Garden Makeover

Redesigns a real garden from a single photo, in one of six styles, seen from exactly the same spot. The house, its facades and openings, the terrace level, the plot boundaries, fences, neighbouring houses and large trees worth keeping are frozen. Patchy lawn, weeds, bare soil, tired shrubs and broken paving are cleared, and a new garden is laid out in their place. Each style has its own vocabulary. Contemporary uses pale large-format paving, a clean rectangular lawn, raised corten or concrete planters and ornamental grasses. Mediterranean brings gravel, terracotta, an olive tree, lavender and a pergola with vine. Japanese works with raked gravel, moss, stepping stones, Japanese maples and a stone lantern. English Cottage has a winding brick path and abundant mixed borders with roses. Naturalistic Prairie uses drifts of grasses and perennials crossed by a mown path. Dry Garden relies on gravel mulch, drought-tolerant plants and sculptural stones. Whatever the style, the layout follows the plot: a terrace near the house, circulation, a main planted area and a focal point, with planting shown two to three years after the works rather than freshly planted. No pool and no structure larger than a pergola is added. Useful for landscape designers who want to show a client a direction before drawing a plan, for agents selling a property with an untended garden, and for owners deciding which style suits their plot.

A landscape designer meets a couple who have just bought a 1970s house with a tired lawn and a cracked patio. They want a change but cannot say which one. Before spending days on a planting plan, the designer photographs the garden from the terrace door and runs the same photo through Garden Makeover in Contemporary, Mediterranean and Naturalistic Prairie. Three images with the house identical in each settle the direction in one meeting, and the plan starts from the style they pick.