Designing a curvy lawn

mathewdavidbrown

Hi all, I'm obsessing over my curvy lawn plan. It'll be surrounded by a border of mostly flowers. Taking inspiration from one of the inserted pics. Are there any hard and fast design rules to for this sort of thing? The first pic is my actual garden and the last is my rough plan.
Thanks

B3

T would use a length of those to try out the curves. Don't make them too sharp or too many.

AnniD

My advice would be to make the curves sweeping as opposed to too tight. When you've laid it out, using a hosepipe or something, try to imagine manoeuvring a lawn mower around. The more open the curve, the easier it will be 

BenCotto

Is that plan to scale? Judging by the fencing panels I would guess your garden to be about 40’ x 20’ which are not the proportions you have planned.

The technique of using a garden hose and viewing it from an upstairs window is sound. My inclination in a garden of this size would be to keep curves to a minimum. As it stands at present the bulk of your lawn could end up looking more like a wide grass path. I would take out both of the indentations on the right hand side and have a broader end to the lawn running it more to the right of the tree in front of the shed.

B3

In the second picture,I_would widen or lose the tight curve to the left. For some reason, it gives a claustrophobic bursting at the seams impression.

rachelQrtJHBjb

There's an alternative method of trying out your design. Head to a builders' merchant and buy spray site marker - white stands out the most. You can then spray on the grass and rub out with your foot bits that don't work. When creating soft curves I often spray out circles and then join then with a sweeping arc, either convex or concave. This helps eliminate tight sections that don't look right and are annoying to mow and edge.

BenCotto

You know, with a bit of tweaking, you could make a profile there of Marge Simpson! And only you and passing aircraft could see it, a bit like this teenage prankster’s work delicately described by the BBC as a comedy painting. I gather that place is now twinned with Cerne Abbas.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/blog/2009/mar/24/penis-drawing-roof-google

delski

I agree with rachelqrtetc that spraying is a good idea. I didn't do anything as ambitious as you, just added a circle in the lawn and widened the borders a bit. At the time, people suggested using a hosepipe but this didn't work for me at all. Some people must have magical hosepipes that go in the shape they want.

mathewdavidbrown

BenCotto said:

Is that plan to scale? Judging by the fencing panels I would guess your garden to be about 40’ x 20’ which are not the proportions you have planned.

The technique of using a garden hose and viewing it from an upstairs window is sound. My inclination in a garden of this size would be to keep curves to a minimum. As it stands at present the bulk of your lawn could end up looking more like a wide grass path. I would take out both of the indentations on the right hand side and have a broader end to the lawn running it more to the right of the tree in front of the shed.

Hi, yes it's perfectly to scale, and while I don't have the exact measurements at hand you're very close with that estimate.

Yes, I've tried the hosepipe thing in the past and I think the trick is to use a nice floppy one, maybe even coupled with spray.

Great suggestions, guys. Taking it all on board as I'm a total newb at this. I'll post my up-to-date plan when it's ready.

LG_

I didn't have a hosepipe long enough, so used big staples and string to mark mine out. Obviously you don't get perfect curves that way, but it's nice and easy to adjust. It wasn't just the look of it, but how it felt to walk around it and use the space that was important, so I left them in place for a while (pushed down to ground level so they weren't trip wires!) and tried to always walk on the future plan rather than the existing path to see if it was comfortable.

Liz.Spr

delski said:

I agree with rachelqrtetc that spraying is a good idea. I didn't do anything as ambitious as you, just added a circle in the lawn and widened the borders a bit. At the time, people suggested using a hosepipe but this didn't work for me at all. Some people must have magical hosepipes that go in the shape they want.

if you run hot water through the hose first it becomes quite flexable.