The municipality of Pirkkala has placed an order for the thesis. The purpose of this thesis was find out how to guide yard construction by the measures of the authorities and is it possible to influence to quality of yard construction by guidance. A guidebook, the goal of which was to encourage the builders of small houses to take notice of the yard construction already in the beginning of the aims of building project and promote the fulfilment of the municipality of Pirkkala to be set to the quality of environment, was created for the customer. The essential contents of the theory together with the headlines of the building code of Pirkkala involving the yard construction was compacted to the guidebook.

The theory part is mainly based on literature and internet sources dealing with policy instruments of yard construction used by the municipality and the state. Weight is put on the measures of supervising the construction. In addition to the measures based on the law in a few municipalities there are voluntary policy instruments, which are striven to ensure the quality of yard construction already when the planning permission is applied. In the theory part also reasons for early garden design were given. The central reasons are how to match the functions and building schedules of the yard and the house together with the influence of floor design – especially processing the differences of levels – to the total costs of building and usability of the garden. Cost effect was found out by an enquiry for producers of small houses and counting the cost of the yard constructions in the examples.

The conclusion is that the fulfilment of the aims set to the quality of the environment, advancing the quality standard of yard construction and speeding up the realization schedule of a garden can be promoted by actively highlighting garden issues. In addition to counselling, for example, to record the quality target to the building code or to specify the minimum target of yard construction and to supervise their realization could be measures used.