These big ideas for designing small gardens, can help you to keep a planet-friendly garden, while still enjoying the same benefits. In fact, smaller gardens enable you to carefully choose landscaping items of quality, and can be just as lovely, if you know what you’re doing. Less work too!
See make your garden safe for pets, for tips on safe landscaping and toxic plants to avoid. Use humane safe slug/snail deterrents and safer alternatives to netting for wildlife. Many plants (inc. yew & oak trees) are toxic to equines. Use no-dig methods to protect earthworms. See how to grow your own herbs (lists pet-toxic ones).
- Six Square Metres is a book of reflections from a small garden. Find life lessons from the ground up. Sometimes you reap what you sow. Sometimes you reap what other people sowed. Sometimes you haven’t a clue what you are sowing. Over the course of a year (within the garden and without), there are births to celebrate and deaths to mourn. There are periods of great happiness and light, and times of quiet reflection.
- EvenGreener sells good quality water butts with safety locks, made from recycled plastic. For tiny spaces, The Original Water Butt Co sells good quality small water butts, with safety locks.
- Outdoor solar lights save energy. But too much artificial light, glass and mirrors can cause birds (and bats) to fly into windows. FLAP has a free home assessment, to help create a bird-friendly garden.
- Trees can make gardens look bigger, by creating little rooms. Don’t plant too close to your home, or it could affect the foundations. Dwarf fruit trees are good, kept small using special pruning. Or try window pots with fresh herbs or tomatoes in pots (toxic to pets). Don’t plant too close to windows, to avoid birds flying towards.
- The Less is More Garden proves that bigger is not always better. Susan offers dozens of tips to take advantage of every square foot of space. Includes photos of beautiful tiny garden designs.
- Small Summer Gardens has tips to create hanging baskets and window boxes, small pots and pretty recycled containers. Create a woodland plant garden in a rusty trunk, scented flowers in a tub, fruit bushes in pots or a mini-water garden.
- Small Garden Style is a stylish guide to creating a lush little garden for an urban patio, tiny backyard, or just a pot by your front door. Jennifer shows how to create vertical walls, overhead spaces, a mini-orchard or outdoor dining space.
