Your Garden Survey Must Include
- A boundary outline: Your property line, or the boundary of the area where your intend to work.
- The house position on site: This fixes the house in relation to everything else on the site.
- The footprint of your house, including the position of doors and windows.
- The position of existing features, such as trees, shrubs, utilities
- Any slopes or level changes including driveways and other entrances
- Services such as electricity, water and communications lines.
Garden Design – Basic Survey Equipment
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- A clipboard: This allow you to control you paper while outdoors.
- Two 30 meter plastic tape Measures: These are the tools you will use most often for taking linear measurements and for taking offsets during your garden survey.
- Brightly coloured ground pegs: You will use these to hold the tape and to mark out various things that you will want to see while you are doing your survey.
- Spirit level: This is a very useful tool to help you take basic levels. Get the longest one you that you can find.
- A ball of twine: You will use this in conjunction with your other tools to, among other things, take levels, set out lines and to take offsets.
- An ordinary ruler: You can use the ruler to help you to make a tidy survey sketch & to take short measurements on the ground.
- Soil test kit: A basic soil test kit will indicate the levels of alkalinity or acidity in your soil and a slightly better one will help you measure nutrient levels.
- Compass: This will help you to find the north-point and will help you assess your solar access and prevailing winds.