.
13. Would you rather build it all at once, or in phases over two or three seasons? Both are legitimate; they are designed differently.
14. Is there a fixed date the garden must be ready for: a wedding, a season, a sale? Deadlines shape material choices.
15. What does failure cost you? A cheap base under expensive stone is the most common way to pay for a terrace twice.
16. Who maintains it in year three? A plan for care, or a budget for it, belongs in the design brief.

17. Is an architect, interior designer or builder already involved? The best results come when the landscape designer joins that team early.
18. Do you want one team coordinating end to end, or a design you can put out to competitive bid? Decide before you commission anything.
19. What must the drawings contain for a contractor to price them without guessing? If the answer is unclear, ask every studio you interview.
20. What would make you consider this project a success in ten years, not ten weeks? Write that sentence down. It is the brief.