Small Garden Design: What You Need to Do

For people who love plants, a small garden is a curse. But it shouldn't be. As a matter of fact, small gardens can be such a delight if you apply small garden designs that make your space look a lot bigger.

Sure, having a small garden is not as grand as having acres of land devoted solely for gardening. But when it comes to setup and maintenance, a small garden is a winner. You don't need a whole lot of plants just to make the garden filled with life. You only need a couple of key elements during your start up, and you're good to go.

There are a couple of things to consider before planting. The following should be included in planning your small garden design:

Budget constraints - Having a small garden may seem less costly than having an expansive one. However, there are still expenses involved especially if you want your garden to look its best. If you cannot afford to buy all the plants and ornaments you need at once, deal with the most needed at the moment. You can always build a collection of plants over the months once you have your budget sorted out.

Selection of plants - Some plants thrive in shady areas, while others bask under the sun. Consider where you're going to place your plants so that you won't have to risk them withering due to inappropriate conditions. You might also want to look into having perennials instead of annuals or biennials as the former thrive longer. This means you don't have to redo your garden design often since you can count on your plants to simply grow back again.

Focal point - Gardens are about not only flowers, trees and plants. They are also about focal points or centerpieces in your garden. A focal point serves as a balancing add-on to your garden. It helps emphasize your garden design by guiding the eye toward the midpoint. Without a focal point, your garden will simply look like a hodgepodge of plants lopsidedly placed on the ground. Without a center, your garden will look more of a jungle.

Layers or rooms - The problem with a small garden is that it can't accommodate all the plants that you want. By building layers, you get to place varieties of plants in smaller areas, thereby giving your garden character. Before you do the layering, ask your local gardening stores which plants grow tall and which do not so that you'll have a successful layered design for your garden.

Small spaces shouldn't deter you from making your small garden design work. With careful planning, you can have a miniature garden that rivals the bigger ones.

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Garden Design for Small Spaces

Gardening in small spaces is generally overlooked in garden design manuals. Garden design is often presented as a list of principles or rules and illustrated on a grand scale. Most of us do not have acres of land on which to carefully calculate the width versus length of our perennial borders. Many of us don’t have the time or the inclination to undertake the maintenance these acres of gardens would need.

Gardening in a small space has its limits, but it need not be limiting. In a small garden, the gardener can pay attention to detail. You can keep on top of maintenance, while still having time to sit and enjoy your small garden. In fact, many small space gardens are designed around entertaining and sitting areas, rather then the need to nurture plants.

Whatever your reasons for having a small garden, there is no reason it cannot be a well designed show stopper. Virtually any plant or garden style can be worked into a small garden space. The principles of good garden design still apply, but you’ll need to tweak them slightly.

Small Garden Design Challenges

The entire garden can be viewed as a whole. Some small garden spaces will be able to accommodate a hidden turn around a path or even be divided into garden rooms, but for the most part, small gardens can be taken in whole, in one look. This means that, more than ever, your garden will be viewed as a composition.

Limited space means you are going to have to make choices. You won’t be able to grow every plant you love. You will need to curb your inclination to buy a plant on impulse and assume you’ll find a place for it.

Color should also be limited, to give your small garden cohesion. Less is more. Cooler colors will make the garden appear larger. You can compensate for the limited color pallette with a variety of textures. The textural contrast will help blend the plant material and allow the garden to flow.

Every plant or feature will need to serve a purpose. There is no room for wasted space or underperforming plants. Plants should offer at least two seasons of interest.


Small Garden Bonuses

Design can be easier when you can take in the whole picture at once.

It takes less plants to make a dramatic effect.

Gardeners get to know every space and plant in a small garden. Any plant that is out of place or not thriving can be spotted and corrected quickly.

Small gardens lend themselves to being enclosed. You may not want to install a stone wall, but an evergreen or flowering hedge will give the illusion of a secret garden. A simple low boxwood edge transforms a small garden into a formal garden. Hardscaping and fencing enclose and define a space for entertaining or children’s play.

A small space garden lends itself to personal expression. Smaller gardens are extensions of your home and speak volumes about the sensibilities and tastes of the gardener. And if those tastes and sensibilities should change, it’s much easier to rework a small garden.

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Make a Small Outdoor Space into a Flourishing Garden Design

Do you want to be near the outdoors? Create an outdoor small garden design. There are many ideas to create an outdoors living area that is just for you. It’s more than just have a place for kids to play, it's an area where the whole family can have fun, and relax.

Creating a small space garden design is having a place to relax on those hot summer days, entertain guests and be close to nature. Outdoor living space is not just a place for your kids to play anymore. It’s an area to bring the whole family together. Think of your outdoor living space as an extension of your living room, or an additional room. You can even set up an entertainment area to enjoy special events on your home theater with family and friends.

Designing Small Outdoor Spaces

Decide what you are looking for in outdoor living. Use elements of the outdoor scenery and incorporate it into your outdoor garden. You can be creative even if you don’t have much room. The smallest corner in your yard can be used by setting up a nook with a couple wooden chairs and a small table.

The entire garden can be created into an area for outdoor living. Create eye appeal by adding lots of greenery into your design. Create raised gardens for plants. You can divide areas to make your outdoor spaces more interesting. Actually these areas could be used efficiently all year long in warm climates.

Ideas for an Outdoor Garden Space

Here are some ideas for making your outdoor garden. These will only compliment any ideas you may have for a patio or outdoor living area. There is no set rule; you can have anything in your outdoor living area.

• Create an area for entertaining within a gazebo or covered patio area surrounded by beautiful flowers or greenery, adding color.
• Make plants a focal point of your area, such as using hedges for walls. A trellis with climbing roses would be a welcome addition.
• Use materials that will withstand the outdoors weather elements.
• Furnish your area with wood furniture, loungers or an umbrella patio.
• Build an outdoor fire pit to enjoy outdoor living even on those cooler evenings.
• Make an outdoor spa near a deck or a pool.
• Enhance your area by setting up privacy screens of lattice or shrubs.
• Use stones, clay or paving stones for flooring. You can use area rugs on wooden or concrete patio areas.
• Make a play area for kids using wood chips or recycled tire chips for the flooring. Set up play equipment, a craft area or make turn them into a private dining area floor.
• Make a waterfall as a central focal point.

Home Décor Made Easy

Have some fun and go to flea markets and yard sales to find some ideas. When finding décor items remember they don’t have to be new to have a place in your outdoor living area. Use benches or older furniture items of bamboo or wrought iron and fix them up with some spray paint. Get pieces to refinish and make new. Use an outdoor theme and get accessories to go along with it. Bring new life to patio furniture by sewing attractive new pillows.

Find unusual containers for your flowers, herbs and plants for your patio garden. Use candles on tables, and hang lighting fixtures. Choose accents that fit into the outdoor space naturally. Hand wind chimes for sound effects. Use terra cotta pots, rocks and shells. Create garlands with grapevines. Hang children’s interesting art projects of pinecones, twigs and leaves and use hanging plants in decorative pots.

Small space garden design doesn’t have to hurt the budget, it can be done over time for you to enjoy.

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French Garden Design

French garden use the same of geometry and symmetry that André Le Nôtre established in the 17th Century. The Lodge at Versailles had originally been a quite retreat used for royal hunts, but Le Nôtre turned it into a palace that became the envy of the European Elite. Based on a pattern of parterres gardens divided by radiating walkways, reflecting pools, and ornate stone coping, the Versailles Gardens reflected an awareness of order and system that brought intricately sculpted individual elements into a complex, interconnected unity visible only from a balcony or palace room. This style was rapidly adopted as the standard landscaping design of all the French aristocracy.

French gardens used in landscapes today are much smaller than their historical predecessors built around 17th Century chateaus. However, the same emphasis on parterres and radiating pathways is used today both on larger estates. Scaled-down or modified versions of this pattern are used throughout local residential neighborhoods. Even though the typical Houston home resides on far less land than even a modest Old World Estate, the topography of the Gulf Coast highly favors a variety of French garden designs. Just like much of France, Houston resides on a very level plane that naturally lends itself to the type of formal bedding used in French parterre gardens and knot gardens.

The parterre itself is the key motif around which every French garden is cultivated. 17th Century parterres were originally four perfect squares set side by side, divided by walkways criss-crossing in between. Today, parterre design does not have to follow this hard-fast pattern. They can morph the geometry of a perfect square into a rectangle, or they can be sculpted like segments of a sundial to create a curved perimeter or support a central landscaping feature like a sculpture or a fountain.

No matter how the original pattern is bent, its effect remains undiminished so long s the original elements of formal beddings, trimmed hedges, and repeating geometry combine together in a tangible sense of balance and proportion. Within this one aesthetic fundamental, multitudinous possibilities exist for the landscape designer to create all sorts of shapes and colors to compliment exterior architecture, outdoor gathering areas, and special landscape ornaments and water features.

While the French garden is still quite breathtaking when viewed from an upstairs balcony or second-story window, it is no longer necessary to limit this design to one that can only be enjoyed from far above. When placed around an outdoor structure or landscaping feature, a French garden adds a formal element to any seating area or gathering spot. Places like arbors, private patios, pool decks, and outdoor rooms are all landscaping elements that can be greatly enhanced by the formality of the French garden design.

Boxwoods are typically used to frame the edges of parterres, with low-growth perennial flowers, herbs, and even special grass constituting the garden interior. Color choices can range varying shades of green to a rainbow of colors blooming throughout the different seasons. The only requirement that somewhat constrains plant material options is the need to create horizontal space that appears visibly larger than vertical space. The larger the length and width of the garden; the taller the shrubbery within it can be without diminishing the aesthetics of balance and proportion. Provided the formal element of flat, cultivated, and highly sculpted planting areas remains readily apparent from every intended vantage point, the options for flowers, plants, and low-level shrubs are both multitudinous and diverse, to say the least.

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Japanese Garden Design Is Quite Simple If You Do This

Japanese garden design is about as hard to understand to Westerners as the Japanese language is. The relationship to the rich and ancient eastern culture adds to this difficulty. The practice is not just a style of landscaping. Rather, it a statement that delivers a specific meaning. Adding further to its complexity is the influence of fengshui and its borrowings from Buddhism and Chinese culture.

The intention of Japanese garden design is to use nature to make a statement. The main element is symbology, most of which is influenced by Shintoism and Buddhism, which is where the gods inhabit nature. This adds even more its cultural complexity making hard for us to understand.

Since the garden is making a statement or telling a story, the first step is to determine what story you want to tell. What is it you want to communicate to the world with your garden? It might be a good idea to decide in broad terms what you want to say, and then through some research find out how Japanese would go about communicating that truth, concept or story with a garden.

Another outstanding feature of Japanese garden design is that the main point is not to be beautiful or showy. The appearance of the garden is not its purpose, but rather the message is the purpose. Beauty is the after thought, so to speak.

The careful observer will notice that flowering plants are scarce or nonexistent in Japanese garden design. Rather, dry gravel streambed or sand swept into patterns and large rocks and boulders are used to tell the tales. Remember that the heart of all Japanese garden design is symbolism and storytelling, the tradition is that this is done with plants and other elements of nature and not so much the use of colorful flowers.

Equally important to Japanese garden design are the use of water, and more specifically the use of running water, which symbolizes passing time or life.

What shouldn’t get lost in Japanese garden design, but often is by Westerners because they think it’s ‘complicated’, is its simplicity. Once you know the story you are trying tell, it’s as simple as composing the elements of nature to tell that story.

What one should refrain from doing is blindly copying someone else’s garden. Why would you do that? Perhaps because you think it “looks” good. But if the “good looks” are just the result of the telling of a story, then the copier certainly is missing the point. It would be like framing a poem you don’t understand and hanging it on the wall. First think of what you want to say, and then through the principles of Japanese garden design

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Modern Garden Design - Suit Your Needs

The "new look" in building architecture started in Europe, and on this continent in California, early in the 20th century. It did not come to Canada until after the Second World War. Basically, modern architecture is functional rather than decorative. It emphasizes the structural mass in buildings and calls for ordered surroundings.

Garden planning has not developed a modern style to such a clear extent as architecture, since traditional materials and practices have not changed as much in gardening as in building. Gardens cannot be purely practical as their function is largely decorative. Their reasons for existence are to provide beauty, relaxation and a natural setting for the buildings. When we work with complex natural forms, it is difficult to adhere to the plain surfaces characteristic of modern architecture.

Today we arrange plants in new forms to suit the scale and proportions of the new buildings; and we arrange the space in our gardens to suit our changing social habits. The key idea in modern garden planning has been to consider the garden as an outdoor extension of the house for the comfort of the family, rather than as a plant museum. This idea has also led to using more outdoor furniture, lighting, BBQ, screens, shelters, swimming pools and other things for decoration.

The average homeowner wants pleasing surroundings and a place to relax, with little labor and expense. Most of us look after our own gardens with perhaps a little unskilled labor for grass cutting and other regular chores. Unless gardening becomes our hobby, we will have less variety of plants than in the past. Also, there will be more careful planning of space as we become more appreciative of good design.

Because we need privacy, where there is little space we now use screens of closely woven lattice, opaque plastic or broad louvers of plywood to separate our garden from the neighbor's. The more expensive walls of masonry or boundary plantings of trees and shrubs take up too much room to be used in a small garden.

Plants of rather unusual form are used in front of these flat surfaces to cast interesting and changing shadows. The effect of moving light and shadow is given by the lattice or louvers themselves, or by "egg-crate" beams in the roof overhangs on garden shelters. The interest of this movement is a substitute for variety in planting and artificial light for plants.

Concrete paving blocks and three-dimensional cast figures are taking the place of more expensive stonework and statues. The outdoor barbeque grill, with dad cooking has replaced tray-carrying servants for entertaining.

Because we like to sit and enjoy the garden from one spot, raised masonry planters, decorative pottery or flower beds are used to connect the inside of the house with the garden, when viewed from inside.

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