Small Gardens With Big Ideas
Our gardening expert Susie White has lots of tips to maximise space
Ioften get asked for advice about making the most of small spaces. A friend recently bought a house with a small garden and she felt very hemmed in by the high brown fences put up by the builders. I suggested she painted them a soft grey and she was amazed by the difference it made.
It’s just simple colour theory; pale colours appear to retreat whereas warm or dark-toned colours come forwards. Paint a dark shed in soft grey or blue and a garden feels instantly bigger.
Another way of making a garden feel larger is by masking walls and fences by clothing them in plants. I call it “disappearing boundaries”. A mass of foliage tricks the eye into not knowing where the boundaries are.
If you don’t want to attach climbers to fences, you can plant shrubs just in front of them instead.
Using height is also a good trick because the vertical lines of trees or pergolas lift the eye up. Choose trees that are suitable for small gardens such as amelanchier, paperbark maple or the rowan, Sorbus Joseph Rock.
Try and keep the rest of the planting simple and don’t try to cram everything in. It’s easy to get carried away by impulse buys at the garden centre, but repetition of a few key varieties adds a sense of calm and balance.
Lawns are not always practical in small gardens, since you have to maintain and house a mower, plus access may be difficult. Gravel is a good option but if you go for a lawn, try one that is circular. It has the effect of pushing the boundaries back and giving a greater sense of width. If you look at the main picture, the small garden appears larger than it is thanks to the circular lawn, the simple repeated shapes of the box balls and the vertical lines of the two trees.
With small gardens, less is more. Simplify the types of materials. Have a limited colour range of plants, and group pots together. A few very large pots creates far more effect than lots of small ones of different sizes, shapes and colours.
Disguise unattractive but necessary features such as wheelie bins or bike stores by planting a sedum roof on a wooden frame.
A small yard can be transformed by a mirror on the wall, its edges disguised by the overlapping of greenery. Mirrors hint at spaces beyond – a continuing path, a further courtyard – doubling the number of plants and increasing the light. Water acts as a horizontal mirror reflecting the sky, and with glossy greens and strong foliage you can turn an urban space into a private world.