If you love plants and have a small garden, it’s very tempting to overfill it. Even to the point where it feels much smaller. However, by following a few tips, you can indulge your love of plants and make your garden feel bigger!
Colour to make your garden look bigger
One of the easiest ways to make a garden feel bigger is to include lavender and blue colour flowers. Cool colours recede your field of vision. Alternatively, hot colours such as orange, red and yellow make a space feel smaller and cosier. This is by advancing your field of vision.
Choose a selection of cool colour plants that together will flower from spring to autumn. For example, spring-flowering hyacinth ‘Delft Blue’, pulmonaria ‘Blue Ensign’ and crocus vernus ‘Purple’. Also, a host of different blue and purple Iris reticulata cultivars.
For front-of-border early to mid-summer colour, the exceptionally long-flowering geranium ‘Rozanne’ is an excellent choice. Its deep blue flowers produced for months on end. Combine this with Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ and long flowering Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’. All three work well together to make the space feel bigger. Shrub-wise, any evergreen, fluffy, blue-flowered Californian lilac shrubs work well at the back of borders, directing the eye upward.
Other plants, such as the light lavender flower Nepeta racemosa, bloom for weeks between early and mid-summer. And they’ll flower again in late summer if the spent flower heads are cut back after their first flowering flush.
Come the autumn, cultivars of plants such as Eupatorium are available in tall and shorter sizes. Such as Eupatorium maculatum and Eupatorium ‘Baby Joe’ with dark leaf sedum ‘Black Knight’ towards the front of the border.
It’s at this time of the year that asters come into their own too. There are many shades of blue and purple cultivars available to choose from.
Larger plants to make your garden look bigger
Adding larger items to smaller spaces is far more effective than filling them with lots of smaller items. Two large containers with topiary evergreen trees in them are a great way of balancing the space. It also means you can buy cheaper trees, as they will automatically be raised by planting them in the container!
Vertical space
The horizontal space may be limited in a small garden, but the sky is the limit. Look for plants with tall spikes of flowers, such as blue-flowered delphiniums. These will flower again in the early autumn if the spent flower heads are removed after flowering.
Verbena bonariensis is also a great small garden choice. Not only do they produce deep purple flower heads on long stems, but the stems are thin, allowing you to see through. This means the space doesn’t feel cramped. They have the added advantage of self-seeding in other parts of the garden.
Walls can be clad with easy-to-care-for climbers like star jasmine (Trachelospernum jasminoides), which has delightfully scented white flowers. Or perhaps a well-behaved clematis such as ‘My Angel’. This not only flowers from mid-summer to mid-autumn but also produces pretty, fluffy seed heads after flowering finishes.
Grasses are another good choice for smaller gardens, with a range of heights, most having a wispy, slightly see-through quality. Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’ will reach a height of approximately 150cm. And it has elegant arching narrow leaves with a silvery white line running along the leaves’ centre. It has the added advantage of being clump-forming rather than escaping and spreading around other parts of the garden.
For a narrower, upright grass, Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ will provide interest for approximately 10 months of the year. Panicum virgatum ‘Shenandoah’ delights with a medium height, narrow but arching form and leaves that turn stunning shades of deep red during the autumn months.
There are also narrow columnar forms of conifers and yew that can be planted to give structure and year-round interest to the garden. These don’t leave the space feeling dark and enclosed, such as Juniperus ‘Skyrocket’ and Taxus baccata ‘Fastigiata’.
Focial points to make your garden look bigger
Adding strategically placed items such as a water feature as focal points will draw your eye towards them, creating an illusion of depth.
Borrowing neighbouring gardens
Say your neighbour has taller trees and shrubs in their garden. Plant up alongside and in front of your fencing with similar-looking evergreen shrubs and small trees. This will not only hide the fence but will seem to merge with your neighbours’ plants. This will naturally make your garden feel bigger by blurring the boundaries between yours and your neighbour’s garden.
Repeat planting
Too many different types of plants and colours can make a garden space feel cluttered. Repeating the same plant throughout the garden can help to make the garden feel harmonious and larger than it is.
Bulbs to make your garden look bigger
Another way of making a small space feel larger is to plant lots of the same plant. This means the eye travels smoothly across the garden. Bulbs are a particularly good choice to achieve this type of effect without interfering with later flowering plants. Once planted, they can be mainly left to their own devices.
They are a particularly good choice to bring the garden alive with colour at times of the year when not much else is in flower. Snowdrops in January and crocus and daffodils in February and March are great early options.
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David Domoney is a Chartered Horticulturalist, Broadcaster, and Author. David has worked with a number of the UK’s leading garden retailers as a plant buyer and strategic consultant. With more than 30 years experience, in horticulture, David is as passionate about plants now as he was when he bought his first plant at a village fete.
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