Ideas to Overhaul Your Small Garden (a guest post)

The Holiday season is over and even in the height of winter, thoughts turn to warmer weather and long days. Now is the perfect time to start planning your garden overhaul. Even the smallest of spaces can be made into a sanctuary with a little creativity and planning.

Get Rid of Ugly Walls – Walls, especially in a small garden, can be oppressive and create a ‘penned in’ feeling that is neither relaxing nor attractive. Paint brick walls in white paint to give an illusion of light and space, and line them with trellis from places like Buy Fencing Direct so creeping plants and flowers can cover the brickwork to visually extend your garden. If you have an artistic persuasion you can paint a mural onto a primed brick wall – a woodland scene on a far wall can work well to give the illusion of a longer garden.

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Raised Flowerbeds – Raised flowerbeds are neat and practical, as well as stylish. Small gardens typically suffer from the flowerbed ‘border’ where plants and flowers are restricted to the edges of the space and actually make the garden itself looks smaller. By taking your lawn right to the edges of your space, and keeping planting to a few strategically placed raised beds, you can make the most of your space and lead the eye through you garden instead of highlighting the edges and emphasising its small size.

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Artwork – Works of art are not just for indoor walls and galleries. Garden art is on the rise and is perfect for a small garden where it is not going to be competing with extravagant flowerbeds and trees. Pebble mosaics make a perfect centrepiece for a paved yard, or create beautiful hanging art to dangle from wall brackets. If you choose reflective surfaces and glass to refract light, you can use your walls as a canvas to enhance the artwork. Garden art is easy to make yourself and there are hundreds of ideas on Pinterest to get you started.

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In-built Furniture – In a small garden there often isn’t room for patio sets or garden furniture. That doesn’t mean that you can’t use your garden for entertaining and relaxing. Building different levels into your garden in the form of deep decked steps and recessed areas means that on a warm summer evening you can use scatter cushions and Mason jar candles to create ambient seating areas for entertaining. 

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