Hi, Genevieve is it? -Hi. -I'm Chris from Germinate Landscapes. -Nice to meet you. -May I come in?

Yeah, come on in. -Thank you.

All right, Genevieve, thanks for your time. -Sure.

What I'd like to do is run through a few questions with you to get a sense for what you're wanting from your garden design.

So we'll do a bit of discussion here first, just so I can get to know you more, and then we'll head out into the garden

if that's all right with you. You can walk me around and tell me about your ideas for it.

Okay. -Sound allright? -Yep. -I do have a template that I'm working off for a set of questions, so we'll go through those, but

it's not a strict interview, so feel free to offer up information as we go along.

Give you my card. Hang on to that.

And then once we've finished the interview, I'll go away and write up what I think you want and come back to you with a client brief,

and if you're happy with that, we can proceed to the next stage.

Sounds good. -Okay. So can you tell me a little bit about this place, how long you've been here, and what you know about its history, I guess.

Yeah, sure. So this is actually like a tiny house I've had put on my sister's property. They've been here close to ten years.

But we've just had this little house here for a year, so we know quite a bit about what happens in the gardens and outdoors.

The actual house itself is fairly new.

Yes. So this is sort of my space and we're just trying to carve off a bit of that to be more mine and separate it from the main family unit.

Okay. Yes. And your sister?

Sister and her...? -Husband, yes. -And they've got some kids?

Yes. Yes. They've got two girls and they're eight and five now.

And so, yeah, they great. I love to hang out with them, too, though. They'll be wanting to pop around a fair bit, but it'll be nice

to just sort of have my own space as well. -Yeah, sure. Do you have extended family that visit frequently or friends that you'd like to come over?

Yeah, usually maybe about sort of two people at a time tend to come up.

And then of course there's a people who visit my sister who're also visiting me.

So, yeah, it's a bit of a mix up there. -Okay. And you?

This is your main residence? -Yes. Yeah, I live here.

Yeah. -Do you have any pets?

No. There's a two kids that live in the house, and one of them likes to visit quite a bit, which is fine by me, but I don't have any of my own.

All right. And do you have a vehicle or car nearby?

Yeah, I've got a car which I park in front of the main house more, so I'd like ideally some parking for visitors closer to this house,

but we don't need anything permanent. We don't a full garage or anything like that.

Okay. So thinking about the garden now.

Yep. -How would you like to use it? What functions will it perform for you?

Well, I am in a small house, so it could be a sort of an outdoor living space

would be really nice to expand, especially for having people over.

It's really hard to squeeze it into this little room. So be nice to have an outdoor seating area and I quite like to try my hand at growing vegetables.

Okay. -I'm not keen to be crawling around on the ground so possibly in a raised setting, but yeah, just a nice peaceful retreat.

Really. Maybe somewhere else to read a book or... -Okay -So, I can have some time outside.

So a bit of relaxation away from extended family.

Yeah. Yes, that's probably the quiet aspect yeah.

And, who else might be using the space?

Are you thinking that your nieces might come through?

Yeah. Yeah, It'd be cool if they had a little way they could come through for a visit because I don't want to cut them off,

but I do want them to know that they're leaving their space and entering mine.

Okay. -Yeah. -Do you think you'll have someone like mow your lawns for you or do the gardens, or is that something you're going to keep on top of yourself?

Probably be me or my sister and her wife.

Probably most likely me, yeah.

Is there anything out in the space like gas bottles that would need to be changed for Infinity Gas or something like that?

No, so everything like that is on the other side of the house. -Yeah. How much time do you want to spend on the garden? 

Do you have any idea? -Oh, not alot, no. 

No, it wouldn't be, you know, maybe an hour every other weekend kind of deal, you know, a couple of hours every other weekend.

But I don't want to have to be out there for half a day at a time.

Okay. So you talked about vegetables.

Would you like to grow fruit as well? -Oh, we've actually already got like an orchard being planted out the front.

I saw that once I came in. -Yeah. So I don't think I need to.

I mean, I wouldn't mind some lemons or anything because they always fine for a drink, but we don't need anything major

And are there any other practical needs you have for the space that we're looking at today,

like the washing line, compost heap -that's a point, -compost or recycling bins or anything like that?

Yeah. I guess I usually use my sister's washing line, but I wouldn't mind having the option of having one here.

So we can look at that. Sort of not urgent, but could be good.

And again, I could just use their compost heap.

So I think, unless I'm going to have lots of garden waste.

I think I'd just use theirs. -And do you have your own recycling rubbish bins or... I use the main house, yeah.

Yeah, that's probably all we need to talk about now.

It's it's hard to do anything else without having a look around. Can we go outside and have a walk around?

Yeah, absolutely. Follow me. So — this is the garden. 

It's a great spot, isn't it? Before we do a complete walk around.

What is it? Which area is it that you want us to focus on?

Okay, so this is me basically, from where the gravel ends.

Okay, Here. The catio is not. And I ideally I don't really want to be able to see that.

-Okay. -But the area in front of it is. And then if we come around this way.

Yeah. -You can kind of see it is delineated by the hedging.

Okay. This little enclosed area here? -Yeah. And ideally, this path, I mean, this is just a temporary path we put in.

But if it could extend all the way to the deck. -Yup, okay.

So that, you know, you could just walk barefoot. Ideally, (-Cool) would be quite good.

Yeah. -All right. So you want to tell me about, you know, what what have you noticed from living here?

So it gets really swampy everywhere. -All of this.

In fact, it's probably still a bit squidgy at the moment. 

Yeah, still quite soft - have had a lot of rain. -Yeah.

So all around here gets quite wet and those willows have actually been planted to soak up the water so they don't need to stay.

But they're sort of performing that function at the moment.

Ideally we'd get that hedge filled in with natives. -Yeah. -The trampolines are not going to be here.

We're going to move that somewhere else.

And you've got a temporary deck here you'd like to be able to transition down from inside into the garden here?

Yeah some sort of, as I said, like an outdoor dining or sort of hard surface would be nice.

And you were thinking you might have like a small group of friends over dinner.

-Yeah, yeah. -Yeah? And do you see any times where your family come from the main house to dine in your space?

Yeah. Yeah. I think they like to come and visit. I don't know about dining, but (-Okay) so drinks or something.

If we catered for up to six, that would be big enough?

Yeah, I think it'll be a good number. -If I can ask a few questions about the environment here.

So is there any particular wind direction that you get most?

Yes, I can show you in a sec. There's some trees over there that are on a lane that's quite strong winds through here.

So that's funnelling this way. -Yeah. Yeah, sort of. Okay.

That direction we get all directions, but that's the the strongest predominant wind.

What about any underground services? -Yes. So there's ...I think it runs here.

You can see where it runs through the path up to the house and that corner.

Yes. -And then there's another one that runs from the other side of the deck to the other corner of the house.

I think maybe roughly where the catio is. -That's  your electricity, is it?

Yeah. Yeah. And then septic/water.

They're off the back so they're not they shouldn't affect this area.

Okay. We will obviously do a proper underground survey before we start any work.

Good idea. -Do you want to show me around? -Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this is where the windiest spot can be evident.

There's a tree here. This one's actually self seeded. -Oh, yeah. Pittosporum.

Yeah, Yeah. That was meant to be this guy here, so I'm not too worried about that.

Yep. -But I do really like the manuka with the flowers, so that's probably a keeper.

And this Pohutakawa (-Okay) has come with me from a couple of house moves.

So that's another one I definitely want. -So you talked about the flowers on the Manuka,

are you thinking you'd like mostly natives, or do you like a bit of colour? -I prefer natives, especially ones that attract pollinators is great. -Oh yeah.

And it sounds like you've got lots of birdlife in the area.

Would you like anything particular to attract birds? Yeah, I guess a little bit.

I don't want them on the ground while we still have the one cat who's outdoors.

But once he's an indoor cat, then I'll be more interested in that. -Cool.

I'll just show you. This is sort of where it ends.

We like to leave this clear so they can drive around to their paddock. In fact, it would be quite good maybe to leave a gap here.

Oh, yeah. -Possibly — just so they had that access. I'm not sure.

Maybe do options? Yeah, I can discuss it with my sister and see what they think, but yeah.

So did you have any questions for me? -Um. Mm.

No, no, I think. I mean, I assume in your brief it'll cover like, timeline and costing and all that.

Yeah, yeah. -That's fine. That's all I really need to know.

Okay. The only other question I had is just about what rooms this window comes off.

Yep. So that's my bedroom window. That window. -Yeah. It's useful to factor into the design.

All right, thanks for your time. -Nice to meet you. -You too. Thank you.

Bye -Bye.