Diarmuid Gavin’s small plot design
Renowned garden designer Diarmuid Gavin shares how to create a successful small space
We’d all love our plots to look like a designer show garden, but for most of us that seems impossible. Well, award-winning garden designer Diarmuid Gavin set out to show how we can do just that at this year’s BBC Gardeners’ World Live. He created two show garden designs, full of ideas that can be used in our own plots. He then set two pairs of young landscapers the challenge of interpreting and building those designs at the show. Here, he explains to features editor Catherine Mansley how to use this, the winning garden, to create your own showstopper.
What’s the benefit of built-in seating rather than freestanding?
Seating gives the notion of rest, so when you look at a garden with seating in, you are immediately given the impression that this is a restful place. It also suggests family and friends, and reflects how you use the garden. By building in the seating, you are preordaining where people will sit, and you can ensure it’s in the best places and that you are making the best use of the space. The space underneath these benches is used for plants that will thrive in the shadows, like ivy and epimediums, and the benches are made from weather-proof artificial wood. In a small garden, you’re unlikely to have much space for storing furniture, so it’s better to use seating that you can leave out in all weathers. Then it becomes part of the overall picture of the garden all year. You don’t want furniture that needs to be covered up, because then you’re looking out onto a big ugly cover for much of the year. You could also use big, wide steps to create seating – this is a visually gentle way of building it into a landscape.
Why create a focal point ?
A focal point grabs your eye immediately and gives you something attractive to look at all year round. Nowadays, we put lots of big, glass doors into our homes, which means the garden is on show all year, so you need something to look at. The focal point here is a sculpture, but it could equally be a fire pit or a
plant. The snake-bark maple, which has been used in the corner, would also make a wonderful focal point. It’s a great tree for a small garden, and its unusual streaked bark looks marvellous, even in winter.
Are trees a good idea in a small space?
I always try to include one or two feature trees in any small garden design, as they create structure and a vertical accent. But it’s important to take time to think about which tree will be suitable for your garden. There’s nothing more awful than the wrong tree in the wrong place. You see trees that are too big for the space they’ve been planted in, and so they’ve been hacked about horribly. Many birches and acers are good in small spaces – even the stag’s horn sumach is coming back into fashion. Here, they’ve also used pleached hornbeams to create privacy, as gardens are often overlooked in an urban environment.
What do you plant under trees?
Underneath trees, keep the planting simple with small, low mounds of plants. You don’t want anything that’s going to detract from the trees, but you also don’t want the tree bark emerging out of bare soil. Choose plants that are appropriate for your soil –a combination that looks amazing is the black tufts of Ophiopogon ‘Nigrescens’ at the base of a white-stemmed birch.
What other plants are a must?
Think about the texture of your plants, as well as the colours. Have some solid planting for year-round interest – topiary, evergreen ferns and grasses, even a low-growing conifer like Pinus mugo – with flourishes of colour coming up in-between from bulbs and flowering perennials. And only use plants you know are appropriate for the conditions. Small gardens are often shady, so if yours is, choose plants that will suit that aspect.
How do you get more colour into a small garden?
Use pots as much as you can. Keep them somewhere out of sight until they’re flowering, then put them into a border that’s not looking great.
Why didn’t you include a lawn?
I love lawns! But I think they’re on their way out, because they’re not environmentally friendly. Our obsession with keeping them green and cut short is not sustainable, with the amount of water and nitrates that it takes, energy for regular mowing, whether that’s electric or petrol, and even our own time and energy. I hope we’ll see more sustainable alternatives coming along. That could be as simple as letting the grass grow a bit rougher – let grass be grass! Let it flower and provide habitats for wildlife, and include plants that provide pollen for insects, like daisies and clover, rather than getting rid of them. Even artificial lawns are an option, provided they allow water to drain properly. We’ll get to a point where having a lawn won’t be an option any more.
What hard landscaping materials are best in a small courtyard?
The fewer materials you use, the less busy it is for the eye. Gardens used to be made using local materials and local stone, because it was so expensive to transport things a long
way. Now we can get materials so cheaply from India and China that people think they’re doing the right thing by using lots of different materials imported from all over. Use local, it’s better for the environment and will help the garden fit in with the landscape around it. Use as few materials as possible and keep patterns simple, because if your hard landscaping is too busy, then everything else has a job to try to settle the design – the plants are having to dance to get your attention over the paving. Here, the garden uses slate for the paving, the edges of the raised bed and around the sculpture. By keeping the number of materials limited, the plants can be exuberant, while the overall design still feels elegant. Would you include lighting?
Warm light uplighting trees, particularly multi-stemmed trees, looks fantastic. And it even looks good in winter, which means that on winter evenings you aren’t just looking out into pitch black. Where should people start if they’re redesigning a space? Think about practicalities. We all need storage – even if it’s just for small tools. Do you need space for the kids’ play things? Where will you sit? Get that right, and the garden will work for you.