Terrace Garden Landscaping Design

Terrace Garden Landscaping

Written by: Ar Rinka D'Monte

Date: 6 June 2020

Adding up an extended living space to a house can be quite interesting if you have even mild interest in plants, herbs, shrubs, flowering plants etc. Lot many more people consider themselves as not the one with a green thumb, but that’s actually not true.

Yes, growing and maintaining plants at your terrace garden will take some amount of good time in a week but if you plan, select and execute it strategically and carefully, the results will be more than satisfactory. So here with this piece, we are sharing our thoughts and guidelines for planning and designing terrace gardens.

There can be a variety of shapes for terrace garden. Like rectangular, square or an oblong shape, but before you start follow the steps as follows:

Step 1: List down all the plants that you are thinking of having in your garden. Make a pictorial image of those plants by searching the same on the internet.

Step 2: Prepare a small list of your must haves in the terrace.

Seating area (only for two people or four people.)
Foldable seating / permanent seating.
Comfortable seating or coffer house seating
So on and so forth….

Do spend sometime to prepare this list, but be courageous enough to discard which are too many. Terrance garden will require regular watering, composting and maintenance, etc so be frugal in making your decision to only have a minimalist approach in selecting the overall features of your terrace garden.

Step 3: Once all the essential features are considered and finalised, then browse online for few terrace garden inspiration images. Do keep only few as a greater number of them will only create confusion and not results. If you are developing and designing your terrace garden for the very first time, then it will be well to select six essential features out of your wish list and then develop a plan drawing layout out of it. The drawing may look somewhat look like this.

Note :- You can watch our youtube video to learn about drawing a terrace garden layout.

Step 4: After you have your first draft drawing of your terrace garden, spend the next couple of days to study it and also discuss it with your friends and family. This will help you to get a better idea about others point of view. Do remember to make a drawing on a piece of A4 paper and not on computer. Once you have some comments and feedback you can develop some more options and ideas for your layout. Remember to have enough hardcopies so as to move around or to place the furniture along with softscape.

Step 5: Within the layout, once the hardscape is defined locate all the place for plants and shrubs. Make an arrangement which is more like a cluster and think of plant gradation i.e. higher plants being behind and smaller plants being in the front. Also make a selection of fragrant and non-fragrant shrubs which needs to be part of the overall scheme along with the colour shade.

Step 6: Even though the layout is not yet executed do make a broad judgement about lighting for your plants and the terrace to get an overall look and feel of the place. Think about it well, if it will it be wired or solar powered etc. Check some sample products online and try to incorporate them into your terrace garden layout to see the total no of them that you will need.

Step 7: With this we come to the end of planning process for developing a terrace garden layout. Now it will be good to make a list of all the work that needs to be done so as to arrive at an approximate costing for your project.

Main elements will include
S O F T S C A P E

Planters (cork, mud, cement or plastic)
Soil
Manure
Watering equipment.
Garden maintenance equipment etc.
Plants, variety and nos, etc

H A R D S C A P E

Planter box
Lights and wiring
Floor finishes
Waterproofing membrane, etc

There maybe lot many more queries or doubts but do give it a try and if you feel then we can work along with you for developing your garden design. Do write to us at homeplansindia.mail@gmail.com