7 Inspiring Ways to Make the Most of a Small Garden
The 2024 RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival was bursting with ideas for enjoying your plot, however small it is
It’s easy to dismiss a tiny patch of outside space as having little value, but recent RHS flower and garden shows have all demonstrated a thrilling range of possibilities for compact plots. This year’s Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival was no exception, with many of the Pocket Planting designs, which each cover roughly 15 sq m, and Get Started Gardens suggesting ambitious ways to maximise your space.
From weaving in edibles and helping to create a bee-friendly corridor to fashioning an immersive retreat, see whether any of these ideas might work in your petite plot.
From weaving in edibles and helping to create a bee-friendly corridor to fashioning an immersive retreat, see whether any of these ideas might work in your petite plot.
2. Slot in a surprising number of edibles
As with maximising interiors, when faced with a small garden, think vertically as well as horizontally.
In the gold medal-winning Our Forgotten Neighbours garden, designer Marina Lindl created a ‘food forest’ by including layers of edibles, from plants such as blackcurrants and yarrow underplanted with myriad herbs, to climbers such as borlotti beans, up to a compact crabapple tree to make use of the small space.
There was an astonishing number of edible plants in this tiny plot, yet it still looked pretty and offered tree stump seating to create a relaxing haven.
Need some help with your plot? Easily find and hire a local garden designer on Houzz.
As with maximising interiors, when faced with a small garden, think vertically as well as horizontally.
In the gold medal-winning Our Forgotten Neighbours garden, designer Marina Lindl created a ‘food forest’ by including layers of edibles, from plants such as blackcurrants and yarrow underplanted with myriad herbs, to climbers such as borlotti beans, up to a compact crabapple tree to make use of the small space.
There was an astonishing number of edible plants in this tiny plot, yet it still looked pretty and offered tree stump seating to create a relaxing haven.
Need some help with your plot? Easily find and hire a local garden designer on Houzz.
3. Create a sunken seating area to feel immersed
A feeling of seclusion can be much trickier to achieve in a small plot, but designer Bea Tann suggested this clever idea in her silver medal-winning Moss Magic Garden.
The relatively simple move of digging down to create a sunken seating area, with reclaimed timber benches on two sides, allowed people to feel immersed amid the planting. Ferns tumbled over the edges, while a slate wall (a byproduct of roofing slate) and a log fence ensured the mosses and ferns rose above eye level for an enveloping experience.
The garden was designed as a small plot belonging to a new-build home, showing how creating a verdant retreat is possible even in compact urban settings.
A feeling of seclusion can be much trickier to achieve in a small plot, but designer Bea Tann suggested this clever idea in her silver medal-winning Moss Magic Garden.
The relatively simple move of digging down to create a sunken seating area, with reclaimed timber benches on two sides, allowed people to feel immersed amid the planting. Ferns tumbled over the edges, while a slate wall (a byproduct of roofing slate) and a log fence ensured the mosses and ferns rose above eye level for an enveloping experience.
The garden was designed as a small plot belonging to a new-build home, showing how creating a verdant retreat is possible even in compact urban settings.
4. Tempt children outside
It’s easy to imagine there’s little you can do with a small plot to please kids beyond laying an expanse of grass, so seeing the Silver Gilt medal-winning Wild Child Cornwall garden was spirit-lifting.
This tiny Pocket Planting design by Victoria Jane Cucknell incorporated lots for little ones, from the structural – woven willow play spaces and log balance blocks that meandered through the planting – to the leafy – textural and edible plants that encouraged children to explore.
More: How to Start a Garden Redesign
It’s easy to imagine there’s little you can do with a small plot to please kids beyond laying an expanse of grass, so seeing the Silver Gilt medal-winning Wild Child Cornwall garden was spirit-lifting.
This tiny Pocket Planting design by Victoria Jane Cucknell incorporated lots for little ones, from the structural – woven willow play spaces and log balance blocks that meandered through the planting – to the leafy – textural and edible plants that encouraged children to explore.
More: How to Start a Garden Redesign
5. Make the most of a boggy patch
If your plot ends up as a boggy mess in the wetter seasons, with little garden left for you to enjoy, take inspiration from the silver medal-winning Ripple Effect Raingarden.
Designer Sarah Cotterill of Wild Atlantic Gardens suggested leaning in to a tendency to sogginess by encouraging water to gather in a central gravel area, thus minimising run-off, and choosing plants that can tolerate the extremes of drought and heavy rain.
It’s a lovely chance to enjoy a range of different plants to the usual, from the purple spires of Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Fascination’ to the pretty pink pond marginal, Butomus umbellatus.
Sarah contoured the small plot to guide the water into the central gravel area, but also to create drier spots, so the planting could be more varied and there would be dry places to sit.
If your plot ends up as a boggy mess in the wetter seasons, with little garden left for you to enjoy, take inspiration from the silver medal-winning Ripple Effect Raingarden.
Designer Sarah Cotterill of Wild Atlantic Gardens suggested leaning in to a tendency to sogginess by encouraging water to gather in a central gravel area, thus minimising run-off, and choosing plants that can tolerate the extremes of drought and heavy rain.
It’s a lovely chance to enjoy a range of different plants to the usual, from the purple spires of Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Fascination’ to the pretty pink pond marginal, Butomus umbellatus.
Sarah contoured the small plot to guide the water into the central gravel area, but also to create drier spots, so the planting could be more varied and there would be dry places to sit.
6. Create a journey
It wasn’t just the small gardens at the show that were inspiring for petite residential plots – some of the bigger schemes had ideas to steal, too.
Key among these was the design trick of creating a ‘journey’ through a garden. A pathway where the destination is hidden – perhaps by tall planting or a screen – can create the illusion of a bigger plot.
Numerous gardens included paths that meandered to a hidden seating area. The RHS Adventure Within Garden (pictured) by Freddie Strickland, meanwhile, had a dogleg path, so the apparent destination ahead was cottage garden flowers, such as the pale spires of Nepeta ‘Dawn to dusk’ and dainty white Achillea ptarmica (sneezewort), before it turned left and led to a little open area.
It wasn’t just the small gardens at the show that were inspiring for petite residential plots – some of the bigger schemes had ideas to steal, too.
Key among these was the design trick of creating a ‘journey’ through a garden. A pathway where the destination is hidden – perhaps by tall planting or a screen – can create the illusion of a bigger plot.
Numerous gardens included paths that meandered to a hidden seating area. The RHS Adventure Within Garden (pictured) by Freddie Strickland, meanwhile, had a dogleg path, so the apparent destination ahead was cottage garden flowers, such as the pale spires of Nepeta ‘Dawn to dusk’ and dainty white Achillea ptarmica (sneezewort), before it turned left and led to a little open area.
7. Slot in a water feature
Many of us are drawn to water and having a small garden needn’t be a barrier to enjoying a that.
Several gardens at the show featured small ponds, including this prettily planted bowl in the Formal Gardening for Wildlife design by the RHS Garden Wisley horticulturalists, featuring plants such as Nymphoides peltata (waterlily); Menyanthes trifoliata (bogbean) and water shamrock.
The Summer Haze garden by Kate Brown, meanwhile, had the simplest of ponds – a circular indentation in the small pebble patio, filled with water to attract wildlife and twinkle in the sun.
Tell us…
Could any of these ideas work in your garden? Or have you already made the most of a small plot? Share your ideas and photos in the Comments.
Many of us are drawn to water and having a small garden needn’t be a barrier to enjoying a that.
Several gardens at the show featured small ponds, including this prettily planted bowl in the Formal Gardening for Wildlife design by the RHS Garden Wisley horticulturalists, featuring plants such as Nymphoides peltata (waterlily); Menyanthes trifoliata (bogbean) and water shamrock.
The Summer Haze garden by Kate Brown, meanwhile, had the simplest of ponds – a circular indentation in the small pebble patio, filled with water to attract wildlife and twinkle in the sun.
Tell us…
Could any of these ideas work in your garden? Or have you already made the most of a small plot? Share your ideas and photos in the Comments.
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Think your garden is too small or too urban to help revive our dwindling wildlife? The designer of the gold medal-winning Buglife: The B–Lines Garden urges you to think again.
Hayley Herridge packed her Pocket Planting plot with bee-friendly flowers to show how even a small garden can be part of a network of nectar-rich ‘insect pathways’ that could potentially stretch across the UK, and could certainly create a green corridor through a built-up neighbourhood.
Plants included Linaria purpurea (purple toadflax); Salvia ‘Carradonna’; Digitalis ferruginea ‘Gelber Herold’, oregano and yarrow. Hayley also wove in nesting sites, including this carved wood ‘hotel’.