Ok, so you think I'm bonkers but hear me out.
The Toyota Production System was developed by Toyota in the 1940s and 50's to reduce errors and waste in the production of automobiles. But it's more then just about saving money for the company, it's a philosophy of making things easier for people by a process of continuous improvement, known as 'Kaizen'. However, it applies to more than just automated factories, and is used across the world, has it's own institute and is now a management system applied to diverse fields such as healthcare and service industries.
And the same principles are part of how I look at Garden Design. Let's break it down.
If a garden is a system for creating joyous moments, we must first identify what joy looks like to the customer, what blockages there are to those joyous moments, and make it easier to achieve the most joy with the resources available. Simple, right?
So we can use some of the same approaches we use to optimise car factories to optimise our gardens. In my previous corporate life, we used something called 'Logic Models' to map improvements for a system and we can do exactly the same for your garden. It looks a bit like this.
It's a really simple and powerful approach, which works for any size of project. For each box, add notes that apply to your garden situation. You don't have to do it any particular order, you can brainstorm your thoughts if that works best for you.
Here's an example with the boxes filled in.
The benefit of using this approach is that it helps you identify which activities you can do today to build momentum and get you started, and which jobs are bigger and may need to be planned in. There may be some improvements which have more priority than others, so you could assign the tasks or improvements with a priority rating.
And you can re-use this again and again each year. Your 'joy' might change. Grandkids might appear in the mix. Maybe ill-health means some activities become more of a burden and need to designed out of the garden. Keep and revisit the plan for as long as you need to, constantly improving the garden to maximise the joy you derive from it.
Have a think about your garden project and use my downloadable template to get you started!
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