Master Plan

The final plan didn’t look too much different from the preliminary, but I did fill in the grasses in the backyard a bit and added some outlying trees in the northwest area. I put the shade garden and the plant schedule on a different page, which looked better.

Anyway, even though my class is finished, I’m not feeling the relief I thought I would, because I think now the real work starts.

Here’s what the drawing looked like before I got it scanned:

The process I used was I first drew (on a vellum sheet) the house and hardscape and plants, with the scale written in pencil near the lower right. Then I took it to ImagePro in Cedar and had them scan it on their industrial-sized scanner. I then uploaded the image into Publisher and finished with the borders, the title block, and all labels and wording. I also did the plant schedules and materials and cost tables in subsequent pages in Publisher. That way I wouldn’t ruin the whole drawing if I messed up on lettering, which is sooooooooo easy to do. Plus I stink at lettering. Win-win. The biggest reason to do the labeling on the computer is that it took me about a thousand iterations before I got the placement of all the labels to look balanced on the drawing.

Here’s what I submitted:

The great thing about finishing up in a computer program is that if you need to move the north indicator around, you can.

Details here: master plan

This is the scan of the shade garden. You can see the labeling and such in the .pdf of the master plan above on page two.

When I started the class, I assumed that because it takes so long and is a little scary to draw an entire landscape, that I’d use a computer landscaping program for the master plan. But I found that as nerve-wracking it is to draw stuff out, and as inexperienced as I am at drawing, I thought it looked a bazillion times cooler drawn by hand than what a computer program spits out.

Something you have to understand about this plan is that the goal here was three-fold: to learn what good landscape design is, get some good feedback on our specific design, and get an “A” in the class. That last part meant that I may have drawn some things in there that won’t make it to the final install, and we may install stuff that isn’t on the plan. Or install it differently when we get out there and start implementing it in real life. But overall I think it’s a close representation of what we’re after.

(UPDATE: I got a 94% on the master plan assignment, and an “A” in the class. Whew. Go Cougs!)