Autumn in Poppy’s garden

Autumn in Poppy's garden

My garden is a fairly wild space, though admittedly not a huge one. It's 30 metres long and 5 metres wide at its broadest point, and is currently divided into three sections: a perennial planting system, a vegetable patch and a small orchard.

Over the course of a year – from autumn through to summer – I'll be making some alterations to the space and along the way will be showing you how to plan and execute your own gardening scheme, in a sustainable and ecologically friendly way.

Watching and learning from your outdoor space

During the first year of developing your outdoor space, it's so important to watch and learn from it so you can work in harmony with nature. By observing your garden, you can learn how the sun falls across it, how the wind blows through it, and how water flows throughout it.

You can also study the plants that are already there, what features you may already have, and crucially, what the condition of the soil is.

Gathering all of this information will help you to design your space in a way that works best for you, the natural world and for the particular habitat that you have.

To really get to know your garden, you'll need to spend as much time in it as possible. Get outside in all seasons – and in all weathers if you can! – and really soak it all up.

By observing the sun's position in the sky and how shadows form across your garden, you'll be able to discover whether you have any frost pockets and will be able to locate any sun-traps. This will help you to plan the placement of the tender and hardy plants in your space.

A full year is the ideal length of time to build a relationship with your garden. You'll be able to observe it during all the seasons and will be able to get to know all its secrets.

How to document your space

There are lots of creative ways you can document your garden and that will help you to keep a record of the seasons, the shifts in sunlight and temperature, and the areas that might work best for different planting schemes.

Here are some of my favourite ways of documenting my space:

1. Keeping a journal
2. Taking photos
3. Compiling a list of the plants that are already there (including which are thriving and which are struggling)
4. Taking videos
5. Writing notes about what I notice and when.

Keeping all this information in one document on your computer is a great way of gathering it all safely in one place and ensuring it can be easily found and referred to when needed.

Let your observations shape your plans

Now that you've observed your space, it's time to really think about what you need and want from it. Gardens are places where humans and nature meet, and while we want to make diverse spaces for nature, we need to think about what's best for us too.

Ultimately, you will also want your family and friends to feel welcome and happy in your garden too, and there are lots of ways to make this happen, whether it's putting in a bench, building a covered area or creating an outdoor dining area.

Start by taking a long look at your garden – is there something missing that you'd love to put in? How can you create a space for leisure, food production and wildlife?

Documenting your space for a year will help you to decide on the best layout of your garden, such as the ideal location for your leisure space. This might be a sunny corner next to your favourite flowers or a bench under a shady tree. Whatever it is, let functionality and beauty meet.

Separating your garden into zones

Dividing your garden into zones will help you decide what should go where. Knowing the current condition of your garden will help with this process too. For example, if the soil is richer in one area, this might be the perfect location for your vegetable patch.

Understanding how you want to use all your space will also help shape your plans. Many people prefer to hide their vegetable beds away, but having them closer to the home and hence kitchen can make them easier to access when you're cooking. Similarly, having your compost heap closer to the home might encourage you to tend to it more regularly.

However, you might like to be drawn into your garden so that you get to spend more time in it and are forced, by design, to travel through it each day. In this case, placing something you use regularly, like the compost heap, at the bottom of the garden will encourage you to interact with the whole space on a much more regular basis.

The condition of your garden will help to dictate what should go where too. By following nature-led design, we can create functional spaces for ourselves that incorporate the needs of the natural world too.

Autumn and winter are ideal times for planning your garden

Autumn and winter are the perfect seasons for taking stock and using the lessons of the past year to inform what we might do in the next. The long, dark evenings offer us a great opportunity to plan for the coming spring and give us time to decide what we want to do over winter to ensure we have enough produce to get us through the hungry gap in spring.

1. Take your time getting to know your space

1. Tune in to the pace of the natural world, learn to slow down and take stock

1. Connect with nature's rhythms and notice how your garden changes with the seasons

1. Keep a garden journal and take photos and videos to document how your space changes throughout the year