Small Space Gardening Tips

Make Your Small Garden Seem Larger

As any avid gardener knows, you can never have enough space to experiment to your heart's delight and create the vast expanse of cultivated land around your home like you want to. But some of us really have to deal with smaller garden spaces which needs some thought and planning before you start digging around. By choosing what you plant and how you create illusions to the eye, you can avoid making your small garden seem crowded and expand its horizons!

Here are some tried and tested tips on making a small garden seem larger with space management and clever and creative planting tips:

Manage Your Space

First things first, try and manage whatever space you have ensuring that all plants get what they need.

1. Select plants that are suitable for small space gardening. With an exception of some plants that grow to heights and can be placed along the walls, choose plants that grow only upto a certain height or buy dwarf varieties of plants that are must-haves for you.

2. Plan the placement of all your plants. Sort out plants by how much sun they need and position them so they get all the sunlight they need to thrive.

3. Go in for raised bed gardening to maximize space utilization without having to sacrifice your plants' health.

4. Use containers and planters along walls that don't have gardens or line them up around cultivated areas.

5. Trellises are great for plants that need support and help you utilize the space above ground level so your ground space is not cluttered.

Trompe I'oeil

This is a French phrase that means "fool the eye". You can make your garden appear larger than it actually is.

1. Blue is your friend. Choose blue flowers, grasses and other plants to make the garden edges blur out.

2. Use soft colors like whites and pinks that seem to recede from the eye as opposed to bright colors that give the opposite effect.

3. Build straight garden paths that narrow down as they approach the back wall or fence. This gives an illusion to the viewer that the edges are narrowing down because the path is receding into distance.

4. Similar to garden paths, you can clip hedges so that they narrow in height and width to create illusions of long distances.

5. If they fit in, use mirrors or a single large mirror in the garden. Propped on the shortest wall and framed with vines, it gives an illusion of length.

Give a careful thought to all the ideas above and think what will really work for your garden space. Try experimenting with some of them till you find the best ideas that work for your own space. A small space can limit the number of plants in your garden, but it certainly does not and should not limit your creativity.