How to Create a Small But Perfectly Formed Garden

It’s easy to make more of a small area, as Brett and Sally found out when Toby Buckland turned their raised decking into a colourful wonderland

Small gardens are often described as outdoor rooms, and this interior-meets-exterior concept is a perfect fit for Brett and Sally’s decked plot in East Sussex.

Like their Victorian terraced house, it has brickwork walls and wooden flooring. So for inspiration, we looked indoors. With no bare soil to speak of, pots are the key to bringing life into this garden.

Choose containers in similar colours and shapes – they’ll help tie everything together, and will look less busy than a dolly-mixture effect of different designs. Just as you would if you were choosing cushions or curtains, keep your overarching design scheme in mind.

I decided to use square fibre-clay pots, as they’re lightweight and easy to carry through the house, but once in place and planted, they look as hefty as lead.

Square pots give roots more room than round containers and the two rows lined up like boxy Russian dolls snug against the boundaries. Arranging them in size order, from large to small, can also lead your eye down a garden and make it feel roomier.

The key thing is getting the right compost for your containers – here, I went for a blend of regular multipurpose compost and John Innes that will hold on to vital nutrients.

Don’t forget to add a bit of controlled-release fertiliser. It only supplies the feed to the roots of the plant when the weather’s warm, so you just have to apply it once in the spring and it will be there whenever your plants need it during the growing season.

When space is tight, plants will have to work hard all the way through the year to earn their keep. Evergreens are essential, and Nandina domestica (a bamboo-esque plant with white flowers in spring and fiery red leaves in the autumn) makes an excellent centrepiece, paired with the purple Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb’ – a colourful clipped alternative to box topiary.

Its beautiful leaves will become darker and richer as the weather turns colder, so there is always something for you to enjoy.

Evergreens will give the garden year-round character, but it’s what is planted around their feet that creates the colour theme, and lends everything a lovely, soft feminine look.

For Brett and Sally’s garden, I’ve stuck to fruity plum tones and reds with complementary peachy orange for contrast, plus blue fescue grass and bright-leaved heucheras.

These will be supplemented by seasonal zingy orange primroses in spring, and marigolds and scented petunias in the summer. A lot of shrubs are too big for small spaces, but thanks to clever breeding, “mini-me” versions with the same flowers and shape are now available for pots.

Buddleja ‘Buzz’, for example, grows to waist height, and although loved like its lofty cousins by bees and butterflies, the flowers don’t seed about.

Kitting out a small garden with utilities makes for an easy life, and installing automatic irrigation is well worth the expense of bringing in a plumber.

Once it’s in place, it’s straightforward to use – all you have to do is adjust the timer to deliver the right amount of water according to the season, increasing flow and regularity as the weather warms.

Outdoor electrical sockets (again, a job to trust to a professional) are another thing I wouldn’t be without. With one in place, you can dock your iPod before a party, and they make installing plug-in-and-play lighting a breeze.

For Brett and Sally’s garden I’ve used white pea-lights that instantly create a celebratory atmosphere – and unlike spot-lamps, they cast few shadows.

Clever storage is a must in small spaces. A micro-shed just 70cm wide and 50cm deep is more than a place to muster stuff – it’s also perfect for personalising with a lick of paint and some tea-lights.

But that’s just the start: the joy of gardening in a plot like this is that it forces you to be creative. Treated timber planks nailed around the shed roof create an elevated herb garden with cascading rosemary, sage and thyme varieties around the edge and alpine saxifrage for colour.

A mulch of grit stops the compost bouncing off in heavy rain, and the automatic irrigation keeps the plants’ roots hydrated.

There’s no reason that a small space can’t be dramatic, and the good news is that small touches can make a big difference. In Brett and Sally’s decked area, I’ve built a plant theatre: essentially, a little set of shelves fixed to the wall for displaying pots of flowering treasures.

It’s raised, which means that everything is at eye level where it can be enjoyed. The outdoor equivalent of a mantelpiece, it also makes a great home for decorations such as clocks and wall plaques.

I’ve left my favourite feature until last. It’s a solution to the issue of what to do with the less-than-exciting garden wall. For Brett and Sally, I’ve created a series of Verti-plant pockets, filled with an evergreen patchwork of amethyst, green and lime heucheras, purple bergenias and cascading carex to create a tapestry of year-round colour and flower.

Plumbed into the automatic irrigation, the plants look after themselves – and best of all, transform an eyesore into a hanging garden that doesn’t take up any ground space.