Start with clear customer goals and requirements

Client conversations often mix desired outcomes, fixed constraints and optional ideas. Notes collected across calls, messages and meetings can make it difficult to distinguish a central requirement from an idea that is still open for discussion.

Record goals and constraints as structured project information, then organise them by theme and importance. Add supporting context and begin from an editable template where useful, so customer priorities remain practical once drawing work starts rather than becoming notes that are rarely reopened.

Customer goals can become detached from the drawing when they live in separate notes or documents. The connection is especially easy to lose when one requirement affects a particular boundary, planting area, path or structure rather than the garden as a whole.

Link a goal to relevant drawing objects and move in either direction between the recorded requirement and the drawing when reviewing the design. This gives the designer a direct route from the customer's stated intention to the part of the design intended to address it, without claiming that the link itself proves the goal has been satisfied.

A goal may be recorded early but never revisited as the design changes. Without a visible review state, an unresolved question can look the same as a requirement that has already been considered and accepted.

Use review states, list and post-it views, and filters to revisit priorities throughout the project. Mark what looks good or needs attention, focus on a theme or importance level, and include the recorded goals in supported reports when customer requirements need to accompany project material.