Long narrow family garden... how to stop it looking like a green corridor

[LeeMiller]

We are in the process of buying a house with a longish narrow garden which is a blank canvas (patio, then a big expanse of grass (or currently weeds) and shed at far end). I’ve looked on Pinterest etc for inspiration but while there are some incredible narrow town/terracegardens a lot are a bit over landscaped with too much space given over to pathways, and not terribly practical for young kids. DS is 2 and loves running and kicking a ball so I want to leave as much grass as possible while avoiding a bland corridor effect.What are your tips/tricks?Anyone fancy showing me their garden?

I’m hoping I don’t have to give up on my ‘mini sissinghurst’ dream until DS leaves home

Have a look at the Love My Garden on itv yesterday lunchtime. It broke the space up into zones and used diagonals pathways to deflect the eye.

Ooh so many gardening tv show I need to watch!

Box hedges are a bad idea just at the moment. UK box plants are being affect by box blight, and I believe there's also a caterpillar pest. The RHS has been experimenting with alternatives to box for small neat hedging. It would be annoying to spend a couple of years neatly trimming and then have big holes appear in it.

Graph paper is probably your best bet. If you don't have any , you can print it (free) from the internet:
www.printablepaper.net/category/graph
Work out a scale that's easy to use, like 1m on the ground = 5 little graph squares. And instead of wrestling with a springy steel rule, try taking a longish piece of string and tying knots at 1m intervals.

There are good design apps once you know how to use them. But it's not worth the learning curve if you're only going to do one garden. Easy to use apps tend to be easy to use because they constrain what you can do.

Windy path and put it into defined sections.... Flower bed, bbq area, quiet zone with seating etc.