What Comes First In A Garden Design Planting Or Paving?

Hard landscaping which is what the paths and terraces in your garden are called is part of the overall design. In design terms you might choose to start with your beds and borders and then move on to the hard landscaping. Much will depend on where you want to sit in your garden and how accessible you want different parts of it to be. In practice in a garden being planted from scratch you should start with the hard landscaping and then plant. In reality most of us are designing elements of a garden rather than the whole thing and as long as you stick to your overall plans it does not matter the order in which you approach things. For example, if lack of money prevents the full scheme being implemented in a year then why not plant those trees and shrubs before the paths go in? After all they take a long time to reach maturity.