There may be changes and design tweaks that you’re longing to make in your garden to make it look better or to make life easier – but before you do, it’s worth stopping to consider whether the hasty solution you’re thinking of is the right one.
Here are some of the biggest design changes people tend to make without thinking it through, and why it might be better to slow down, think about it and take a different course of action.
Path straight to the shed
You might think that a making a path or stepping stones straight to a shed, garden room or the bottom of the garden is a logical and practical idea, but before you pick out bricks, it’s worth considering a few factors. A path straight down the garden will make a rectangular garden or a long, thin space feel more narrow, and look like a runway down the garden. Everything can be seen all at once and there is no sense of exploration, discovery or enjoyment in the journey from the back door to your destination.
A curving or winding path is often a better solution, meandering through different parts of the garden, revealing its delights slowly along the way and keeping some elements hidden from view.
My first suggestion is always to create multiple seating areas, giving them a reason to get out, explore the space and experience different aspects of their garden
This sort of path will need to be planned in such a way that people don’t just take short cuts across it, trampling your plants – these routes, often seen as bare patches across corners in public parks, are called ‘desire lines’. An S-shaped path or one with a slight curve can work well in a long, thin garden.
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In Libby Webb’s small city garden, two gently curving paths lead you in two different directions: through a trio of juvenile winter-flowering cherry trees and into the heart of Libby’s sumptuous planting; or, alternatively, under an arch and onto the outdoor seating area.The paths, although short, are punctuated with charming vignettes: two graphite-grey planted water bowls are particularly effective, as is a compact evergreen fernery. “A curving path is a useful trick,” she explains. “Because the path isn’t completely flat and straight, it feels less contrived and stops the eye swooping straight to the end of the garden.”
Big patio or deck
If you’re putting in a patio or deck, it’s tempting to make it cover as large a space as possible along the back of the house or at the bottom of the garden, but this isn’t usually the best idea. Instead of one massive expanse of paving or hardstanding, it’s better to create various places around the garden to enjoy at different times of the day: a sunny spot for a morning coffee, and somewhere else to enjoy a sundowner drink for example. Designers call these ‘destination spaces’, to entice you to use all of the garden and create more areas to explore, to take advantage of the light, or shade.
This diversity of seating and eating spots make a space more multi-dimensional, rather than only having one vast and probably rather hot area right outside the kitchen, from where you only have one view and never venture out into the rest of the garden.
“When I visit a new client for the first time, I often find they have a terrace across the back of the house, a dilapidated lawn and not much else,” explains designer Matt Keightley. “My first suggestion is always to create multiple seating areas, giving them a reason to get out, explore the space and experience different aspects of their garden.” He points out that while a patio close to the house has practical benefits, it often means that you’re staring at bulky furniture from inside, rather than a calming green space.
If you are stuck with a large patio, try this helpful trick suggested by designer Colm Joseph. “A quick fix for an existing patio is to lift some of the paving and introduce planting such as creeping thyme, ornamental grasses, flowering perennials, or even a small tree such as an acer, to break up the hard expanse.” In the garden designed by Matthew Wilson, above, ground-hugging and drought-tolerant plants, including Alchemilla erythropoda and Luzula nivea, break up a patio and turn it into a flowery haven.
A path straight down the garden will make a rectangular garden or a long, thin space feel more narrow, and look like a runway down the garden
Matt Keightley also advises on choosing your furniture first. “Since the pieces you choose will be a key component of the overall look, consider them from the outset and develop your design around them, instead of waiting until the garden is finished and then scrabbling around to find furniture that will fit into the remaining available space,” he says.
You’ll need to leave enough room for chairs to be pushed back without toppling into flower beds, and additional room for people to circulate comfortably around the area – but avoid making the area bigger than it needs to be, as it will feel sterile and soulless. Enveloping a deck or patio with a generous area of planting will help to create a feeling of intimacy.
Swap lawn for plastic grass
Plastic grass can be a tempting idea – no more mowing, no need for a mower and no edging or weeding. But plastic grass is a terrible option for wildlife and most plastic grass cannot be recycled. Also, it does require maintenance – leaves and debris need to be swept or hoovered off, and if it gets soiled by wildlife or food, it needs to cleaned.
“I just cannot work with plastic grass,” says designer Manoj Malde. “It has no beneficial impact to a garden or to human beings and more importantly, no beneficial effects to wildlife. The rubber backing takes forever to break down and ends up polluting the environment and the soil.
Worms have been known to move away and out of the soil when plastic grass has been put down. And for people who say, oh but they’re easy maintenance, they’re so not. If your dog goes and pees on it, you’re still going to have to wash it down. You still get weeds growing through it, you have to brush it, you have to clean it. So actually, is it easy maintenance? I don’t think so.”
Putting up a fence
There are some instances in which you are going to have no choice but to put up a fence, especially as a boundary between neighbours in a small or narrow garden. But wherever you can – around a front garden for example, or around a larger, mature garden, consider a hedge.
A hedge not only looks attractive, it can also provide shelter, food and habitat for wildlife. A tightly packed hedge can also help to filter air pollution and sound, such as road noise. If you live in an exposed spot, a dense hedge makes an excellent windbreak as it filters the wind, whereas a fence can create eddies of wind within the garden, making the problem worse (and often resulting in frequent repairs to the fence).
While a hedge will, yes, need to be trimmed from time to time, fencing often needs cleaning and painting or even replacing. Hedging can be considerably less costly than fencing, especially if planted as bareroot plants in winter; or if you want instant impact, you could opt for more mature plants. If you do go for a fence, don’t forget to blur the boundaries by planting lots of climbers and wall shrubs against it.
Skinny borders around the edge of a lawn
Often, narrow borders are pushed to the edges of a garden in a bid to maximise the feeling of space in the middle, but it can be transformative to create deeper borders that cut across the width of the garden. It might feel counterintuitive to make planting beds bigger in a small garden, but generously sized areas of greenery will help to make the space feel larger.
Don’t be afraid to plant trees and shrubs towards the centre of the garden rather than around the edges. This will bring depth to the space and can help create a sense of mystery – a garden looks and feels bigger when you can’t read it all as one.
Designer Tabitha Rigden often uses planting to divide areas, frame views and draw the eye through the space. Layers of texture and height, particularly through trees and tall perennials, add drama and depth - paradoxically making the garden feel larger than it is. “Do not skimp on planting,” she says. “It’s the planting that turns a space into a garden. While hard landscaping provides the bones, planting brings atmosphere, softness and cohesion.”
Paving over the front garden
If you live on a street where parking is at a premium, or your household has several cars, you may be considering turning your front garden into a paved parking space. One in four front gardens are now paved over, but with this comes an associated risk of flooding, lower air quality, the ‘heat island effect’ and water pollution. The removal of plants takes away habitats and shelter for wildlife and also changes the face of a street.
It is possible to have a welcoming green space and have somewhere to park, too. The key is to keep the parking area as small as possible, and include as much planting as you can. A typical parking space is 2.4m by 4.8m. “When planning a parking area, you should take into consideration the number of cars that are likely to be on your drive at any one time. Can you get in and out of the car relatively easily? How big is your car? Once you’ve allowed for all these things, you will have the remaining space in which to plant,” says designer James Alexander-Sinclair.
If you only have one car, the most effective way to create unobtrusive parking is to lay two tracks into the garden, positioned under the path of the vehicle’s wheels. The pavers must be suitable for vehicular use, with each track typically 300mm to 600mm in width – the wider the tracks the easier it is to drive on to them.
This solution looks extremely effective if the tracks are laid into gravel or a dense matt of low planting. “Low groundcover plants will live happily beneath a parked car – thymes and scrambling herbs won’t mind,” says James Alexander-Sinclair. This is especially true if your car is usually parked elsewhere during the day.
Cutting down a tree
An existing tree in your garden may not be exactly where you’d like it, or it may be too large or dense or casting too much shade. But a tree can add a sense of character and maturity to a garden that is not easily replaced. It also changes with the seasons and is like high-rise accommodation for wildlife. So instead of cutting it down, can you instead embrace it, prune it or plan or adjust the rest of the garden around it?
Sometimes, lifting the canopy (removing the lower branches) of a tree can work wonders as it enables you to sit underneath it, walk under it or plant beneath it. Branches can also be thinned to give a more airy look; some trees, such as Paulownia, can also be pollarded (cut down hard in spring) to keep their size in check.
“If you took the three cherry trees out of this garden, it would be nothing,” says Libby Webb of her garden shown above. She keeps them on a tight rein, though. “I constantly monitor the direction of new growth then thin and prune accordingly. Any branches running across the garden that give me a view of blossom from the house in winter get to stay; anything running front to back is removed, to avoid shading out the planting below.”
Ripping it all out to start again
In the past, garden owners and even garden designers might have been happy to rip up a garden that wasn’t quite to their taste, chuck it all in a skip, and start from a blank canvas, imposing a new look on it that could be anything from cottage style to subtropical jungle. But nowadays, it is much more sustainable and economical to work with the plants and materials that you already have, incorporating them into your new design.
There is a growing trend in garden design toward repurposing materials – either reusing what you already have in the garden, or by visiting a salvage yard. “By utilising reclaimed or up-cycled materials in our landscapes, we minimise environmental impact, while infusing outdoor spaces with unique character,” says designer Stefano Marinaz.
Designer Miria Harris recently gave herself the challenge of a no-skip, zero-waste project, giving away, recycling or reusing everything in a back garden before transforming it into a space her client could love. “The previous owners had obviously spent a considerable amount on the existing mature garden, so while the tropical-style planting, composite deck and raised concrete terrace were not to the client’s taste, it would have been incredibly wasteful to put them all in a skip,” she explains.
The deck was also carefully dismantled so that it could be reused, while the concrete terrace would form part of the new design. Miria then posted a free plant and material giveaway on social media and set out a stall in front of the house. “Within 48 hours, everything had gone. Community gardens and private owners were the main beneficiaries, and the deck went to a handyman who installed it at his home, together with the pergola we didn’t want.”
The next challenge was to future-proof the new garden, using materials from the existing plot that Miria was unable to give away, and sourcing reclaimed timber for the decks and walkway she had designed. Broken bricks and old slate chippings were specified as a sub- base to secure the timber walkway and the concrete platform, which would have been difficult and costly to remove, was hidden beneath the deck at the back of the garden.
“The fact that all the plants and many of the materials went to new homes in just two days was incredible, and I would definitely encourage more people to do this and reduce the waste going to landfill. It’s a win-win, too, as the new owners come away with a bargain, and everyone is happy.”
So think before you bin it, try to keep everything within the garden to reuse in some way, and consider every element, tree and feature carefully before deciding to remove them.
Image credits: Richard Bloom, Rachel Warne