Gardens with a similar layout can feel completely

The hazards of the walled town garden include a lack of light throughout the year, making plants reach upwards and inwards to gain the most from it. Shade might come from surrounding buildings or from an overhanging tree growing in a neighbouring garden. Conversely, the walled garden might be a sun trap and become far too hot for limited periods.

Taking these factors into consideration, the design for an enclosed town garden should be very simple, with the object of making an outside room furnished with permanent sculptural groupings of plants. In front of these you can contrast bright masses of annual plants, grouped and arranged in pots. You might consider some form of overhead canopy too, for seclusion. The character of the town garden should be quite different from that of gardens in any other situation and should not be a reduced version of the country garden. The tiniest town garden, even on roofs or balconies, can be magical. They provide an escape from bricks and mortar and a link with the natural world beyond the city.

Gardens of a larger size - and they usually are in suburban locations - have greater demands made of them. Couples tend to move outwards from city centres as their families grow, giving themselves more space. Vegetables might be included in the garden plan to supplement the table, and any open space will eventually be used for children's play. Whereas the design of the town garden promotes passive enjoyment, the suburban family garden design should provide for more active enjoyment with enlarged terrace areas for play as well as entertainment. The planting of such a garden will at first be limited to the screens required to give privacy, and only as the children of the family grow up will it come to include more specialized decorative groups.

While country gardens may be large, there is now a general movement to make them more manageable. The increasingly wide spectrum of pursuits which a family can now undertake inhibits time spent working in the garden. Weekends in the country often prefer to enjoy the countryside, rather than achieve an immaculate plot by Sunday evening with prospect of starting again the following Saturday. The whole outlook on rural gardening is now far more relaxed. The area of the garden which requires moderate maintenance might be restricted to the house surround, with alternative and less demanding treatments used for the garden beyond the house or cottage.

Town, suburban and rural locations are often indivisible, one flowing into the other. Often the only difference between the locations is climatic conditions, or the altitude at which they are located, for the standardization of modern building has meant that new houses and their plot size are often similar anywhere. It is easy to end up with a standardized garden to match if you are not conscious of its location.