Who is this plan for?
This plan is for you if your project is outdoors: you want to redesign the garden, put in a pool or start a vegetable patch, without touching the house. The house is drawn only as a footprint, like on a land registry map. Everything interesting happens on the rest of the plot.
The plot is 20 × 35 m, or 700 m². The street is to the north; the 12 × 9 m house is set back 5 m, with a driveway at the side and an existing 28 m² patio to the south.
What's in the plan
What already exists is drawn normally: lawn, path, patio, hedge, a large oak at the end of the garden, a birch and a pine. The whole project is in red:
- an 8 × 4 m pool (32 m²) with a 77 m² travertine pool deck, 8 m from the house;
- a gravel path linking the patio to the pool;
- a 34 m² vegetable patch to the east, in full sun;
- three flower beds (45 m² in total) and two fruit trees, an apple and a cherry;
- an underground irrigation pipe running to the vegetable patch.
What works well
- Before and after on one plan: you can tell straight away what stays and what's new.
- Distances can be measured: between pool and house, pool and boundary, oak and pool deck.
- What's underground is planned: buried irrigation means no hose across the lawn.
Ideas to adapt it
- Move the pool so it gets afternoon sun, away from the oak's shade.
- Replace the pool with a pond or a natural swimming area.
- Add a garden shed or a pool house near the deck.
- Turn the vegetable patch into raised beds and add a compost bin.
Then drop the aerial photo of your address under the plan to copy the exact position of your trees and boundaries.
Going further
For the pool's position, read Where to put a swimming pool. The guide Draw a garden plan to scale explains how to survey an existing garden, and Map of underground pipes and cables helps you avoid pipes before you dig.