Smaller gardens

[FollowtheLizards]

After a few years of DIY landscaping, I finally feel like I have the bones of a semi decent garden, with a good amount of year round interest. I think this year I need to play around a bit with moving plants around to make things a bit more cohesive. One thing I'm struggling with is balancing the style of garden I like which is wildlife friendly/cottagey with the fact I have a relatively long but fairly narrow garden to work with. I've also had to incorporate the elements my partner insisted he wanted - a blocked paved driveway and a lawn.

I feel like I need to keep an element of semi formal planting so it doesn't look too chaotic. My gardens have fairly narrow borders, approx 3ft (which I know isn't ideal, but the length of the garden does make it look in proportion). At the moment, I'm repeating plants and colours across the length of the garden, which I think works ok. I'm not sure if I should stick to the formal scheme low growing plants the the front and tall at the back, or if I can get away with mixing heights as you would in a traditional cottage garden.

Another thing I'm struggling to decide on is lawn edging. Do you think it's better to leave a gap of an inch or so of bare soil between the lawn and the start of the flower bed, should I let the plants spill over the lawn, or should I edge with some type of paving to make it look neater? The front of my border is currently predominately cotton lavender and creeping thyme, so at minimum, I do need to weed the thyme from the grass to stop it becoming a mess.

Any thoughts or advice will be gratefully received.

Following for ideas on border/lawn edging. We've got coping stones on their side as an edge. But I will be trailing stuff over it.

My balance is keeping the lawn - which DH wants - with my more chaotic type of planting.

I mix heights a lot, I think it helps in a smaller garden - so I have a lot of tall wafty things at or near the front of the border. Grasses, verbena bonaseris, geums and cosmos. I'm hoping to repeat more plants as I dived existing perennials - so that it'll look more cohesive.

I've also put quite a few small trees in for height, the birds and to break it up a bit.

What I'm missing is evergreen structure in the winter....

Also I find this blog helpful...www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/8-steps-long-thin-garden-dreams/

should I edge [the lawn] with some type of paving to make it look neater?
It will save labour on having to edge the lawn. It will be neater but neater does rather go against the grain of being "wildlife friendly/cottagey".

Are your borders straight up and down or are there some curves towards the middle to break up the long length. Also, have you got height (obelisk, arch, etc).

I agree with JustJam's "wafty things".

I was nodding along to your description, btw - repetition, colour palette etc. Three feet is about the max for a border (an arm's length) unless you also have access (a hidden path) from the back.

Re what I was saying earlier about curves, here is a video from the middle-sized garden. They have a very long border but the gentle sweep makes all the difference.

Both my gardens have been very long and narrow. I’ve used two techniques 1] dividing horizontally into separate gardens, which allows for variety of treatment 2] being able to bring the planting right towards the centre, and doing it on alternate sides, so at one point you have to go along a path to the L of a bed with a central tree, then at the next division the path may be to the right. It means you have to explore thegarden, you can’t see it all from the house.

I have winter and spring things at the far end, to tempt me out in the bleaker months.

If you go for an irregular lawn, it fits in better to a wilder planting than a square or circular one, and you can steal a bit of it for spring bulbs.

A row of irregular shaped paving slabs round the edge keeps the lawn edge tidy, and you can relieve the formality by allowing plants to spill on to the edge of the paving

Thanks JustJam I was watching some middle sized garden on Youtube last night trying to get some inspiration! Evergreens seem to make such a difference to a smaller garden in winter. One of the first shrubs I planted was Osmanthus Burkwoodi and it looks really nice this time of year. I planted lots of evergreen honeysuckle and jasmine to cover my front wall and I'm hoping that will fill out by next winter. I think lawns are harder work than borders and less interesting!

Senua and MereDintofPandiculation - unfortunately my borders are a straight rectangular patch. I've got an arch with a bench under it waiting to go up next to my nature pond. Hoping to grow some nice thornless roses and sweet peas over it. I think playing around with dividing the borders into more sections might be the way forward. Half of the garden has the driveway and quite formal planting and the other half has the pond and is probably a bit too wild at the moment! Thanks for the tips

Oh I’m really interested in this thread and to see/hear the solutions, I’m in the process of creating a border in a long narrow (and small) garden and thinking about these issues myself. That middle-sized garden site has been really useful.

Our border is wavy so the garden is almost split into three ‘rooms’ to break up the corridor effect (while leaving maximum lawn space for DS). We’ve used flexible metal edging (everedge-type stuff on a roll) which was very easy and which I prefer to thick/chunky edging in a small space. I’m really happy with how it looks and once the plants start draping and trailing over it it will be softened and barely visible.

I’ve included lots of wafty, leany plants - verbena bonsiarensis, guara, knautia macedonia, nigella, thalictrum etc that you have to look beyond but which will hopefully give an airy effect too. I also think growing upwards (so climbers, trees, obelisks etc) is important in a small space.

Could you select climbing roses for your arch that produce hips? That way you get colour and interest all year round. And maybe some plants with attractive seed heads too.