Too often, garden designers focus too much on trying to make a small space seem bigger, rather than exploiting the unique charm of the given space. In the examples here, the gardeners demonstrate various ways you can make the most of a small garden space by using the scale to best advantage. This small square garden is the first thing you notice about the house and, simple as it may be, it makes passers-by notice and smile. It is not a grand garden, but it is still somehow commanding. Areas along driveways and streets are often the best locations for garden planting areas in the front yards of smaller homes. The gardener has made some nice plant choices, sticking with pastels and gray foliage that complement and blend with one another. The gardener has also taken advantage of the borrowed view from the woods adjoining the yard, designing the landscape so that the islands seem to frame an entryway into a larger space. Positioning the garden beds adjacent to the adjoining wooded area makes the public woods appear to be part of the garden landscape. Even if there is no path leading beyond the flower beds, viewers are still drawn up the slope to investigate. There’s already a very English feel to this garden space thanks to the plant choices—roses, clematis, and lavender nepeta help create that impression. The small tree and overgrown lilac to the left serve as a backdrop for the small garden border and serve to make the space more intimate. By using fairly large clusters of just a few plant varieties, this fairly new garden gains an appearance of age, maturity, and abundance. And because the garden bed is clearly visible through the large windows, the small garden is enlarged by inviting it indoors. In this example, the owners have surrounded their tiny patio with low-maintenance flowering shrubs and bulbs. There’s even a cluster of river birches as a privacy screen facing the road. The garden is newly planted, but there’s still enough to make the landscape immediately enjoyable. And the shrewd choice of plants will allow the garden to age slowly but comfortably. This gardener has chosen bright bloomers with a tall growth habit that draw the eye and create a more solid screen than smaller, less colorful plants could achieve. Small trees behind and adjacent to the fencing make the garden seem larger as they mature. In this example, the technique creates a considerable amount of visual interest as the eye follows a line of plantings from the garage around the entire yard before shifting to the foundation’s plantings. Walking the perimeter of the border can also give an up-close adventure, thanks to diverse plantings that invite close inspection. In total, this simply designed landscape is considerably more interesting than most small-scale properties. Aged terra-cotta pots and a sprinkling of evergreens and succulents break up the monotony and introduce new forms and textures. What was once a simple gravel walkway linking the house and garage is now a restful garden walk accessorized with an iron bench.
Retaining walls can be an effective strategy on any property with sharply sloping land, creating flat planting areas and minimizing slopes to mow.
Another technique that can work fairly well in small landscapes is to use a relatively small number of larger plants, arranging them in a pyramid fashion with the largest specimens in the center. The impulse in a small garden is often to cram as many plants as possible into it, but this actually makes the garden look overly cluttered and without purpose. Less is often more when it comes to small gardens. This gardener has created a garden wall with an assortment of climbing clematis of various sizes and bloom periods, ensuring that something is always flowering. The lamb’s ear is a good choice for edging the patio; the fuzzy gray softens the gray pavers, as do the other plants that spill over the edges. Yet nothing here requires a great deal of maintenance. This is not a large space, but it is lush. In this example, the gardener has included raised beds with seating, an easy-to-maintain gravel path, a seating area for when you can’t wait to sample the produce, and deer fencing in an art nouveau style. Sometimes, something as boring as fencing can make all the difference in defining a space. Fences can also give you a vertical dimension for growing climbing plants, such as cucumbers or pole beans. It can be difficult to make a small landscape serve all purposes, and it may be necessary to define your garden as “all-vegetable” or “all-ornamental.” But it is still possible for a vegetable garden to be attractive through the spot use of annual flowers. Remember that many edibles have their own beauty, such as the ripe lushness of tomatoes or the bright yellow of sunflowers. And good design is its own form of beauty, as demonstrated in the lovely geometry of this vegetable garden. Espalier is the art of growing fruit and other trees flat against a wall, pruning and training them to grow two-dimensionally. The art first became popular in the walled gardens of medieval Europe. Besides taking up less space, training the trees against a sunny wall creates a warm microclimate. Fruit trees that wouldn’t ordinarily bear in cooler zones can be fooled into thinking they are a warmer zone. Additionally, the open framework of an espalier lets in more sun, encouraging more blossoms and faster ripening. A final benefit is how beautiful the trees look basking in the sun against your home. Apples and pears are the most common fruit trees used with this technique. Stone fruits such as peaches, cherries, and plums can also be trained, although the pruning schedule will be different. The trees in this example are planted in a border not much more than a foot wide.
