There are some good garden design books available, I suggest you find yourself a good bookshop and browse through their selection - buy the one (or more) you like the look of.
Also try and take a photo(s) of your garden and print them in A4 size, get some tracing paper and trace round the features you want to keep - then let your imagination work overtime. Bear in mind direction of the sun, any permanently shady areas, think about what it might look like from different angles with various features, get some string and canes to lay it out on the ground before you start. Colour schemes and themes will be important too. And don't forget to think about how the garden will be used.
Have fun!

Have you seen the programme where the man makes a model first and then rearranges it - maybe you could make something similar from paper/cardboard and then move things around until you are happy. Also I've found library books have quite a lot of gardening books with plenty of ideas. Oh and check your soil from different places around the garden as mine changes in different areas. good luck!!

Got another idea for you (though looking at design books is something you should still do). Draw a scale version of your garden. Now just look at it and think what you'd like in it, pretending there's absolutely nothing there at all. I suggest this because sometimes, if you have a mature garden, its quite difficult to think out of the box, so to speak - we always get stuck on that tree, this bit of paving, etc., as if none of it can be changed. It can - though you might not need to change it all, in the end. And, as Rogerbee says, consider the usage - hanging out washing? sunbathing? barbecuing? eating outside, table and chairs? hard paved areas? sandpit, etc.

Bamboo and Genuisscuffy you two are full of good ideas!! Ive seen that program, if you dont like the look of it you take it out, Far better than doing all the hard work then deciding you don't like it

Wow, what an inspirational crowd you are, with making little models and looking at books you never know I may even get my hubby interested enough to have an opinion, his usual mode operandi, is to start doing what I want after weeks of thinking about it then suddenly announcing it would be better if we did it this way or that way, annoyingly they are often better ideas, that I wish he had brought to the table earlier!
Thanks for all your help, somehow I think I may be back as the project goes along for more info from you experts out there

Ruth
x

if you choosin a non wind day then cardbord boxes are good to put in garden weer you wantin things to be, an you can move them round - use pee stix to hold htem in place an mark them: pond, well, rokery,path(flat ones ofcorse), gate and so on