When you’re trying to design the garden of your dreams Pinterest is the perfect online tool for the job. With millions of inspirational garden images and links to the best online horticultural how-tos, you’ll find everything you’re looking for on this platform - and more besides.
If you’ve never used Pinterest before, don’t worry. Whether you’re a technophobe, a novice or an expert, this guide will help you use Pinterest to plan your best garden yet.
What is Pinterest?
Image: Charles via Unsplash
Pinterest is a visual search engine with billions of images to explore. You can search for pictures (called ‘pins’ on Pinterest) using words or phrases - like ‘garden design’ - or you can search for people and/or their collections of pictures (called ‘boards’).
Pinterest isn’t just a place to find ideas. It’s also a place to save and organise them - kind of like a virtual ‘mood board’.
Whenever you find a picture that you want to keep, you just have to ‘pin’ it to your account and it will stay there for as long as you want it. Simply hover over the image you like and choose ‘save’, or click on the image for more information and save it from there.
You can also create ‘boards’ - collections of your favourite pins organised by category - to make them easier to find later on. Once you’ve set up your own categories, you can quickly save images directly into them, keeping all your ideas organised and accessible.
You don’t need to register for an account to browse Pinterest, but it works a lot better if you do. If you want to pin images and create your own boards, you’ll certainly need an account to do that.
Setting up a personal Pinterest account is free.
Boards to get you started
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Search Pinterest and you’ll soon see that there are thousands of garden-design related boards for you to browse. Here are some to get you started:
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The List - Garden Designers - House & Garden Magazine UK
House & Garden Magazine is home to quality images from top garden designers. This board catalogues the editor’s favourites.
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Focal points and features - Judith Sharpe Garden Design
With over 30 years’ experience, Judith has an expert eye for stunning garden design. The motto of her Focal Points and Features board is: “you remember the quality long after you've forgotten the price!”
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Softer planting and form - Laara Copely-Smith
Garden designer Laara Copely-Smith has boards on every aspect of garden design from topiary to lighting, courtyard gardens to country estates. Her Softer Planting and Form board is home to some beautiful images of romantic flower gardens.
Get pinning to discover what appeals to you
Image: Sophie McAulay/Shutterstock
Once you start pinning your favourite images, you’ll notice that Pinterest recommends similar, related images to you. These are listed under the heading ‘More like this’. Exploring these images will lead you to more recommendations, and then to even more.
Remember to pin any images that you want to keep so that you won’t have to go hunting for them later on.
Create categories and sort your pins
Image: Alexander Tolstykh/Shutterstock
As you accumulate more and more pins, you’ll want to start putting them in some sort of order. This is where boards can help.
Boards are collections of pins, usually themed around a category.
Following the example of the boards we looked at earlier on, you might want to create a board for garden paths, another for types of planting, one for vegetable gardens, or garden sheds, ponds etc.
Give your boards clear names that will still make sense in the months and years to come.
Divide your garden into bite-sized projects
Image: Antonina Potapenko/Shutterstock
As you can see, Pinterest is a great platform where you can discover, save and organise all your garden design ideas. This makes the job of creating your dream garden a lot easier too.
Use your Pinterest boards to break your garden project down into smaller tasks. You could start a board for hard landscaping, then have boards for planting, paths, fencing, patios, and so on.
Pin inspirational pictures as well as more practical how-tos relevant to each task.
Then, when it comes to tackling each job, you’ll know exactly where to go to find the information and visual inspiration you need.
We hope you have enjoyed this guide to using Pinterest to plan your garden. Check out Waltons’ Pinterest boards to see some of our favourite garden building makeover ideas. Are there any garden designers or boards that you follow on Pinterest? Share them with us over on our Facebook page.
Lead image: Lukas Gojda
