Part 2: The Design Of Small Garden With Its Size
The next step is to see if those plants will work with the aspect you have (the amount of sun or shade), how much water can be supplied to the area and the climate. Is it going to be too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter for the type of plants you want? If you are trying to create an exotic or Mediterranean garden in a cold climate, go to your best local nursery or garden centre and ask for their advice. A good expert will be able to suggest plants that will grow in your area that will give you the look and feel of the type of garden style you want to achieve. One last thing to consider before you go plant shopping is the purpose of the plants. Do you want them to screen an ugly view, reduce exposure to wind gusts, or for privacy? Do you want some edible plants, like herbs, fruit and vegetables? Do you want scent or colour at a certain time of year? A lot of plants will often 'tell' you which conditions they need to thrive, just by looking at their leaves. Learning which characteristics to look for will save you needing to learn hundreds of individual plants.
As part of this Kindle garden design series, I've written a book called 'How to choose the right plants for your garden' which will show you lots of tips and tricks to becoming a 'Plant Whisperer'. See the back of this book for the details. How you put the plants together to look good all year round is a big topic and the subject of the 'Planting Plan Design System' book that is part of this series. But to give you some pointers, there are a couple of very useful blog posts on the Successful Garden Design website. The first one shows you how to choose plants using a free online plant-picking tool and the other one shows you how to combine those plants effectively. How to Choose the Right Plants for Your Garden Combining Plants Attracting wildlife in a small garden. A great deal of the gardens featured so far in this book, have had the majority of the space down to paving and decking. That's not because I'm against planting or grass in a small space, it's because the owners of those gardens preferred low maintenance and wanted as much space for seating, rather than lawn and planting. As a designer, my job is to design to my client's tastes, not my own.
If you prefer a lawn and lots of planting to bring more wildlife into the garden, do not despair. The process I've shown you still works, you just have a lawn instead of all paving or gravel. It's the shape of the lawn or patio that will dictate how good the garden looks, not the surface you use. So please don't feel that you have to pave or deck the entire garden just because it's small. It's your space and you can, and should, design it to suit your tastes. The examples in the book, I hope, will show you how to organise the space. So you can take a design you like and adjust how much lawn, paving or planting there is to suit your needs. The plan below shows a design with more planting and lawn than hard landscaping. Edible small space gardens Small gardens can be terrific for growing a surprising amount of fruit and vegetables. They can also be stylish to look at. A trick you can use to make sure your vegetables don't end up making the garden look messy, when they are past their best, is to hide them behind something solid like a low box hedge or rendered retaining wall if you are wanting a more modern look, as shown in the plan below. The planting in the garden featured above is a hundred per cent edible. I was asked to create a modern vegetable garden by author Niki Jabbour, so if you'd like to see the full details and the fruit and vegetable varieties used in the garden, then check out her fantastic new book Groundbreaking Food Gardens:
Plans That Will Change the Way You Grow Your Garden. It will be in all good book stores. The other trick to successfully combining vegetables in the garden is to choose varieties with really attractive foliage. Things like Swiss Chard, Beetroot and even Sweetcorn, can look amazing in amongst ornamental plants. Also consider planters as well as hanging planting pockets for your herbs and vegetables, to utilise every last bit of space in your garden. The advantage of a planter is the ability to move it when you've finished harvesting your crops, if it looks unsightly. How you harvest can also make a big difference to the longevity of things like salad leaf veggies. If you remove a few leaves of lettuces, and other salad crops, rather than removing the entire thing, they will last much longer, so you won't have big gaps in your planting every time you want a salad. Ornamental planters Planting in shrubs and grasses in pots or in raised planters can give you additional interest and movable colour in your garden. Try to choose planters that will complement the style of garden you are trying to achieve. Terracotta is ideal if you want a Mediterranean feel. Try using sleek, modern planters for contemporary gardens and brightly coloured ones for modern, funky gardens. If using planters, you must consider the fact that your plants will have to be able to cope with drier conditions than they would in other parts of your garden, as planters do dry out much more quickly. You can buy swell gels that will help hold water in the soil but be careful with these if you have a lot of rain in the winter.
Plants can easily rot and die if they get too wet at any time, but especially in winter. Further Illusions of Size Now we've discussed plants, there's another useful trick that works in conjunction with the plants and has been used successfully for centuries - it's the use of mirrors. Adding a mirror can make the garden appear to go on indefinitely if done correctly. Mirrors have to be used with care and subtly to really be effective, though. The way I like to use them is to position them at the end of a fake path. It's fake because it doesn't actually go anywhere but looks like it does because of the mirror at the end of it. If you want to be really cunning, then attaching a gate next to the mirror adds an extra layer of believability visually. If a gate is not going to work because your garden is just too small, then try a window or portal instead.
An illusion trellis panel will help make these work as shown below. 40 I mentioned you need to use mirrors carefully. Here's the critical thing to look out for when deciding on placing a mirror: what will it reflect back? If the reflection goes straight back to your house or a utility area, it's never going to look nice if that's all you see in the mirror. Ideally, you want it to reflect some garden back so that it looks like there is a whole other garden you can walk through to. This will really make your garden look and feel larger. The other thing you need to be careful of with mirrors, is preferably not positioning them in the sun. You don't want to accidentally start a fire with the reflected sunlight! Now, features for gardens come in and out of fashion. Some garden designers these days do get a bit precious over the use of mirrors as it is the oldest trick in the book. But so what? It works, and works really well. If the situation is right, I have no qualms whatsoever about using them and neither should you. Obviously, if you have small children that are likely to run into them or cause damage with footballs, it's probably not a good idea, but other than that, if the location is right with the reflection, go for it! Changes in Level It's a funny thing when it comes to a change of level in a garden - the people that have one don't want it because they see it as an obstacle.
The people that don't have a change of level want one because they think their flat garden is boring! I usually try to steer people away from creating artificial changes in level because of the cost but in a small garden it's totally possible and can be a great way of maximising the space. So, let's first look at how you tackle an existing change in level, then we'll look at how to create one if you don't. The first job is to make an existing change of level work for you. To do that you need to be aware of it (mark the location on the plan of the main changes of height as shown on the plan below, if it is stepped) but when it comes to the initial stages of design, ignore it. 41 There is no rule that says the change of level needs to, one, stay exactly where it is now - it might be better if it is moved back or forward. And, two, there is no rule that says the change in height has to be a straight line across the garden - you are free to change the shape as well as the location of the level change.
Now, moving levels around, does have cost implications, but to begin with ignore that as well. I know this might sound like an awful lot of sticking your head in the sand but it's important you don't get overwhelmed with 'problems' whilst trying to design. You will produce much better results if you tackle one thing at a time. You can probably guess by now that I'm going to tell you to get the shape right first, that's a given. It's helpful to come up with a design shape you like without even thinking about the level change. Once you've got a shape you like, you can experiment modifying it and moving it to work with the levels by incorporating steps to get from A to B. That's then the time to think about the cost implications. If you are shifting a lot of soil around the garden that requires people and machinery, then it's probably not going to be cheap. If it's something you can do yourself over a few weekends, then it's fine to put the level change wherever it looks best on your design (without causing your neighbour's gardens to collapse!). How do you know where looks best, though? Well, part of that answer comes down to your personal needs and tastes, and some of it will be practical.
