Small Garden Design – Tricks That Professional Landscapers Use
Believe it or not, small gardens can very easily be transformed into amazing spaces if you know a few of the tricks that professional garden designers use.
People understandably assume that having a really small garden isn’t a good thing. But in this article I will show you how to make the most out of your seemingly small space. You could say that small gardens take on somewhat of a room type of appearance. This in fact allows you to get more creative with how you design and landscape the space.
Trick 1: Shape, Shape, Shape – The Most Important Part to get Right!
The most important thing to get right with any small garden is to make it look larger and more interesting than it is. The more you can achieve this, the better and more appealing your garden will look.
Important……The key to any successful small garden design is in the shapes you create within the garden. It really doesn’t matter what shape you begin with. It is how you shape the open spaces – i.e. the lawn and patio areas – that makes all the difference. When dealing with a small garden design, you need to take a little bit of extra care to make sure the shapes you create make the most of the available space.
If you have a square shaped garden, one of the quickest ways to make it look larger is to use circular shapes. A circular lawn with a semicircle of patio cutting through it adds interest and leads the eye around the garden. This in turn will make it look larger than it really is.
Trick 2: Get The Right Proportions
In larger sized gardens, a general rule that is used by landscape gardeners is to have approximately three-quarters open space (lawn (real grass or synthetic grass) and patio) to one-quarter mass (planting and any upright features). In smaller gardens, however, the open areas need to be a little bit larger. Plants, by their very nature, like to spread out and grow. This means that any area of space, like a lawn or patio, will decrease in size as the plants grow. This is why it is vital to give them less space at the outset to achieve the right balance in the future.
Trick 3: The Perspective Cheat
This is a great tip! If you have room for more than one shape, like a circle, another very effective trick is to accentuate the perspective of the garden. Basically speaking, if you have two circles together as your lawn shape, make the circle closest to the house the largest and the circle furthest away smaller. This will emphasize the perspective and make the garden look longer than it actually is. A neat trick….Perspective is key!
Trick 4: Hide And Seek
Not allowing the whole garden to be seen at first glance is a very effective way to enable a small garden to look larger than it actually is. Your mind will imagine there to be more of a garden beyond what you can see. This may seem like a tall order if your garden is really small but just simply having a border that extends out in the right place creates a visual block. This will then steer where and how you view the garden.
Trick 5: Choosing The Right Materials Is Critical In A Small Garden
This is of massive importance for a small garden design. One must pay particular attention to the materials that one decides to use in your garden. Make sure paving, fending and decking are smaller sizes that for larger gardens. Seeing a lot of one element tricks the eye into thinking the quantity means it’s a larger space. If you use really large paving slabs it will have the opposite effect and it will make your garden feel really tiny.
Also, take into account the direction that you lay the paving or decking in. If your garden is very narrow, it’s a good idea to have the lines of the paving or decking running perpendicular to the length of the garden. This makes the space look wider than it actually is. If you need to make your garden look longer, then make sure the paving and decking lines run from top to bottom. Our eyes naturally follow lines, so this is a very useful trick.
Transform Your Garden Now!
Want more information on how to create the garden of your dreams? If so, what are you waiting for? Contact Apco Garden Design today on 01-6263496 for a free consultation and let us show you how we can make the most out of your small garden.
