The blank garden is the one project where everybody starts at the wrong end. Nursery first, plan later, and by the second summer half of it is either scorched, waterlogged or standing somewhere nobody ever sits.
In brief
- Map your real outdoor hours before you map beds.
- Test drainage with a hole and a watering can, not a guess.
- In France, article 671 of the code civil sets planting distances.
- Hard landscaping is where the budget quietly disappears.
Start with the hours, not the beds
Write down when you will actually be outside, and doing what. That single list decides more of the layout than any inspiration folder. Morning coffee, evening apéritif, children playing, laundry drying, a bike that needs somewhere dry to live: each of those wants a different surface, a different amount of shade and a different distance from the kitchen door.
My own list was embarrassingly short when I first wrote it. Coffee outside at eight, dinner outside from June to October, and a stubborn habit of reading in the shade at four in the afternoon. Three uses, three fixed points, and suddenly the paths drew themselves between them.
The bird watcher example is worth borrowing here. Putting up a feeder is a purchase. Placing a comfortable seat in shade, at the right distance, with a screen of planting that lets you watch without being seen, is a design decision, and it costs roughly the same.
Read the site before you argue with it
A garden tells you what it wants if you spend a fortnight watching it. Track where the sun lands at nine, at two and at seven, in the season you will use the space most. Note where water sits after heavy rain. Note the corner the wind funnels through, because on the coast that corner will eat any plant with soft foliage.
The drainage test is worth doing properly: dig a hole about 30 cm deep, fill it with water, let it drain, fill it again and watch. Water still standing hours later means heavy or compacted soil, and that is a fact to design around rather than a defect to fight.
| What the site does | What it rules out | What it rewards |
|---|---|---|
| Water stands after rain | Mediterranean shrubs that need sharp drainage | Damp tolerant planting, or a raised bed built on purpose |
| Full afternoon sun on a south wall | A seating area with no overhead shade | A pergola, a tree, or a dining spot used only in the evening |
| Wind funnelled between two buildings | Parasols and tall soft foliage | A fixed structure and a windbreak hedge planted first |
| Thin soil over rock or rubble | Deep rooted specimen trees | Containers, gravel garden, shallow rooted planting |
The rules that redraw your plan before you do
Three legal points settle parts of the layout whether you like it or not, and all three are cheaper to respect at the drawing stage than after the digger has left.
Planting distances. Article 671 of the French code civil sets them: anything that will exceed two metres in height must sit at least two metres from the boundary, and lower plantings at least fifty centimetres. The distance is measured from the centre of the trunk at ground level, not from the edge of the foliage, and a neighbour can require an over close tree to be removed or cut back under article 672.
Pools and structures. Under the code de l’urbanisme, an in ground pool of 10 to 100 m² needs a déclaration préalable filed at the mairie, and above 100 m² a full permis de construire. Local planning rules can add their own constraints on materials, colours and boundary setbacks, so the mairie is worth a visit before the plan is final.
Water. Summer restriction orders are real and they arrive fast. The French government’s VigiEau service publishes the level applying to each commune, on a four step scale running from vigilance to alerte, alerte renforcée and crise, with garden watering progressively limited or banned as the level rises. A planting scheme that only survives with a hose running every evening is a scheme that will fail in the year you most need it to work.
Comfort is the bit everyone leaves until last
Most people who say they never use their garden are describing a comfort problem, not a taste problem. No shade at the hour they are free. Furniture that punishes anyone who sits on it for more than twenty minutes. Nowhere to put a glass down. None of those cost much to fix, and all of them decide whether the space gets used at all.
Shade first, always. A tree is the best answer and the slowest, a pergola is the honest compromise, and a large parasol is the answer for anyone renting or unsure. Then a surface that stays walkable in bare feet, which rules out a lot of dark stone in a place where the summer sun is not shy.
Where the money really goes
Budgets on a garden rarely fail on plants. They fail on hard landscaping: levelling, retaining, paving, drainage runs, anything involving a machine or a lorry. Plants are the cheap, reversible part of the project, which is precisely why they should be decided last.
Being more useful does not automatically mean spending more. Moving a seating area six metres to sit under an existing tree costs nothing and changes the whole summer. So does deciding that the far corner will stay rough grass cut twice a year instead of becoming a lawn you have to feed.
The order I would work in
- List your real uses and the hours attached to them.
- Survey sun, water, wind and soil across at least two weeks.
- Check boundary distances, planning formalities and local water rules.
- Fix the circulation and the seating positions on paper.
- Commit to hard landscaping, since it is the part you cannot undo.
- Plant, starting with the windbreak and the shade tree.
Work in that order and the design ends up personal rather than generic, because every decision came from your own list rather than someone else’s photograph. Work in the other direction and you get a nursery trolley with a garden built around it.
Short on ground but not on ideas?
Vertical planting solves the small courtyard problem, provided the watering is thought through from the start.
Published on 18 August 2026. Sources: article 671 and article 672 of the code civil (Légifrance), code de l’urbanisme for pool formalities, and VigiEau for drought restriction levels, all consulted in August 2026.
