Small garden ideas from the House & Garden archive
There are plenty of small garden ideas to make your patch of outdoor space a blessing, however tiny it may be. It's been proven time and again what a huge benefit having a garden makes to our mental health. No matter how small yours is, it can provide a space for growing flowers, harvesting a kitchen garden or simply relaxing on a sun lounger. A sprawling country garden full of flowers would be ideal, but even having a small garden, balcony or tiny roof terrace can provide solace in spades. The only problem with small spaces is that they can be harder to design, but there's no need to be daunted; arm yourself with the right small garden ideas and design tips and tricks and you'll have the tools you need to make it a tiny sanctuary for you to enjoy all through the warmer months, which are here to stay (fingers crossed)! It doesn't matter if you have a balcony garden or a small patch of patio or even a small front garden, make it a space to be proud of with the right planning and planting.
How do you design a small garden?
Start by thinking about what you need from your garden and how you can plan it to fit those elements in. There are some excellent garden design apps out there that can help you with the basic structure. Chances are you'd like a pleasant place to sit on sunny days, so carve out some space and have a look around for some stylish garden furniture, set up a parasol and prepare for some outdoor dining. We also love using lighting in the garden, especially solar lights, which can help you make the most of the space after dark. And in a small front or back garden, if there's no room for a garden shed, you'll want some sort of garden storage to stow away your garden tools, toys and anything else that has a tendency to end up outdoors.
How do you make a small garden look nice?
It’s time to consider planting. Perhaps you just have room for some plant pots for pretty seasonal plants and herbs around your table and chairs. You may have room for a romantic border that will make your city garden look more like a country garden. Or it may be that you want to learn how to grow vegetables, in which case see our garden editor’s guides to creating a kitchen garden and making a compost heap.
However small your garden is, we believe you can make something beautiful and functional there, so read on for more inspiration. If you’re a novice gardener consult our our essential guide to gardening and landscape design.
Smart small garden ideas from Sam McKnight
Small garden ideas
Owen Gale1/65The garden of this house in Bath leads down to a former garage-come-guesthouse. The small garden space outside features a neat lawn area and seating area for outdoor dining, set under a pergola for a lovely way to provide shade.
Chris Horwood2/65This small London garden, attached to a former vicarage, has been kept natural and beautiful with a lawn edged in lovely borders. The sprawling tree creates a naturalistic element in this city garden.
Mark Anthony Fox3/65In this London house transformed by Veere Grenney, the house has a lovely little garden designed by Alex Hoyle. The furniture is by the American firm Munder Skiles.
Chris Horwood4/65At Nina Campbell's house in Chelsea, there is a tiny courtyard garden lined with greenery in planters.The garden originally had a low wall on to the street which Nina extended to make the space private. There is a bin store hidden behind the wall of roses, and the space is a haven for birds.
Mark Anthony Fox5/65Charlotte Boundy's petite but pretty garden in Shepherd's Bush, which is accessed from the kitchen.
Paul Massey6/65This part of Fiona Golfar's garden at her Cornish house is full of helpful ideas for small gardens. Antique mirrors reflect light around the space, which is filled with plants in containers, a rustic table and benches, and cosy sheepskin coverings.
alister thorpe7/65The beautiful magnolia and cherry trees in this London garden are the centrepiece in an artful new design by Sheila Jack. The client’s brief was to preserve the atmosphere of an old town garden but also to open it up – bringing greenery closer to the house through the year, as well as a crescendo of blossom in spring and more low-key flowers in early summer. A central axis of reused York-stone paving separates woodland planting below old magnolia and new cherry trees.
Sabina Rüber8/65Garden photographer and self-confessed plant addict Sabina Rüber has turned her long, narrow plot in the Welsh border town of Presteigne into a flower-filled haven, with the first flush of camera-ready colour arriving in spring. Clipped box balls and iron plant supports for clematis and sweet peas anchor the borders behind the studio.
Eva Nemeth9/65The small space at the side of garden designer Laura Heybrook's Oxford house is put to good use, with pleached hornbeams, topiary and Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ in a terracotta pot.
James McDonald10/65Because decorator Chloe Willis's London apartment takes up half of the original terraced house, the garden is long and thin. To draw your eye, Chloe introduced level changes and raised beds, breaking it up into three spaces and planting geraniums and climbing roses in the seating area “so that it feels secluded and romantic rather than just small.”
Rachel Warne11/65After creating an enchanting festival show garden at RHS Hampton Court Palace, Alexandra Noble was commissioned to re-create the design for this garden in west London, complete with secret spaces, winding paths and magical, gossamer-fine planting. The small space is filled with clouds of Cenolophium denudatum, Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ and Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’. A pale gravel path edged with porphyry setts meanders through the space, passing a table and chairs.
Jake Curtis12/65At Thea Speake's basement flat the small courtyard garden outside the open-plan living area and Thea’s bedroom is a sun trap, and looks lovely with simple furniture and striped yellow cushions.
Paul Massey13/65At this Cotswold barn, the outdoor dining area is hidden away amongst the shrubbery, an idea that would work equally well for small gardens. A Maison de Vacances tablecloth from Cutter Brooks and Maisons du Monde metal chairs brighten a bespoke table by Londons Calling Antiques.
Mark Anthony Fox14/65The backview of an East London terrace, where the garden aims to have a sense of cohesion with the main house and its extension.
Paul Massey15/65Annabel Bevan added mirrors to the courtyard garden of her London house to create a sense of space. Annabel and her family moved to London from Bahrain, and the garden reflects the middle Eastern style of the area. The 18th-century patisserie table was bought at Violet Grey Antiques.
Lauren L. Caron16/65The small balcony of this Seattle bungalow by Studio Laloc is transformed into a social space thanks to a sofa from Anthropologie, a coffee table from Chairish.com, and chairs are from Summerhouse. The designer had weatherproof covers made for the upholstered items for the winter months.
Sarah Cuttle17/65In this small city garden featured in Philip Oostenbrink’s The Jungle Garden, plants are all grown in pots, and the emphasis is squarely on having a good display of foliage throughout the year. It’s easy to swap the plants around if some are looking particularly nice at a particular time of year, warranting a place at the front.
Elsa Young18/65In the garden of Henrietta Courtauld’s 1850s London terraced house, yew balls surround the main bed, which is planted with vegetables, Melianthus major and Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’. Among the small but thriving vegetable garden is room for a small shed which works as a studio space. Beyond this vegetable patch is a communal garden that has been a labour of love for Henrietta who is one half of the gardening duo the Land Gardeners who run a thriving flower garden based at Wardington Manor in Oxfordshire.
Romain Ricard19/65In a London house designed by Retrouvius, an indoor-outdoor football pitch for the children uses artificial grass by Easigrass extending from the inside to the end of the garden. It is a gloriously whimsical idea for what would otherwise be the darkest and potentially least inspiring part of the house.
Ngoc Minh Ngo20/65If you don’t have much space, plant upwards. Jos and Annabel White’s six-storey town house in Manhattan's West Village has window boxes full of flowers and trailing ivy framing the patio windows.
Benjamin Edwards21/65With its mix of clean lines and natural textures, the townhouse of interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch pays homage to its London setting, while serving as a reminder of her rural roots. Designed by Charles Harman, the garden features a Neptune dining table and custom bench. Cushions are in a mix of fabrics from Christopher Farr Cloth.
Paul Massey22/65At Paul and Caroline Weiland’s west London townhouse is this charming garden by Butter Wakefield. The garden was inspired by the one Caroline loved at the Stockholm hotel Ett Hem,, and designed to be an integral part of the living room room beyond the Crittall windows. White gravel and lime chippings are flanked by paths of London brick, with a small terrace created from reclaimed cobblestones.
Michael Sinclair23/65The ground floor of a London house by Emily Todhunter looks out onto the garden created by Tania Compton. Lush planting and wide borders take up a lot of the space but create an oasis feel, heightened by the blue tile-lined water feature in the centre.
Owen Gale24/65This small London garden was designed by Piers Beeching, who used a pretty bench as a focal point and added an abundance of potted plants for colour and protection from neighbouring gardens. By using plants of varying height, Piers has created a sense of scale in the space that could surely give you some front or back garden ideas.
Eva Nemeth25/65In her own London garden, a typical long narrow space, landscape designer Emily Erlam has constructed a series of elegant terraces, each with its own mood, which provide structure for Mediterranean plantings and natural canopies. Using spoil from the recent renovation of the house, levels were built up to form four elegant tiers separated by simple brick retaining walls. Each of the terraces has a distinct atmosphere and purpose: ‘Some of the spaces are for a few people and some are for just one or two, but all have a shared quality of intimacy and shelter,’ she explains.
Eva Nemeth26/65While Daisy Garnett’s Brixton garden is relatively spacious for London, her approach to the patio and to containers is one any small garden owner can learn from. Daisy’s growing collection of pots on the terrace brings seasonal colour and interest to the area for most of the year. In an array of different shapes, sizes and materials, they contain plants ranging from large shrubs to tiny annuals. The large terracotta urn from Mallorca was a gift from her father.
27/65In her London home, designer Bridie Hall has a tiny patio which she imbues with the idea of a country garden via verdant planting and a sweet mismatched bistro table and chairs.
Eva Nemeth28/65In this Bruges garden by Piet Blanckaert, the trees and shrubs bordering the reclaimed Belgian Blue stone terrace are clipped and pollarded so as not to dominate the space. Edged by a serpentine hedge of cloud-pruned box, a narrow canal reflects vegetation and sky. It creates an illusion of space in the small courtyard.
Rachel Warne29/65Curator and potter Joanna Bird has turned her garden into an exhibition space, where modern sculpted ceramics meet calming evergreens. In the foreground is a bed of blue and mauve plants, including alliums and perovskia.
Andrew Montgomery30/65The strict, geometric layout of Jinny Blom’s small garden is reinforced by a backbone of structural planting: great big squares of box – ‘I’ve always loved box in squares, long before Christopher Bradley-Hole did it at Chelsea,’ she says with a twinkle in her eye – and a bold peppering of big-leaved, exotic plants that give the garden a distinctly contemporary feel. The bottom right corner of the garden is planted with Geranium ‘Patricia’ and a multi-stemmed Catalpa x erubescens ‘Purpurea’, which is perfect for small gardens if pruned every year.
Paul Massey31/65Helen Fraser and Non Morris, founders of garden-design company Fraser & Morris, haven’t let space restrictions stop them from creating an abundantly green and wonderfully lush garden, complete with a beautiful fig tree. Think big, people.
32/65The outside of Cameron Kimber’s house in New South Wales is covered in charming clapboard. Gravel, generous tubs, and a lovely white bench come together to create a welcoming entrance to the house.
Rachel Warne33/65In the hairstylist Sam McKnight’s London garden, a path runs through proliferating borders of dahlias and other flowers – the perfect maximalist look for a small space.
Alessio Mei34/65If you have a tiny garden, create a snug corner that features tiling and pretty textiles – then everybody will be too cosy to notice its diminutive size. Bonus points if you frame the hideout with a beautiful arch.
The owner of this garden loves the simple generosity and glowing fowers of the Plumbago family. Here, Plumbago Auriculata has been trained over an arch in the riad to frame a view of the beautifully painted niche, which makes the perfect hideout on hot afternoons. Inticately patterned tiling decorates the interior of the alcove seating area.
Extract taken from Gardens of Marrakesh by Angelica Gray. Photographs by Alessio Mei. Published by Frances Lincoln at £14.99 in paperback.
Andreas Von Einsiedel35/65Inspired planning of fenestration means that, from every aspect of the house, you have glimpses and vistas of this intriguing space, as well as several points of access to it. Seen from the other side, a kitchen garden has been created on the upper terrace.
Paul Massey36/65The double level wall in this Cornish cottage garden draws the eye up and makes the space seem large in the process. It's a clever trick also used in interior design to trick the eye.
37/65The founder of JamJar flowers knows how to create a beautiful garden, even in a small space. This garden at her Brixton house has a romantic, countryside feel thanks to furniture gathered from various antiques markets.
Tim Beddow38/65When it came to her garden, decorator Sarah Vanrenen added a feature fireplace as the focal point for summer nights. She kept the garden neutral – full of greens and stone – to maximise the space.
Simon Brown39/65This west London garden belongs to designer Butter Wakefield and is filled with an abundance of geums, foxgloves, nepeta, roses and geraniums; a wildflower meadow sweeps across the centre of the lawn, which is handsomely framed by clipped box pyramids. Disguised behind a trellis is her workstation – apple crates overflow with knapweed, daisies and wild carrot and there are planters of orange, salvia and cow parsley.
Chris Tubbs40/65Sussy Cazalet Design were asked to create an organic, mystical, jungle inspired space using natural and organic materials that soften the glass extension opening onto this small garden. A bespoke designed lava stone table was installed, along with teal lava tiles wrapping around the seating area. The bamboo canopy was designed and built to feel natural and unobtrusive, with the hope in time to be completely overgrown with plants.
NGOC MINH NGO41/65In a courtyard of this David-Chipperfield-designed house, a Japanese maple is underplanted with cloud-pruned Lonicera nitida ‘Maigrün’.
Andreas Von Einsiedel42/65Two adjoining town houses were combined to create this modern Chelsea home. The buildings had an unusual formation in that they were each shaped around a courtyard garden in the centre. When the dividing fence between the two gardens was removed, the effect was to create a central courtyard in roughly the shape of a keyhole. This quirky feature has become the focus and defining element of the new layout.
Alex James43/65The tiny courtyard at the home of the interior designer Helen Green comprises simple but elegant touches: a trellis of roses, a feature stone water plinth and plants potted in a variety of vessels, from wooden crates to wicker baskets and pewter milk pails.
Alexander James44/65The compact garden of a restored weaver’s house in Spitalfields is in its infancy, but has shown surprising results already. ‘The shrub Tzbouchina generally needs greenhouse conditions in this country, but, as it’s protected on all sides, it's flourishing,’ owner Olwen says.
Ngoc Minh Ngo45/65Pots are grouped on the deck of an admittedly rather large Kensington garden by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, however this corner shows an idea that can be translated to rather more humble spaces. The wall of foliage cocoons the deck area with the pots adding a contrasting note to the decking and greenery that creates the illusion of space and makes the garden appear rather grand.
Benjamin Edwards46/65This sunken terrace garden at a 19th-century terraced house designed by Bryan O’Sullivan has a living wall of plants designed by the landscape artist Elizabeth Staveley of LandARC.
Lucas Allen47/65Diamond pattern paving leads back to a shady seating area in the garden of a timeless townhouse in Bray decorated by Christopher Howe.
Lucas Allen48/65Designer David Bentheim brings greenery to a wood-decked garden with potted plants of varying sizes, and uses shrubbery to give privacy from neighbouring eyes.
49/65Pergola perfection – we’ve found it in this wisteria-clad pergola installed by Sean Walter of The Plant Specialist. Hanging wisteria provides shade for the outdoor dining area, while striped cushions make this a stylish corner in the garden of a London flat designed by Charlotte Crosland.
Kara Rosenlund50/65Even a small decking area can provide a relaxing outdoor space. Make like Anna Spiro and her Brisbane house and employ sweet potted plants for a burst of life.
Rachael Smith51/65This collection of pots arranged in front of an outdoor mirror in the west London garden of interior designer Louise Jones brings a touch of the countryside to her city space. They are planted with a combination of white geraniums, cosmos and lobelia.
Andrew Montgomery52/65Jinny Blom’s small city garden is a neatly walled space, replanted only months before this photograph was taken. Clipped box cubes contrasts with a clever planting scheme that mixes large-leaved exotic plants with cottage-garden favourites. A wide pond is traversed by a clever walkway.
Paul Massey53/65Suzy Hoodless’s low maintenance garden features Kettal’s ‘Riva’ armchairs, designed by Jasper Morrison for outdoor use, on an AstroTurf lawn.
Michael Sinclair54/65This small roof garden features potted herbs on rustic shelves, which offer a fantastic way of maximising on space outdoors. For more inspiration, see our balcony and rooftop garden ideas. Designer Jane Gowers discovered her London terrace house by chance, but its restoration and decoration have been the result of good judgement and a sympathetic approach.
55/65This chic Belgravia townhouse features a compact paved area with a large mirror to visually enlarge the space. Modern furniture is balanced by an abundance of climbing plants softening the walls.
Alexander James56/65Grasses are planted in front of the original wisteria-hung loggia at this house designed by William Smalley, while a stone table makes a great permanent dining space.
Sharyn Cairns57/65This seating area in the courtyard garden of a Kent barn conversion was designed by Kate Gould.
Andreas Von Einsiede58/65This townhouse garden off Portobello Road provides a sanctuary from the bustling streets of Notting Hill. With the dining area situated on the roof terrace, the garden has been simply, symmetrically designed for pure visual pleasure. If you’re unable to take your alfresco dining elsewhere, opt for fold-up or portable tables and chairs, which can be easily removed when you want your garden to function solely as a beautiful green space.
Rachael Smith59/65Louisa Jones developed a passion for David Austin roses when she was planning the garden of her Victorian cottage in south west London. She planted an arbour of roses to separate the patio and lawn of her country-style city garden.
Ngoc Minh Ngo60/65A brilliant small garden design idea – the uber-pretty porch at this Dominican Republic hotel, painted in what the owner describes as ‘faded bathing-suit colours’, is furnished with a vintage macrame hammock and peacock chair.
Simon Upton61/65If you’re lucky enough to have a brick wall, cover it in wisteria. If your wall is moderately tall, the vines will quickly scale it and each year you will be rewarded with the most beautiful spring display. A perfect idea for an outdoor space without much space for planting.
Paul Massey62/65The pretty shuttered doors leading onto the garden at the French country house of textiles designer Susan Deliss have been painted bright white. They look clean and fresh nestled amongst green foliage and vines that climb the walls of the house.
Andrew Montgomery63/65Small garden? Pot your flowers in buckets for a chic look. (Just remember to make drainage holes to ensure they don’t drown.) This also allows you to protect them easily over winter.
Alessio Mei64/65Drama is created in a simple linking passageway at Riad Madani with a brooding shade of magenta plaster twinned with the green tiled floor. Potted bananas interspersed with young Philodendron Bipinnatidum add hot tropical notes.
Extract taken from Gardens of Marrakesh by Angelica Gray. Photographs by Alessio Mei. Published by Frances Lincoln.
Simon Brown65/65A small vegetable garden sits in front of the guest house at this elegant Georgian home in Oxfordshire. The guest house was the conversion of a former garage behind the house, which means that friends who come to stay can be independent.
