Small Garden Ideas

Make an Instant Table

Turn a large urn or planter into a quick and colorful outdoor table. Simply cover the top of the urn with a thin slab of stone or wood and pull up your favorite chairs. It's a fun and fast way to entertain unexpected guests in your favorite garden corner. Here, a pair of vintage wire chairs surround an oversize green urn with a stone top.

Create an Outdoor Room

Turn a tiny patio into a gorgeous outdoor room by adding a freestanding pergola. Here, a small wooden pergola was constructed over a gravel patio and enhanced with a teak seating arrangement. The pergola creates a sense of enclosure and makes the patio seem a lot larger then it actually is.

Go Gravel

Crushed brick or gravel is a beautiful and low-maintenance paving option for small gardens. It's also easier to use and less expensive than brick or flagstone. Just be sure to spread a layer of landscape fabric underneath the gravel to keep weeds from popping through. On this California hillside, the gravel also allows rainfall to percolate through to the soil instead of running off down the hillside.

Add a Pond

You don't need a huge backyard to have a water garden. In fact, installing a water garden is a great way to handle low or wet spots in your garden. Just dig out the area, add a pond liner and pump, and you're on your way. Even a tiny oasis will attract a wide range of colorful butterflies and birds. In this garden, Water Snowflake, Nymphoides humboldtiana, a small relative of water lily, provides color in tight quarters.

Double Your Pleasure

Get twice the flowers and vegetables in your garden by adding a trellis or low fence behind every planting bed. That way, you can grow vine crops vertically so they don’t sprawl over their plant neighbors. In this narrow garden bed, a trio of rustic wooden trellises support flowering vines at the back of the perennial border.

Welcome Wildlife

Even a small garden can become a haven for birds and butterflies when you choose flowers they prefer. For example, this square bed is packed with bird and butterfly favorites, such as black-eyed Susan and phlox. A bird feeder and birdhouse add to the garden's wildlife-friendly features.

Add a Mowing Strip

Keeping turf grass from encroaching in your garden beds is a lot easier when you install a mowing strip at the border's edge. This mowing strip was specially designed to keep weeds at bay and act as a low-maintenance garden path. It also provides easy, mud-free access to the garden for wheelbarrows, mowers, and other equipment.