Maximize Space in Your Garden – Even for green-fingered garden enthusiasts, a small space can seem restrictive. When you don’t have a lot of room to play with in your garden, you might assume that you’ll be limited on what you can grow, or the kind of landscaping you can do.
You don’t even need to be living in a house with a small garden to face this challenge.
People with rural properties need to make the most out of every inch of space – particularly if they’re growing their own fruits, vegetables and herbs.
The good news is that thanks to innovations in the gardening space, there are plenty of ways to put your skills to work where you can also get environmental benefits in even the smallest gardening spaces. With limited space to work with, you might need to be more creative, but you’ll be able to achieve amazing things if you’re willing to work with shapes, colors, and a few other tricks.
Here we’re going to cover five of the best ways that you can maximize the space in your garden without having to start over from scratch.
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In a home, people will often tell you that light colors like white can help a space to appear bigger. The same sort of strategy can work in a garden too. Brighter colors like red and yellows are fantastic to make your garden more intimate and attractive when you have a large space to work with.
However, when you’re managing a smaller garden, lighter pastel colors like whites and soft purples are great for giving the effect of an expanded space.
When you’re choosing flowers to plant in your new yard, remember to consider species carefully too. Lilies and lavender are great for giving the impression of larger garden. What’s more, arranging a variety of smaller plants in specific areas also helps your garden to stand out with unique focal points.
Look for New Ways to Grow
You don’t just have to make use of the floor space in a garden, you can enjoy extra freedom by growing upwards too. No matter how small your garden might be, you can always look for new ways to expand vertically, by using hanging containers and pots that you dangle from the walls of your home, and the fences around your property.
There are plenty of beautiful crawling and clinging plants out there that green-fingered individuals can work with across their fences and walls.
Star jasmine, for instance is a particularly beautiful choice, while geraniums tumbling out of pots and hanging baskets around your home will give another incredible effect to draw the eye too.
If you’re interested in growing food, you can try things like climbing beans and vining tomatoes too. Strawberry plants also grow well across different vertical structures.
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Play with Scale
If you want to make the most out of a small garden, then you’ll need to be cautious when it comes to scaling. Choosing the wrong plants could mean that your garden quickly gets swallowed up as those plants grow.
On the other hand, choosing the right plant species and arranging them properly will help to create the illusion that your garden is bigger than it is. Think about how much space you have to work with and avoid planting anything that’s overly large.
Tall breeds should be kept to a minimum, and you should instead be focusing on medium and shrub-like flowering plants that make your property appear more expansive. Don’t just use a single size of plant or flower either. Playing with different styles and breeds will also give more depth to your garden and allow for the illusion of texture too.
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Try Raised Garden Beds
We already mentioned that you can move beyond the floor if you want to expand your garden space to include more vertical options. Planting in raised beds is one of the other ways that you can expand your growing space without using hanging baskets or trellis options.
Your plants will grow out of the raised platforms and usually cascade slightly down the sides, which will mean that you need to consider the kinds of plants you’re going to use carefully.
The best option for you when it comes to raised bed planting will depend on the look and feel that you want to create for your outdoor space. Some people even use recycled items from around the house like milk crates and wood planks to give them more room to plant with. You can build a garden bed cheaply.
If you’re short on seating, you can also extend your raised beds a little to give people a place to rest when they’re in your garden.
Work with Geometric Design
Geometric patterns and other bold shapes in a garden can really give depth to the space. Using cleaner angles for your patio spaces, pathways and flower beds is a great way to make sure that any garden looks tidy and crisp. What’s more, although it may be appealing to use softer curves and edges – like those that you see in many gardens, curves can often make smaller spaces appear crowded.
The angles of geometric shapes will be naturally softened by flowers and plants too – so you don’t have to worry about your garden seeming too harsh.
The right contrast of organic shapes and angles in your smaller garden is a surprisingly good way to draw the eye around the space and give it more depth.
Even simple steps like paving your garden path diagonally can make it seem as though you have longer and wider spaces to work with, when you’re only using a few square feet instead.
Additionally, lighter paving stones that are pale in color will add to your light colored plants to make your garden look bigger too.
Working in a small garden might seem restrictive at first. However, the more creative you get, the more you’ll begin to see just how much you can really do with a small space.