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."

Last spring, Kevan Busa imagined he would be studying Spanish gardens. A student of landscape design at State University of New York (SUNY), Busa planned to spend his final semester in Barcelona, but a sharp pain in his right leg changed everything. 

When the pain wouldn’t subside, a friend drove him to the emergency room. Blood tests showed that Busa’s platelet count was virtually depleted, and his white blood cells had risen dramatically. Further tests found that acute lymphoblastic leukemia had spread to 92 percent of his bone marrow. 

“They told me I probably had a week-and-a-half to live if I hadn’t come in,” he said. 

Despite the devastating diagnosis, Busa was determined to graduate on time. However, after four rounds of chemotherapy, three bone marrow biopsies, and several spinal taps, he was in no shape to travel. 

So Busa discussed a unique idea with SUNY advisors: his final project would examine the healing potential of landscape design from a patient’s perspective. His observations appear in the June 2013 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine.

Anatomy of a Healing Space

The idea that gardens can benefit the sick has had a long and robust history throughout both Eastern and Western cultures. In European and American hospitals, this belief remained strong up until the 20th century.

Busa points to Roger Ulrich’s work as a sign that the idea is returning to modern medicine. Ulrich’s 1984 study “View through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery,” was published in the journal Science and has been repeated multiple times. The practice is now called evidence-based design.

More than an attractive luxury, according to Busa, green space is “a sound economic investment in health and productivity, based on well-researched neurological and physiological evidence.” 

“If you put somebody in a space where they will heal faster, so they get out of the hospital three days earlier than before, do you know how much money you’ll save?” he asked. “Hospital bills per night are pretty intense I would say.”

But not every garden is therapeutic, and Busa’s perspective reveals critical details that most designers overlook. 

As he recovered from his bone marrow transplant at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) in Buffalo, NY, Busa turned his attention to the facility’s two-and-a-half acre courtyard. While this green space promises some escape from the clinical environment, Busa discovered that it did not consider patients’ needs. In fact, many of the park’s best features directly conflicted with doctors’ orders. 

“I did a survey of 85 bone marrow transplant patients and they said that what they like the most about the courtyard space was the sun,” he said. “But guess what? That’s the absolute worst for you right now. I’m sure your doctors have told you that, but they’ve probably told you 50 things a day for two months.” 

After the surgery, drugs, and chemo, Busa’s health was more fragile than ever. Not only was he now 200 times more likely to get a skin cancer, but his weakened immune system couldn’t even handle cut flowers in his room, much less the flurry of pollen, dirt, and fungi found in the courtyard. 

“It’s aesthetically very, very nice,” Busa said. “But the question arises: is it for the patients or is it for the family and the staff?”

In his report, Busa wrote that for bone marrow transplant patients like him, “the solution may be gardens that can be experienced from indoors, through glass. This idea may not sound terribly inviting, but it is a far preferable alternative to 100 days of brick walls.”

For an example of a healing space designed with patients in mind, Busa looked to another Buffalo institution: the Richardson-Olmsted Complex, a mental asylum completed in 1890. Now a National Historic Landmark, this therapeutic design came from architect H.H. Richardson, and the father of American landscape design, Fredrick Law Olmsted. 

Details of the grand complex reveal a 19th-century belief in the curative power of environment. According to Busa, it was designed to provide “benefits that no medicines can reach.”

“They had the patients come out into these porches and they could view this green space,” Busa explained. “They could see trees, they could see the grass, the plantings; they could feel the wind, they could feel the rain, they could feel the sun, but they were still in the protection of the actual architecture itself.”

Busa says that whether designing for a children’s hospital, mental asylum, or cancer institute, in order to be effective the green space must suit patients’ needs. 

“In school they teach you to study all aspects of a site,” he said. “Well, you’re studying all the aspects of the landscape itself, but what about the culture? What about all those additional, secret, hidden factors that have massive effects?” 

“It’s simple, but until you’re faced with this consideration you don’t even think about it.”

Here are some highlights:

1) A big ass 500,000 square foot mall. (okay, fine, 500,000 square feet is not that big as far as malls go, but it certainly looks very large)
2) A 13 acre mega-yacht marina. (Finally addressing Miami’s chronic shortage of mega yacht dockage. Seriously, this is an actual issue)
3) A parking garage and heliport to the east of the Children’s Museum.
4) A large waterfront park, sculpture garden, and amphitheater on the east side of the seaplane terminal.
5) A giant fountain on the MacArthur Causeway offramp to Island Gardens. Fancy!
6) Atop the mall, and between two towers, an amenity deck to end all amenity decks, which will include pools and ballrooms galore.
7) Terraces cascading down to the waterfront with lots and lots of waterfront dining.
8) Two luxury hotel and condo towers.
9) 500 hotels room
10) 200 residential units.
11) Docks with observation decks to check out all the giant boats in the marina.
12) A budget of somewhere in excess of $1 billion. Yep.
Etc. Etc.
· Island Gardens coverage [Curbed Miami]
· First Look At Plans For $3 Million Square Feet Island Gardens [exMiami]