The smaller the garden, the easier it is to design. Or so the theory goes. But sometimes it's the tiniest of spaces that pose the greatest challenge. In a back garden in Chiswick, west London, Kate Gould has made the most of a minuscule plot, by carefully selecting the hard landscaping, limiting the colour palette and restraining herself at the nursery.
When Debbie and Nigel Kellow extended the kitchen of their Victorian terrace, their dark and dingy side return was replaced by a 4m sq south-west-facing plot surrounded by other gardens and shaded by mature trees. "In tiny gardens, I usually rotate the design by 45 degrees, which can make the space feel larger," Gould says, "but Debbie and Nigel wanted the garden straight on. I wanted to make everything as simple as possible and as large as possible: big and bold."
She also needed to pin down what was possible: homeowners tend to be overambitious, pencilling in a hot tub or a veg garden as well as a patio, but when space is tight, the vagaries of the English weather tend to rein in grand plans. "You have to be realistic," Gould says. "Get in what you're going to make good use of, especially with an English summer. You may use your garden only a few times a year."
The Kellows wanted their garden to be a place where they could sit, eat and entertain, and the sandstone-paved area with its narrow borders has enough room for a table that can comfortably accommodate eight. When the weather's a letdown, the chairs slot underneath the table: the set is made from synthetic rattan, so the whole thing is waterproof and, so long as it's covered, can even be left outside all winter. "We didn't want it overdesigned," Debbie says. "I wanted it to be fairly traditional, in keeping with the house."
The Kellows also didn't want the garden to feel like a seamless extension of the kitchen, so there's a small step between the two, and french windows rather than sliding doors. But the cool colours do echo the interior: the fence and planters are painted (French Gray, by Farrow Ball) to pick up the colour of the kitchen. Adding trellis to the top of the fence gives the garden extra privacy and growing space without loss of light.
The simple colour scheme extends to the plants, too: white is the dominant colour here. As a keen plantswoman, Gould says she had to tame her urge to buy one of everything at the nursery in order to make this garden work. There are fewer than a dozen species in this space, which was planted up last summer, but the repetition and simplicity are restful to the eye. Rather than adding trellis to the surface of the fences and wall, which would have made the garden feel even more hemmed in, she strung wires between vine eyes for a long-lasting and more or less invisible way to keep climbers in place.
On the back fence, the semi-double, white, scented flowers of Rosa banksiae 'Alba Plena' are beginning to open, and on the wall to one side and the fence to the other, another white-flowered climber, the highly scented star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), will soon join in. In April and May, the nodding, sky-blue bells of Clematis 'Frances Rivis' open, followed later in the summer by the flat, white blooms of C. 'Miss Bateman'.
A low line of box (Buxus sempervirens) provides strong, clean lines when the garden is bare in winter, and shields the sparse bases of the climbers. A pair of lollipop-shaped standard bay trees (Laurus nobilis) in Versailles wooden planters made by the carpenter who built the fencing provide more architectural shape. Large lead troughs from Oxford Planters lend a solid, traditional feel and give the Kellows a place to sow herbs.
The entire project, including hard landscaping, re-fencing, planting, and design, cost around £12,000-£15,000. If such a hefty price tag is outside your price range, there are plenty of lessons here for the DIY gardener: choose a palette of only a few plants, and stick to it; invest in architectural plants to lend structure, especially in winter when everything else is bare; clothe walls with climbers held in place by a network of wires, rather than fussy trellis; and keep ornamentation to a minimum: a couple of large pots or planters makes a small garden look bigger, whereas a mass of smaller pots clutters the space.
Was it worth the money, hiring a designer to work on such a small plot? "Definitely," Debbie says of her tiny haven. "In the evenings, when it's all gone quiet, all you can hear is the trees."
Speak Your Mind