Detailed design and documentation
Drawings you can actually build from
A concept is a picture. Documentation is instructions: setting-out dimensions, levels, sections through every built element, drainage falls, irrigation stations, a plant schedule with counts and pot sizes. This is what separates a design from a wish.
You end up with
A full document set for your project — layout, levels, details, drainage, irrigation, planting, lighting, specification.
What you produce in this phase
Levels and grading plan
Mark the finished level of every surface, the fall direction and gradient of each, all step locations and riser heights, and calculate your cut-and-fill volumes. Confirm every surface drains somewhere legal.
Drainage plan
Calculate the required soakwell volume for all new impervious area, mark soakwell positions with their distances from buildings and boundaries, show all connecting pipework with falls, and mark subsoil drains and their outlets.
Planting plan and schedule
Draw every plant at its mature spread, and produce a schedule listing botanical name, common name, quantity, pot size, spacing, mature height and width, hydrozone, and sun requirement. Total the plant cost.
Specification and schedule of works
Write the specification for every element (material, standard, method, finish) and the schedule of works listing each task in build order with its dependencies, durations, and who does it — you or a subcontractor.
Lessons
- 01
From concept to a setting-out plan you can build from
The concept says "paving here". The setting-out plan says exactly where, dimensioned from fixed points that will still exist when the garden is a building site. This is the drawing you take outside with a tape.
⏱ 3 hIntermediate - 02
Levels and grading plan: falls, steps and cut-and-fill balance
Where every finished surface sits relative to your datum, which way each falls, and whether the earth you cut out matches the earth you need to fill. Moving sand you did not need to move is the most common waste in a build.
⏱ 3 hAdvanced📐 Makes: Levels and grading plan - 03
Hardscape details and sections
A section through each built element showing what is under it: sub-base depth, bedding, edge restraint, footing size, drainage behind a wall, membrane, fixings. This is where quality is actually specified.
⏱ 4 hAdvanced - 04
Drainage plan: soakwells, subsoil drains and surface falls
Not written yetOn the Swan Coastal Plain stormwater is disposed of on site by infiltration. Size the soakwells for your impervious area, place them legally, and plan the subsoil drainage for any area that will hold water.
⏱ 2.5 hAdvanced📐 Makes: Drainage plan - 05
Irrigation plan: stations, mainline and controller schedule
The drawing that turns your hydrozones into stations, valves and pipe runs. The engineering behind it is the mini-course in Phase 8; this lesson is about producing the document and coordinating it with everything else.
⏱ 2 hAdvanced - 06
Planting plan and plant schedule
Species, quantity, pot size, spacing and mature dimensions, drawn to scale at mature size — not at nursery size. The schedule is what you take to the wholesaler and what stops you buying forty of something you needed twelve of.
⏱ 5 hAdvanced📐 Makes: Planting plan and schedule - 07
Lighting plan
Not written yetWhat to light, what to leave dark, and the difference between a garden that looks good at night and a car park. Plus the WA line between low-voltage work you may do and mains work you may not.
⏱ 1.5 hIntermediate⚠️ Licensed trade - 08
The specification and schedule of works
Not written yetThe written half of the documentation: what materials, to what standard, in what order, by whom. It is the difference between "build a deck" and a set of instructions you could hand to a stranger.
⏱ 4 hAdvanced📐 Makes: Specification and schedule of works