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Covered in detail in an earlier blog, and in the book, but it is/was the mantra of a former colleague and tutor Par Gustaffson, a Swedish Landscape architect, who undoubtedly brought a logical approach to the design table. Essentially, to avoid confusion, mistakes and oversights, you should divide a garden or landscape overview into three separate themes. 1 A survey of the physical and factual site elements, including topography, planting, existing structures, weather across the seasons including extremes, neighbouring people, planting, buildings etc and the potential attack on your proposals and you and your family's senses and so...make your own list of issues (more in the book). 2 Once all the facts are documented, without comment and consideration, you can then explore the implications of slopes, weather extremes soil structure, noise, that pig farm, sun angles, exposure and so on. 3 You and everyone who wants to be involved can now make a start on using the information, along with your brief (needs, wants, must haves, desires etc) to propose possibilities, design ideas etc You'll be pleased you approached the whole project this way, as you just imagine, while chatting to a local in the pub who tells " course you realise much of the garden floods every few years" or "they were making noises about re-opening the old railway behind that place" and so on. Not that local observations should be discounted (add to survey section)...similarly a chat with a long-standing neighbour could well prove very informative. You should not assume your solicitor's search will always through up nasties! They're only human after all! Good luck.