It may still be a bit nippy to be doing many jobs in the garden, so now’s a perfect time to relax and make design plans for the year to come.

Ideas may come from magazines, a TV programme or may simply be inspired by a neighbour’s garden, but it’s best to buy yourself a notebook and jot down your plans.

Whatever you decide to do, whether it’s creating a new bed or making radical changes with hard landscaping, work out how much time and effort you’re prepared to spend on the project and the subsequent maintenance that will require.

It’s no use planting a garden full of high-maintenance plants if you’re not going to be there to deadhead, water, feed and keep everything under control.

Think about where you are going to site any new project. If you’re planning a raised bed for vegetables, make sure it’s going to be in a sunny spot with not much shade from overhanging trees, or you won’t be able to grow a huge variety.

Other practicalities to consider when creating a new area include drainage, storage space, available electricity and water. If the garden’s on a slope, you may need to level the site or install a drainage system. If you’re planning a paved area, make sure it’s level but with enough camber for drainage.

Think outside the box and you may come up with a more interesting design. Never, for instance, make narrow borders along boundary fences, because following the boundary lines will just emphasise the shape of your garden and make it look smaller.

If you’re creating a new bed or border, the very minimum width should be 1m (40in).

The general rule of thumb with proportion of planting and features to open space is one-third planting to two-thirds space, so the planting and features can be seen to best advantage.

Even if you have an awkward-shaped garden, you can create spaces within which it can be explored – it might be a circular lawn or a winding path, fringed by planting and focal points to give it depth and structure.

You may want to create a change of level in your garden to define specific areas, using terracing, or install points of interest along the way such as a water feature, seating or an eye-catching statue.

Of course, gardeners are always interested in new plants, but often the plants which steal the show are old favourites, so look at what you already grow successfully in your borders, the plants which like your soil and their situation, and consider repeat planting further along.