Small garden design ideas - how to smarten up your garden with stone cladding

When your plot is the size of a postage stamp, it is easy to believe you can hodgepodge your design as you go. However, small garden designs need to be considered even more carefully. You have a place where you can use your creativity to create a minor masterpiece beside your home. With a bit of imagination and patience and a lot of thought, you can do a lot with a little in the world of gardening.

When you are planning your garden, there are some pillars of design that will help you succeed. You should be careful to landscape and furnish the garden smartly. When it comes to patterns and colours, you need to be especially careful, and light will be a crucial asset. Let’s take these ideas one by one.

Clever landscaping choices

You need to section off the space, so there are zones. You might think this is odd in a smaller garden. However, if you have separate areas for different activities, you can create the illusion of space. You can make these zones using flooring to differentiate, rather than using walls or planting. When zoning your garden, be careful to leave gaps where you can move freely without falling over. If you are tripping all the time, you will be convinced it is all too small. Map the paths through your gardens before you begin to create your design.

There is still room for furniture

You want to enjoy your garden. Therefore, you are going to need seats. Some lovely garden benches can become a feature piece and allow you and your favourite people to sit side by side. However, do not be too ambitious with the size of this furniture. If all you can fit in your garden is your corner rattan outdoor sofa, then it is going to be a dull place to spend some time.

Steer clear of trends and buy what is suitable for your garden. If all else fails, you can purchase some fold away garden chairs and tables that you can tuck away when not in use.

Patterns and colours

You might think that any sort of pattern or colour is going to shrink your small garden into oblivion. People believe that if you make a garden busy, then it will feel claustrophobic. However, if the patterns you use are geometric, with straight lines, not curves, you can help create a multi-dimension area. Curves are a terrible idea because they eat into your space, leaving you with sections unusable.

Bold colours can shrink your space, however. The brighter the colour, the more they bounce out at you and close you in. Therefore, you should consider using light greys and greens and maybe some duck egg blues. The lighter the colour, the more it will reflect the light and help your garden feel spacious and airy.

Light, light and a lot more light

The more light that comes into your garden, the more spacious it will feel. Trees and hedges that block this light and take up space will double impact a small garden. Therefore, you need to keep planting cut back so that all the light can get in. Some gardeners suggest adding mirrors to shadier spots of the garden. This will do the same in your garden as it does in your living room, giving a perception of a more significant space. Obviously, this need for light should be balanced against your need for privacy. Your neighbours likely overlook your garden if your garden is in the UK and relatively small. Therefore, you will need to think about creating areas of privacy for your seating while trying to maintain as much light as possible.

Other hints and tips

Gardeners are full of great hints and tips about how best to maximise the space in a small garden. One of the cleverest is the rule of three. In garden design for tiny areas, the clustering of items in threes can create a bold statement without the space becoming cluttered. The three garden ornaments or three pots make a focal point for the eyes to land on without crowding them. Another great tip is to distract from the size by using the vertical space. You can use trellises and arches to introduce some climbing flowers – and maybe even plant some alpines into the gaps in an old wall. You could have a flower bed on one wall only – or perhaps just a water feature or statue to act as a point of interest. Whatever you choose, remember to let your garden reflect your personality rather than the latest trends, then you will always enjoy it and feel right at home.