Although many people now use professionals to design their gardens, there is no reason why you shouldn’t do it yourself, especially if it is small. Before you start, here are five points to consider:

Simplicity is king

Avoid packing the garden with too many different plants and features, or it will end up looking chaotic and unplanned. Don’t use too many contrasting materials either. For small gardens I advise a maximum of three or four. One sympathetic mix would be terracotta tiles, wooden railway sleepers, gravel and rusty iron.

Forge links

Even if you have a particular style for the garden in mind, your home should always take the lead. If your house is modern, your garden design should reflect this in some way, perhaps in the choice of materials, the proportion of features or in the planting. If it’s a period house, use traditional materials. I’m sure you have seen a few Japanese pastiches looking queasy and self-conscious among traditional cottage plots.


Living room

The most important part of your design will be space for relaxing. Do you want to sit in the shade or in the sun? Whatever you decide, make sure the seating area is big enough. A trick is to create life-sized cardboard cut-outs of the dining set and lay them on the ground. Is there enough space for all the family? Do you have room to pull back chairs easily? Think about access. This must be easy with no tight corners or squeezing past obstacles and other people or you will be offloading plates into your guests’ laps.

In small urban gardens, the table and chairs usually form the centrepiece of any new design. It’s helpful to start here if you are stuck.

Think carefully about the floor. Hardwearing slabs or smooth decking are popular choices; they provide a stable base, are comfortable underfoot and can be used all year. Gravel is a cheaper option but you need a thick compacted sub-base to make it really stable — it’s often better merely as an accent. Lawns are cheaper still but are a no-no for year-round entertaining. It might be better to get rid of the lawn altogether if it’s tiny and pave the area instead.

Size matters

The most common question I get asked is “How can I make this space feel bigger?” Here are some tips:

1. “Borrow” scenery. Nothing makes a garden feel bigger than having a view beyond it — “out there” feels like it belongs to you. Frame attractive buildings in the distance with plants of a similar shape or complement the view with similar materials and colours.

2. Before hacking back plants that spill over from your neighbour’s garden, consider incorporating them into your own design, perhaps by mirroring them with similar ones elsewhere. The garden will feel bigger because the boundaries around it are blurred.

3. In basement spaces, cram in the plants to distract attention from the walls. Free-climbers such as ivy and climbing hydrangea have good covering power and tolerate the shadiest wall.

4. If you have a narrow garden or one that is wider than it is long, work with diagonal lines at 45 or 30 degrees. It alters perspective and leads the eye across the space, stopping it from focusing abruptly on the back boundary. The whole layout doesn’t need to be at an angle; simply alter the orientation of the flooring.

5. Create garden rooms. Divide long and thin gardens using planting, pergolas, wooden trellis or walls. If you have a space like a passageway, lay sleepers or slabs across it, perhaps interspersed with gravel. Or break it up with cobble circles along its length. The alley will seem shorter if you put large plants in the distance with smaller ones up close. To lengthen an alley, hide the end with planting and taper the path up to it.

6. Add a trompe l’oeil effect — false painted doors and murals. These give the illusion that there’s more to your garden than there is.

7. Get deceitful with large mirrors on the walls, but make sure that what they reflect isn’t the kitchen window or the drainpipes. Always aim to hide the edges with plants and test their position before you fix them into place.

8. In tiny enclosed spaces such as basements, paint the walls or fences in light neutral colours. Choose flooring that reflects light.

Surprise surprise!

By the careful positioning of focal points such as statues and by the use of height, you can encourage both the eye and the body to move around the garden.

In tiny gardens it is tricky to bring in an element of surprise, but it is not impossible. A kink in a path or a statue that invites further scrutiny draws you out into the space, with the anticipation of discovering more.

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