Planting for small gardens

I asked Tomoko and Charlotte about planting for small gardens.

Charlotte thinks that if your garden is small, it’s a good idea to have as much evergreen planting as possible, then the garden will look good all year round. In Charlotte’s own garden, she has a big choisya ternata (Mexican orange). This evergreen shrub was very popular in the 1970s and 1980s, then fell out of favour. It has bright green foliage and white flowers, and is a really good presence in the garden.

Now that so much box is affected with box blight or box tree moth, Charlotte adds evergreen structure with other plants. I particularly liked some beech and yew balls she had planted close to the house. Beech is not technically evergreen, as the leaves die in winter, but they stay on the plant, so I imagine this will look wonderful as a foliage contrast. Beech holds its leaves best when it’s regularly clipped.

I’ve seen some wonderful yew balls in gardens this year. You need English yew for balls, whereas Irish yew is a good columnar evergreen plant.

Charlotte also has evergreen climbers, such as Trachelospermum jasminoides or star jasmine. This has pretty white flowers, glossy dark green leaves and a wonderful scent. I think you could almost call it the perfect small garden climbing plant. Cut it back once a year in spring.

Of course, the delights of flower colour, constantly changing, are one of the huge pleasures of gardening, but it is difficult to have lots of flower colour in borders in a small garden, because the gaps where something isn’t flowering are a bigger proportion of the planting.

The answer is to use pots and containers for your flower colour, because you can change them a couple of times a year.