Small narrow garden - overhaul help

[Eeyrie]

We moved into our house a year ago. It’s got a very low maintenance garden - mostly paved, plus borders - but it’s small and narrow and doesn’t get a huge amount of light (2-3m wide around 3 sides of the house, plus a big hedge and parking area at the front).

The garden was our compromise when we moved - we’re very happy with the house and the area. The garden isn’t working for me though. It’s very grey and feels overlooked, so we’re thinking about totally overhauling it. I’ve started using Pinterest to keep track of ideas I like, but would be grateful for any tips on where to start with stripping everything back / planning what to do with it.

In an ideal world I’d like a fairly low maintenance garden - nothing too formal, I prefer something a bit more rambling - with space for my kid to play and space to start growing some vegetables. I’d happily cut into the parking space, but it’s monoblocked, so I don’t know if it would be easy to change without spoiling the rest of the driveway.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated!

I was going to suggest Pinterest.

How long is your garden? Have you watched ‘Big ideas, Small Spaces’ on BBC2? Loads of good ideas.

Thanks. I’ve found quite a lot of ideas on Pinterest and have watched the first episode of Big Ideas, Small Spaces!

We’ve come on a bit with our plans and decided to concentrate on one side of the garden at a time. Trying to think the whole garden through was a bit overwhelming! So our current plans are to level off our raised flowerbed, and turn this into a dinosaur area (dinosaur footsteps, a fossil sandpit, a small den and some ferns/tropical looking plants) then take up the paving slabs and fill the lower part with some greenery and maybe some raspberries/beans etc on some trellis up the wall with a smaller path cutting through

Any suggestions for where to start searching for tropical looking plants can survive the Scottish winter (ideally low maintenance and suitable for a smallish space)?! We have some well established ferns in the garden already, so know that they grow well.

We’re pretty sheltered- that part of the garden is south facing, but between the wall of the house and a fairly tall brick wall that edges our garden.

Ive absolutely no idea on soil type - I’ll need to work that one out!

We managed to get out today and we’ve got some soil settling in a jar of water to look at tomorrow. Experiment number 2 looks like sandy loam though, it would bend a little, then start to crack

Jungle looking plants that survive in my exposed Scottish garden are Fatsia Japonica ( castor oil plant), Choisya ( Mexican Orange Blossom), rhododendron and Buddleia.
Apart from the Buddleia, they are all evergreen and can be eventually pruned to make ‘hiding’ places underneath.

I’ve now got a Pinterest board full of hardy tropical looking evergreens - been having lots of fun on the RHS website!

Experiment number 1 is inconclusive, it’s being treated as a snow globe by my wee one, so still not fully settled!

Any suggestions on the cheapest place to pick up old bricks? I’ve found some on gumtree for between 50p-£1 each, but wasn’t sure if there was anywhere else worth a look? We’ll need a fair few as there’s a wall needing raised and I want to use them for a path too

I’ve had another look at the jar now it’s almost settled. It looks like about 40% sand, 50% silt and 10% clay.

Oooh brick walls! You could look at garden mirrors! I love the idea of garden mirrors but we have nowhere one would work.

I love the sound of a mirror on the wall, have seen a couple of nice ones on Pinterest- but do you need a specially made one to withstand the weather?

I’ve been out to start potting the plants we want to keep before the flower bed gets levelled off for our dinosaur garden. There are so many bulbs .

We’ve managed to get some old bricks off Freecycle - if we can get a few more we should have enough to start our path once we’ve got round to taking the slabs up!