Small city garden: inspire me!

[Solasum]

I have a small city garden, consisting of a patio area, then two stepped beds, one higher than the other, leading up to the garden wall. It is high enough that people can’t look over. Red brick edges.
There is one acer tree which seems to be doing well, also a rather sad looking palm. Otherwise blank canvas. The garden is north facing, but gets sun during the day. The soil currently is very dry, but is ordinarily London’s loamy clay.

I have decided to turn the front section into a herb garden, but need ideas for the back section which is currently empty. I’d like it to smell and look nice, and be relatively low maintenance.

Does anyone have any ideas? I am a novice gardener (to put it bluntly!)

You could grow a honeysuckle up the wall. Get a smelly one, not all of them are. Then, depending on the look you want you could plant a couple of nice shrubs for fragrance (a Daphne maybe, perhaps a Calycanthus) and some perennial flowers - for a cottage feel.

Or, you could go jungle or architectural

Have a look at the space and imagine the look that you want there, we can then probably help a bit better.

I agree with honeysuckle. Or a jasmine. Lavender is another one which you could put in pots if you wanted. Do you want it ‘wild and free’ or architectural? Would you post a picture?

Image hopefully attached.

Honeysuckle and jasmine sound lovely. I do actually have a lavender in a pot already too.

I am not quite sure what ‘architectural’ means ? Is that small plants at the front and large at the back? I don’t want complete jungle, and definitely not the municipal park effect. A country garden in the city sounds nice?

You have far more room than I was expecting. When you look out of the door are you facing North? So the ivy wall gets sun in the morning - is that right?

What a lovely little garden!

Architectural plants are those with a strong shape - fatsias, cordylines (?(?sp) and so on. Not really country garden plants. The latter are usually herbaceous perennials (i.e. they die down in the winter and regrow in the spring) - look for plants labelled herbaceous/hardy/cottage perennials. Lots and lots of lovely different flowering plants to choose from. Herbs also very country garden. Most of the herbs and many perennials need sun, but there are also many (particularly the latter) that will flourish in shady areas.

That is an estate agent picture, (just bought) so they have done something funny with the lens, it isn’t as big as it looks there.

Re direction, the gate faces South. I think I may have confused myself here. In my head the garden looks the other way?

It does get sun though, but not all day