How To Design A Small Garden

If you have a very small garden, it doesn't mean it can't be made beautiful and functional. Here are some tips on how to trick the eye so that a very small garden is bigger and more interesting. You can try creating a fort, fix a gate to a boundary wall or fence even if it leads nowhere giving an impression there is something beyond it.

Try using an old rose vine gate with a mirror behind it and a fringe of climbers to blur the edges. Use contrasting colors. A pale wall with a door size rectangle painted in a dark color framed by some climbers and planted pots will look like a passageway.

You can use contrasting flowers and foliage colors as well to add an illusion of extra depth to your garden. You can try creating force perspective. This can be achieved in several ways, for example, using diminishing size poles.

By which, I mean larger poles closer to the house gradually getting smaller as they go near the garden boundaries or you can use a path which is wider by the house closer to the house and gets narrower as it approaches the boundary. Another great trick for making a small garden more interesting and appear larger is to combine hard and soft elements. For example, terminated pergola or pathway at a garden boundary, plant the boundary with evergreen climbers and the base of the path or pergola with evergreen shrubs.

This blurs the edges of the garden and gives the impression of greater space. You could be familiar with the use of trunk levels in the house. This literally means a trick of the eye.

It is also used in the garden as well. It is usually a notional view into a landscape beyond the garden. It can give a quirky extra dimension to the garden.

If done well, they can make a real statement. Keep it simple. Paint the doorway and surround it with evergreen plants and climbers.

Level changers work really well in a small garden to make it much more interesting. So, use level changers like steps, raised beds, raised pool to make it interesting and add extra depth - gives the garden an extra dimension. The eye will stop on the level changers and not withdrawn immediately to the garden boundaries.

Wooden structures are also a great addition to a small garden. Vertical planting will give height and help create an impression of a more spacious garden. A heavily planted pergola placed against the boundary wall prevents the eyes stopping on the garden boundary and glassy edges of the garden suggesting extra space beyond.

An archway pathway down the path suggests another area of the garden. Use strong shapes in the design. Avoid fuzzy lines and stick to strong geometric shapes to focus the eyes inside the garden.

You don't want to be looking beyond the boundaries, you will want to be firmly focused on the inside of the garden. So, those are some of my tips for designing a beautiful small garden. .