Illusions of grandeur
A few simple tricks can make even the smallest of gardens look bigger – and it all starts with the planning
Who wouldn’t love a bigger garden? Most of us would, whatever the size of our present patch. But when it’s just not on the cards, the alternative is to make your present space work harder for you.
Most people waste an awful lot of room because their garden has grown without proper planning.
But if it was redesigned slightly with space-saving in mind, you’d fit in a lot more of the things you really want.
Overcrowding
Tackle the most obvious problem first, and for established gardens, that is most likely overcrowding.
Late autumn and winter are good times for cutting back overgrown trees, shrubs and climbers, but when you are trying to grow too many large plants in a small space it’s a never-ending job – and hard pruning isn’t always the best solution.
Instead, thin out crowded planting schemes, and replace outsized species with multipurpose trees and shrubs that are compact and slow-growing. Also, use a changing sequence of flowers or attractive foliage, plus autumn colour, fruit or berries, and employ striking winter shapes or superb bark.
If you have a favourite one-season wonder you can’t bear to part with, add a little all-year-round interest by growing climbers, such as a clematis, up through it.
And if you have a big tree that’s making too much shade, you can let more light through if you lift the crown by removing the lower branches, and thin out the centre slightly.
Streamline beds
Eliminate small fussy beds in favour of a few large, flowing borders that create a streamlined effect. Sort out perennial beds and borders regularly.
Congested plants need thinning, vigorous spreaders need digging up and dividing, and weak growers need resurrecting or dumping.
You can try a lozengeshaped lawn that ‘recedes’ in the distance
Pick a theme
If you like the feel of a very busy garden, the best way to keep it looking good is to stick to a theme, but you don’t have to go mad and turn the whole patch into a tropical-style jungle or Mediterranean vineyard.
Try several mini areas with a different theme – such as a scented garden, a decorative vegetable patch and a formal courtyard – and link them together by using meandering paths that make a journey, using arches, trellis and screens of shrubs.
Build in lots of detail – try a patch of camomile growing in a gap in the paving
or creeping thymes peeping through chinks in a wall.
Colour schemes
Light colours make a small space seem larger. You can set off a traditional scheme of pastel pink, lilac and pale blue with a sprinkling of darker colours, such as purple, to draw the eye.
Use hazy mauves and smoky purples at the far end of the garden as they create a false perspective – a trick used in landscape watercolour paintings to make distant fields or mountains.
Optical illusion
You can give a short, wide garden the illusion of length by constructing long, straight features such as a path which narrows slightly as it goes further from the house.
You could also try a lozengeshaped lawn which will appear to recede into the distance.
Alternatively, fix a large mirror at an angle at the end of a path so it reflects plants – but not your own image – as you walk along it.
Boundary stretchers
Put a false gate into a wall at the end of a path so it gives the impression the garden continues further, or cut a peep-hole in a hedge to bring in a view.
Don’t hem in a tiny garden behind tall fences. Use a range of verticals – rambler roses grown on colonnades, espalier or pleached trees, or trellis with climbers – to create a secret garden feel instead of an orange box look.