Small Garden – Big Ideas

On the edge

The boundaries of a petite plot require careful treatment. If you’re faced with stark fencing or an ugly brick wall as your perimeter, do something about it! Climbers will create a warmer feel that will provide more interest as well as obscuring the edges of your garden. If you have a wall, consider painting it before encouraging your screening planting. Outside, in bright daylight, you can be more adventurous with stronger colours than you might be indoors. Create a feature wall with a block of colour, perhaps with a sculpture or water feature at its centre – the outdoor room equivalent of the fireplace.

Remember that blues and greens  tend to fade into the distance, helping walls to recede, while hotter colours such as red tend to leap forward; this can be used to your advantage. It is possible to create the illusion of more space simply by placing a mirror on one wall to reflect your garden. Just be careful that visiting birds don’t get confused and fly into it. You can avoid this painful fate by criss-crossing the mirror with trellis to break up the expanse of mirror while retaining the illusion.

Climbers are amazing plants that make short work of covering vertical spaces. But what about the ceiling of your outdoor room? Climbers can also be encouraged to knit together above head height by growing over a pergola. Grapevines work well trained like this, but bear in mind you don’t want to exclude valuable sunlight – we do live in Britain after all!

Using levels

Distraction is a useful tool in pushing the boundaries of a garden. One way to do this is to develop different levels, either by raising planting up in raised beds, pots and quirky containers, or by terracing the ground to step the garden up or down in stages. Sunken seating areas work really well to give a sense of seclusion and comfort.

With planting raised higher up as a result, occupants will get to enjoy the sights, smells and sensations of the plants far easier. And there’s something about being surrounded in your own little world that gives a great sense of security and cosiness. You can also bring plants up to eye level by using hanging baskets, window boxes and pots attached to fences and walls using hooks and clasps. This also gives many more planting opportunities – always to be welcomed, especially if you’re a plant addict like me.

Drawing the eye up vertically with one or two skyward-thrusting specimen plants, a piece of sculpture or a well placed obelisk will help the eye to travel in all directions of the garden, rather than concentrating on the limited ground plane. Remember the sky is literally the limit – so make use of it!

Devil’s in the detail

Of course, in a small garden where everything’s laid bare it’s difficult to hide mistakes. This  is where attention to detail will pay off. Your outdoor room has to be somewhere you will want to spend time, so choose your table and chairs for alfresco dining carefully as they will ultimately form the centrepiece to the plot. A bench to the edge of the garden, perhaps set into a wall-flush arch thronged with climbing roses will not only offer somewhere extra to sit during a summer garden party, it can potentially become a secondary focal point.

Lacking storage space? Then incorporate a tool box into the seat of the bench to hide away those tools in style. Concentrating your budget on one or two well-designed focal points is better than spraying numerous objets d’art around the garden. Similarly, don’t be too fiddly with the ground plane of the garden.

If space is tight consider doing away with the lawn altogether and instead laying tasteful paving or perhaps old bricks in a herringbone pattern, maybe with the occasional gap left for creeping plants and herbs such as thyme. While we could all do with more outdoor space there’s no point dwelling on what you haven’t got. Make the most of your space and turn it into a little slice of paradise. With the right combination of time, love and care you’ll soon have the garden of your dreams.

5 GOLDEN RULES FOR SMALL GARDENS

1 Somewhere to eat: Turn your garden into an outdoor room by furnishing it with a patio set of table and chairs. Eat there in the summer and soak up the rays!

2 Blurred boundaries: Push the boundaries back by obscuring them with climbers and other plants that won’t take up too much ground space.

3 Trick the eye: Use mirrors in strategic locations to make the garden feel bigger. Smaller paving slabs, cobbles, setts and bricks give the illusion of a larger space.

4 Exercise restraint: Don’t try to cram too much in, which can have the opposite effect by making a small garden feel claustrophobic. Keep it simple and pay attention to detail.

5 Help the eye travel: Curved borders and subdivisions will slow the eye down, giving more to take in. Think trellis breaks, bamboo screens or even espaliered fruit trees.