Do you want to make the most of your small yard by turning it into a lovely garden that’s interesting, well put together and thoughtful?
Whether large or small, it’s time to start planning your garden. It isn’t that the concepts herein apply only to small landscapes, but details are even more important in tiny areas than on larger properties.
Many folks are daunted by tackling little spaces. Don’t dread creating a landscape in a small yard. Yes, mistakes are more obvious, but with planning and creativity, something special can evolve.
You can do it! Don’t be scared! Here’s how…
Start with the soil. Take time to enrich your beds. Apply compost every year or two, just laying it on top of the soil. New research is continually being released showing that, by disturbing soil, the creatures inhabiting the soil, from microbes and fungi, to visible crawly things, are disrupted in a way which hurts the garden, interfering with nutrient release and uptake and even with plants’ abilities to communicate with each other! Since amending the soil to suit the plants is a forever job, picking plants to suit the soil is easier in the long run. Besides, some amendments, such as peat moss, are truly not great for the environment. Peat moss harvesting is done either by mining down into the landscape, or by sucking the moss off the surface (along with all the newts and orchids and such).
Little landscapes allow you to go premium. Since you’re filling only a small space, you need less of each material. Smaller project = more affordable. Spend the coin to get exactly what you want. You don’t HAVE to buy the most costly material, but don’t let budget be your primary motivator.
Since you can squeeze in only so much, plants need to do one thing really well for a long time, or have multiple seasons of interest. Try to avoid mass-produced plants from big-box stores or those with a short season of interest…unless that short season is specTACular. For instance, tropicals are fantastic accents. Foliage colour can be extremely useful in the small garden. Many new varieties offer gold, purple, copper, and even pink – yes – pink leaves. Even on a postage stamp, a plant-a-holic can still indulge. Always remember, flowers come and go, but TEXTURE will make or break your garden!
This use of space is true of non-plant aspects as well. A fence can be more than plain and utilitarian. It can be art… and can also be a clematis lattice. Many features can be made to do double duty. A low wall can be a bench. A river rock feature by the road can be a place to put bags on garbage day.
Gardenettes – ok, that’s a goofy term, just trying it on for size… small landscapes don’t stop you from doing some ‘Good’. Even if it’s planting just one nice native, or one pollinator-friendly species, every little bit makes a difference. You can even create a small rain garden, but you’ll have to look that up in your spare time. Never enough room to fit in all the sidebars!
Release your inner sculptor. Use art to highlight the garden and vice versa. Find a special statuary feature, or even a found object, to add interest and draw the eye to a particular area of the property. As with all art, don’t worry about what others think. Your art is yours.
Use magic to make your yard bigger. It’s not real magic…but almost! You can use mirrors and other tricks to make it seem like the space goes farther than it does. It can involve something as simple as using a fake gate and arbor to create the illusion that your yard continues into the distance. Using a painting to create a false sense of perspective, as if there’s a hole or tunnel in the wall to another place, is another way to create this impression.
Splish-Splash! A water feature in the garden makes the space. It can even mask street noises and provide motion within a space, all while supporting birds and pollinators.
Just a tangent: motion, and its offspring, sound, are often overlooked in the garden.
It’s no surprise that in Canada, much of the year it’s dark when you wake and dark when you come home from work. So much work went into creating the landscape, but we lose all those hours of enjoyment because we can’t see our gardens. Low-voltage lighting doubles the number of hours you can enjoy your yard…and it’s artful! As a bonus, thanks to LEDs, costs have come down remarkably, as has energy usage.
It IS about size, or at least how we handle size. Don’t fight to keep a big shrub small. It’s bad for the shrub and untenable in the long run. Instead, prune off the lower branches, guiding it to grow up OVER the landscape, creating a ceiling for the landscape, which makes the area feel more intimate. It will look better, and the plant will live longer.
When it all comes down to it, crafting that tiny space, which seems like such an insurmountable task, is actually a huge opportunity! Like many of life’s challenges, it’s all about perspective.
— Sean James, Guelph Wellington Master Gardener