These garden design ideas are the key to creating a layout you’ll love for years to come. Whether you’re looking for landscaping ideas to update your outdoor space (no matter how big or small), attract more wildlife or become more sustainable, we’ve got great ideas to help transform your yard and even help you gather ideas. increase the value of your property.
If you’re looking to update a smaller garden, we’ll share tips and styling suggestions for garden furniture, paving, lighting, plants, edging, decking and more to help you create an outdoor space you’ll truly enjoy.
But most importantly, consider your garden as a whole before you proceed with any redesign or renovation, says Andrew Kite of Chelsea Gardeners: ‘Know everything about the garden’s position, direction and perspective. This not only affects the planting, but can also determine how you use the space.’
Whether it’s a small garden, a long and narrow garden, a summer garden or a patio garden, you need to see where and when different parts of the garden receive light and sun. Think about the entrance and what you want to use your garden for: planting and growing vegetables, sunbathing, eating outside or just sitting and drinking a cup of tea on a sunny morning?
Answer these questions and you will have a clear idea of how you want your garden to work for you. We hope this garden idea will inspire you…
1. Get your lawn in shape
Look out the window in your garden and the biggest shape you can see is your grass. If it is in good shape and strong, it will set the whole garden on the right track. And remember, it doesn’t have to be square; Try oval, round, square or oval shapes. You need the right tools to get the job done. Searches for robotic lawn mowers and riding machines have increased in the past year, with the Flymo Easi Glide 300 Electric Lawn Mower being one of the top sellers, according to price comparison service PriceRunner.
Stuart Thomas, horticulturist at Primrose Online Garden Centre, offers this advice for ongoing lawn care and maintenance: ‘If your lawn is looking weak, consider three principles: sunlight, rain and soil aeration. Trim branches to avoid excessive shading. If regular UK rain isn’t enough, water once a week in the early morning. To remove the air, place a fork in the fire and make several holes. Do all these things and your grass will be green before you know it. Don’t cut too much!”
However, with the rise of natural wildlife gardens, perhaps instead of using grass, you need to let the grass grow longer and see wildflowers growing naturally. This is largely due to remodeling trends and “people wanting gardens that look more ‘natural’ than more overtly designed spaces,” explains garden designer Ann-Marie Powell. Read more: The Great Lawn Debate: To Mow or Not to Mow?
2. Plan your planting
The best garden design starts with systematic planting filled with beautiful flowering plants. Therefore, use evergreen shrubs as punctuation marks at the end of each border and along paths. For larger areas, add small shrubs such as boxwood or large evergreens such as mahonia.
Once you have this framework, fill in the empty spaces with beautiful flowering plants. Try to limit yourself to just five or six different types and arrange them in a repeating pattern for a coordinated and harmonious effect. A meter or so deep is the ideal size for a border, giving enough space to accommodate smaller plants in front and taller plants in back.
Remember, a narrow, low bed can define a sitting or eating area, as can rows of planted feeders; Choose an aromatic evergreen such as lavender or Mexican orange blossom. However, containers offer the most flexibility, allowing you to move them around as you wish. “Creeping rosemary is an excellent plant for container borders because it trails from an upright, evergreen and is covered in blue flowers in spring,” says managing director of garden design company Garden Club London.
If you don’t have room for a three-foot-deep bed, you can still place climbers behind the border to gain planting height. For climbing plants, choose evergreens such as clematis, which provide a beautiful and colorful display.
Tony recommends star jasmine for the seating area: “It produces excellent, white, waxy, fragrant flowers all summer long and works well in cuttings, where this plant doesn’t want to hang. It’s perfect for placing and we enjoy the scent.
When choosing flowering plants, try to keep some of them “off-season” for year-round color, or plant bulbs in spring and early summer to get the garden off to a good start.
If you’re looking for ways to make your garden more sustainable, Sue Townsend’s Samphire Garden shows how you can create a garden that benefits the planet while adding texture and visual interest.
Set amongst locally reclaimed York stone pavements, the Suffolk Coastal Garden uses a rich palette of drought-tolerant plants, including native coastal plants, Mediterranean grasses and shrubs, with stones of various sizes surrounded by Plants including verbena bonariensis, eryngiums, euphorbias, lavender , achillea, ballotata, miscanthus nepalensis, pennisetum, verbena and thymus. Be sure to use a permeable surface to allow water to drain naturally into the soil.
3. “Garden Transformation: Creating a Beautiful Corridor of Greenery”
The color and style of asphalt and how it is laid can provide a strong design direction for the entire park. For example, gray or white stones placed in a random pattern create a background for a French country look; black or silver floors of plain design form the perfect background for an elegant and modern scheme; while gold stones in mixed patterns create an English country atmosphere.
Do you need inspiration? Butter Wakefield has created an intricate paving design in her Ribbon Wheel garden, which consists of 10 connected circles, each different in design and size, linked together by a ‘ribbon’ of York cobblestones. Made from a combination of limestone and York stone, the circle is arranged into a mixture of stones and cobblestones to create an interesting effect.
If you want to construct the garden of your dreams, attention to detail is essential. Coordinate your plants with your preferred cover to create a stunning arrangement. For example:
Gray or white stone pairs well with purple and white flowers.
The black and silver finish looks great with strong colors like red, orange and yellow.
The golden pavement works with flowers of soft colors: pink, lavender and lime yellow.
Michael John McGarr, director and garden designer at Warnes McGarr & Co, suggests: ‘Instead of cleaning up old, worn paving, consider something new and interesting, such as large format porcelain stoneware. Porcelain does not absorb water, so it requires less cleaning than traditional types of veneer, which means less washing pressure and less labor when it ages in later years.’
Either way, it’s a good idea to create traffic flow from your home to the garden. “By keeping the pavement level with the interior floor, you can blur the lines between the inside and outside of the property,” adds Michael.
4. trees
A mature tree can be a starting point for building a plan. It blocks sunlight and can also be used as an anchor for sails, hammocks, pendant lights or hanging decorations.
If you live near a busy road, trees may block off undesirable sights or assist filter noise and air pollution. It also has important environmental advantages, supplying pollen for insects and shelter for birds, as well as turning carbon dioxide into oxygen in the atmosphere.
Multi-stemmed trees are a growing trend: planting them can create architectural masterpieces, and elegant canopies help with layered plantings or, if planted alone, create an interesting structural image. In this contemporary Suffolk garden by Caitlin McLaughlin, multi-stemmed trees and soft plantings create a deconstructed woodland setting in the front yard garden, as seen below.
5. Different levels
Does your garden have many levels? If you don’t like the thought of adding stone stairs, you may create a seamless effect with your current grass by allowing it to flow from one area to another. Garden designer Helen Elks-Smith connected the lower terrace to the little terrace above by blending flagstone into the existing grass, as seen in the picture below.
Looking for patio ideas? If you have an uneven or sloping garden, paving is an ideal and economical option to smooth it out. Decks can also have split levels and include stairs, making them an ideal place for dining furniture, and due to their use, enclosed garden areas usually have to withstand heavy foot traffic.
Eco-friendly, slip-resistant and maintenance-free, Millboard composite decking is an innovative combination of polyurethane and mineral compounds that offer the beauty and versatility of natural wood without the maintenance. This woodless deck has a non-porous outer layer so it’s self-cleaning, so the rain does the hard work.
6. “Optimizing Garden Space: Identification and Zoning Strategies”
You should also consider screening off areas of your garden to create separate ‘rooms’. Introducing hardscaping in the form of a pergola or fence or through planting. “You can’t go wrong with hardy rose bushes or tall bamboo,” says John Holloway, founder of Garden Trading. Alternatively, try a series of potted plants.
If space is limited, consider zoning your garden area, although this is a good idea for any shape or size garden. “The garden really is an extension of the kitchen and living room,” says Vicky Angell, outdoor buyer at John Lewis & Partners. “Partly because our house is smaller than it used to be, so we’re looking for outdoor spaces to entertain and relax.”
7. Tips for Boundary Structures in Your Garden
In a small garden, a boundary wall, fence or fence can be the largest visible element, so it’s important to look good. They don’t have to be the same, but try to provide a visual connection between them. For example, you can have the same type of hedge and plant climbers in coordinated colors. If you can’t change the fence, wash it with lime or put on a fence or fence. Check with your neighbors first to find out who owns the fence and ask permission before doing any work.
The material you choose is also important. For example, a wooden post does not necessarily limit the neighbor’s garden with a fence. Carefully placed in the garden, they can be used to frame plants or habitats and add extra interest to borders or paths.
Bowles & Wyer’s NHS 70 garden for Addenbrooke’s Hospital exemplifies a genuinely imaginative application. They used reclaimed oak columns to frame the view along the central circular path, placing them at different heights and angles so that new parts of the space open up as they move forward.
8. Furniture
For smaller patios and decks, choose folding furniture or benches that can be placed under the dining table when not in use. L-shaped sofas can be very compact, larger spaces can accommodate full upholstered chairs, matching chairs, sofas and tables, chairs and chairs, or modern hanging egg chairs or swings.
Invest in a good set of garden furniture that will serve you for years. Consider the space and leave enough room for everyone to sit comfortably and pull up their chairs without touching anything. Remember, you need room to walk around the table with everyone seated. It takes up more space than you think!
According to Claire Belderbos, director of landscape design at Belderbos Landscapes, “a dining table works best in a garden with full or partial sun in the early afternoon. Place a smaller living room.