If you’re currently giving your garden space a makeover, this is the post for you. Here, we share some of our favourite garden planning tips for this summer.

1. Play with different levels

The first of our summer landscaping ideas is to give the eye lots of different things to admire at different heights.

In its simplest terms, this could mean planting at different levels, from flower beds on the ground to hanging baskets, climbing plants that flower at the top, and even trees that might tower over the rest of your garden space.

However, if you’re also interested in hardscaping, this could be much more involved – albeit much harder work! If you have a slanted garden, you might want to consider turning it into a terrace-style stepped space instead. That could mean fattening out different spaces and adding wood or stone edges to create different raised levels that you can do interesting things with; like a lawn on the lowest, a patio on the middle level, and a summer house on the upper one.

2. Combine natural-looking materials for a rustic feel

Many garden areas we see are a simple combination of stone patio and flat concrete path, with a block of green lawn next to it. There’s nothing wrong with that from a practical sense, but in an aesthetic one it can leave a little to be desired!

Our second garden design planning tip for this summer is to be a little more imaginative and design your garden in a way that fuses as many natural (or natural-looking) materials as possible.

wood and shingle garden steps

For instance, take the idea of the stepped garden above. Rather than a standard stone patio, why not use some wooden decking? Then step down from that onto a loose gravel path running alongside nicely-laid new turf, before climbing a few wooden steps, stepping over an edge of wooden sleepers, onto a level covered in low-maintenance artificial grass. At the back of that level you might place another set of wooden stairs, leading to a third level with a tasteful wooden summer house.

The combination here of wood, turf, loose stones and artificial lawn makes for a more multi-textured finish that helps differentiate the different levels of your garden space.

3. Follow these dry weather planting tips

  1. The third of our five garden design tips for this summer is actually lots of little mini tips to help you with your planting in the driest season
  2. Whatever you’re planting you can help new plants by digging out a shallow dish in the soil that surrounds them to help water soak right in to their roots
  3. Make sure you use mulch! We mentioned it in both our spring and summer gardening tips for a reason – it’s fantastic for helping plants grow while also preventing weeds from taking root
  4. Planting veggies you want to make sure get as much water as possible? Try cutting off the top half of a plastic drinks bottle and placing it in the soil next to them, then watering via that bottle so the water soaks right through to the roots
  5. On a similar note, if you’ve got big pots loaded with plants, try planting water pipes into them to make a little homebrew irrigation system. Then all you need to do to water them all in sequence is turn on your tap for a few minutes a day!

4. Add outdoor lighting and heating

An outdoor garden decked patio with a fire pit and lounge area

Another important summer gardening design tip is to light up and heat your garden, allowing you to host in the space during pleasant summer evenings.

Thankfully, that’s surprisingly easy to do without breaking the bank. Just a quick search for ‘garden lighting’ on Amazon reveals all manner of ways to light your garden space, from string lights to inconspicuous path lighting, tasteful fence lights and even motion-activated spotlights. Best of all, each of the solutions we’ve linked to here use small solar panels to recharge a built-in battery during the day, meaning you don’t need to worry about an electrician installing expensive power leads in your garden.

Pub-style garden heating options are also a winner, with an entry-level heat lamp likely to see you back less than £50. Alternatively, you could go for a fire pit to create a centrepiece you and your guests can sit around, campsite-style.

5. Find a funky way to hide your hose and accessories!

Our last garden design tip for this summer is to be a bit more creative with the way you hide your garden hose, along with your other smaller gardening accessories.

The video above shows how you can upcycle a worn-out old indoor cupboard to make it weather resistant and ideal for placing against a wall on your patio.

It’s a highly inventive way to store a larger garden hose like the kinds we featured in our garden hose buyer’s guide, and is also fab for protecting the extra attachments in our Qwickhose® starter set from the elements.

Helping you get the most from your garden this summer

At Qwickhose, we’ve designed our products to help you get the most from your garden space, with the least effort possible.

Our Qwickhose® hose attachments are made to simply clip on to your garden hose with as little fuss as possible – helping your water your plants, lawn or car. They even make filling the paddling pool or lubricating a slip-side a cinch, so you can get on with spending time with friends and family in your summer sun trap.

To learn more, take a look at our Qwickhose® products, or browse the blogs below.