5.8 Rear garden courtyurad home

We will next complete a design for the rear courtyard of a small cottage. The aim here is to design a job with GardenCAD taking into account the aspect of the site and the client's request to reduce the heat load on the house by adding some planting information, illustrative images and some text notes.

The client owns a courtyard home on a relatively small block. The rear of the house faces east and the heat load in rooms across the back of the house in summer is significant (it is a site in the southern hemisphere). In addition, the courtyard itself is almost completely paved at present and provides no real planting opportunities for this client who is a keen gardener. She has a penchant for garden art.

The figure below shows the view of the courtyard from one of the rooms - the sun problem is obvious. Almost the entire courtyard is presently paved.

We will provide you with a base plan for the rear yard (including the paving and pergola). Your task is to use GardenCAD to provide a garden plan to solve the two problems described above. The figure below shows one student's solution to the problem. Yours will be different.

Most garden designers visit the site to make an assessment and draw up a simple 'mud map' showing the site. The level of accuracy must be reasonable, but not to excessive detail. The figure below shows the mud map we made. The whole site is 9.15 meters wide by 25.0 meters long, but our rear area is considerably shorter.

This client has a penchant for garden art. Use the insert raster tool to place some images of garden art and water features around your design.