Anyone fancy helping me redesign my (teeny, tiny) garden?

[Sooperswooper]

Just that really. We moved in Feb and have finally started thinking that we need to get on and get it sorted. Sadly, both me & dh are lacking in garden imagination. All pinterest etc seem to throw up are sleek, highly impractical paved over spaces which won't work as we need a grassed area for ds. We'll be getting rid of the shed so discount that, and probably that ivy/ tree too and will need new fencing as starters. Plus new turf. The patio bit I think we'll make pretty by putting herbs on the wall in little buckets, some nice lighting and some outside furniture, but it's the rest of it! We could just whack in some standard fencing and some new turf, but I kind of feel that's a bit lacking in imagination. I'd love a pizza oven/BBQ/ veg patch, herbs, pretty flowers, an area that ds can roam (within a m2) and have as his to put his water tray and things in, etc but that's probably in a few houses ( never ) time..

We're redesigning our tiny garden with the help of some advice on here. I think the most helpful bit of advice was to think about what I wanted the garden for, and start from there. I decided it should be somewhere for dd to play, for me and DP to sit in the evenings, to dry washing and to grow a few veg - quite a lot for a tiny garden.

I put a playhouse up against the house wall for dd, in a spot which doesn't get any sun. Next to it I put some garden toys and a sandpit. I'm now thinking I might need to move the sandpit to a sunnier spot as the sand is always a bit damp due to not getting any sun.

In the sunny end of the garden I have put a veg patch in a raised border. We made the border from breezeblocks which were already in the garden and we plan to paint them white with some colourful pictures for DD. We are then going to put bits of wood on top of the breezeblocks and use them as seating. something like this.

It's still very much a work in progress but we are out in the garden all of the time now. Before we were just trying to maintain the old garden, which was probably lovely in it's day, but was full of spiky roses and poisonous lilies so it all had to go.

The key difference is that our garden is north facing and so our choices of plant have been pretty much dictated by that.

One of our neighbours had a garden designer advise on a low maintenance south facing garden and they came up with different types of lavender, (pink as well as the usual purple) santolina, rosemary, olive trees, and grasses. It looks lovely and smells nice, like a mediterranean courtyard