A riverside garden in the heart of the city
A Small Garden Design how-to
Have you got a small garden and don’t know what to do with it?
“Small is beautiful…. Size doesn’t matter…. Quality not quantity.”
Have you ever looked at your own garden, or a scrap of land that you’ve been asked to design, and tried to tell yourself any or all of the above? That it simply doesn’t matter that you don’t have room for stuff, that there’s simply nothing to be done with it as there’s absolutely nowhere to hide?
The latter part of that sentence is true - in a small garden design, there is indeed nowhere to hide your mistakes. Every error glares out at you, reminding you of the folly of perhaps trying to squeeze everything in, or maybe ignoring certain factors (eg the surroundings), hoping that they’ll just mentally go away. And it’s not through any lacking on your part - every designer who has created a range of different-sized gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show will tell you that the smallest gardens are by far and away the hardest. Every tiny element gets scrutinised; everything can be seen at once. The larger show gardens, though harder in terms of actual construction, have plenty of places where errors will go unremarked or unchecked.
It’s exactly the same in real gardens. You (or the client, or perhaps you are the client) stare at this unforgiving space and know that you need a dining spot and a bench and places to enjoy the different views from and grass for the dog and privacy and low maintenance and keeping the existing summerhouse and creating joy. And then you’re exhausted and go away and do something else to put off thinking about the grim reality and the seeming impossibility of shoe-horning all of these wishes into a garden which seems to be shaking its head at you in that no-way way.
But it’s possible. I promise. Come on a design journey with me…
This above is what greeted me on my first visit to a tiny space in the heart of London. A falling-apart and terrifyingly slippery terrace, an equally-falling-apart trellis, some fairly joyless paving blocks and a couple of out-of-place spiky plants which offered nothing of beauty nor of environmental benefit. No pollen, no nectar, nothing. Defined by pointy lines (balustrade), amorphous lines (path), diagonal lines (terrace), the whole garden appeared to have been laid out on a day when decision-making had been difficult.
It’s so easy to be critical though, isn’t it?
And that’s the moment when we need to take ourselves in hand. When faced with a collection of minus-points as large as this, you can quickly slide into being Debbie Downer, Negative-Nancying at the sheer awfulness of all. What must have been going through their mind, you wonder, as you start to go down a route of trying to imagine the workings of the mind of someone else - a pretty tough endeavour at the best of times, so when it’s somebody you’ve never met and whom you’re unlikely to ever do so, it’s frankly a bit of a waste of time.
Let’s think instead then about all the positives. You’ll find some, I promise. Here it was the view. THE VIEW. Probably one of the best views of all the very best London views, this garden is tucked in along the banks of the River Thames as it snakes its way from one side of the city to the other. The water doubles the shifting scene as the sky changes the picture every day. And actually, on inspection, whoever had originally set out the garden had successfully identified the best areas for views, and had had a stab at making these spots into hospitable spaces. The problem was that they had then promptly forgotten the meaning of the word ‘hospitality’, using uncomfortable angles and unwelcoming thresholds all shouting ‘STAY AWAY”. I needed to think '“Come hither” instead.
The amorphous path wasn’t too bad either. The route round any garden space is important, and sharp rectilinear lines here would have been silly - people would cut corners. Have you noticed that people always shortcut the right angles in small gardens unless there’s a massive great flowerbed to block the shortcut? So yes, I could use this winding route, making it wind in a slightly more satisfactory way, with stronger 2D bends which would be gentle in 3D but not amorphous, and I could introduce along the way plenty of stopping-off moments which would take into account that wish-list of “a dining spot and a bench and places to enjoy the different views from and grass for the dog and privacy and low maintenance and keeping the existing summerhouse and creating joy.“