Soft landscaping is the easier bit, the shaping of the garden using plants. Apart from a few prickly ones, most plants are fairly soft, flexible and manageable. Many of them smell good as well. But plants can be fussy about the soil they grow in; their growth rate and ultimate spread, and even the flowering season varies hugely from one variety of plant to another; so there are a multitude of opportunities to choose the wrong plant for any given situation. Hence the benefit of a detailed planting scheme.

If you employ a garden designer, you will get both a hard landscaping plan, and a planting scheme. These will enable you to create the garden yourself, with a minimum of effort and mistakes; or they will ensure that the landscaper you employ to do the digging, building and planting, can do so with no misunderstandings, and a minimum of fuss and mess.

You will also get an artist's impression of your garden, to show you what it will look like in 4 or 5 years' time, which is helpful if you are not familiar with reading plans. It will also reassure you, during the early days of construction, when your garden looks like a bomb site, or the first few weeks after planting, when all the plants look so small, that nevertheless, given a little time, you will get the garden you have dreamed about.

A professionally designed garden gives years of pleasure. It has constant interest with seasonal changes of colour, shape and texture. Once it is established it will require only a minimal amount of work to maintain its good looks and durable qualities. As it matures it becomes as distinctively individual as the rooms in your house.