Design ideas for small garden on a 1k budget (pic attached)

[Asvan]

Hi all,

Please see attached pic of my small gatden. I live in a terraced house so I have neighbours on both sides.

I am not into gardening at all but I would like to make the garden look a bit nicer and maybe spend more time in it in the summer. I was thinking that i could add some solar lights, plant pots and seating, as well as give it all a lick of paint. I also need to put a small shed in one corner for storage, which i have already ordered.

I have a 1k budget to sort out the garden, what can I do to make it into a low maintenance, inviting space? All ideas would be appreciated, I am totally clueless.

Thanks you.

You can do a lot with £1k, as long as you're willing to hunt for bargains and put some work in. Don't waste it on buying your own jet washer. Rent one, or try to borrow from a friend. They're £21 a day near me (Library of Things).

Paint - expensive now, discounted from September-October. There is a paint recycling place near me that sells for £3 a litre. Look up Dulux Community RePaint.

Furniture and pots - check Facebook marketplace, Gumtree, local eBay, friends & family. You could make a big planter from scaffolding boards (you'll need a sharp saw).

Widen the borders by taking up some of the tiles. It'll give a more luxury feeling. It doesn't have to be in straight lines, you could take out a few more in the middle to make different zones e.g. seating area at the back.

Plants - buy the biggest you can afford, and buy perennials so you don't have to buy them again next year. Clematis is great for shade (likes its roots in the shade but flowers in the sun), but buy a good size, around 80cm high/15cm pot. Don't buy the 3 for £5 little ones, they don't grow fast enough.

How on earth is anyone meant to paint their fence then, like ever?

What a bizarre comment.

Watching with interest, as my back garden is the same as yours minus the planters

I also agree (with a previous poster,) about not painting the fence grey. A few people in my village have grey fences and they look bloody awful. Grey is SO 5 years ago, and looks horribly dated! Sage green is OK, but not for me. Our fence(s) are medium oak. (Like attached pic.) Looks really nice. We do have a large garden though. Maybe a lighter colour would be better in a smaller garden.

Don't worry about the paint dripping through the other side onto your neighbour's side and 'looking a horrible mess...' and them not being very happy about it. 🙄 That won't happen. It will not look a horrible mess. A few bits may bleed onto the neighbour's side, but they're usually so small and insignificant that they won't even notice. (And if they do, they can paint over the bits with their own fence paint. That's what we do when a neighbour paints their fence and a bit drips though.) Although, for the past 5 years we have had the same colour on the fence, so it doesn't matter!

!

Some ideas can get expensive or high maintenance. Climbers need regular upkeep, and painted fences require repainting every couple of years, so it’s often better to create focal points that draw attention away from them.

Keep things simple: choose a low-maintenance design that looks good year-round. Start by clearing weeds from the patio and borders. Pick a colour scheme..one main colour plus green. White works especially well to brighten a partially shaded garden.
Place the small shed in the back left corner and paint it in your chosen colour (e.g. sage green or cream, such as Cuprinol Garden Shades).

In the back right corner, add three large white planters with bay laurel lollipop trees in different heights (tallest at the back). Use a pale grey or buff gravel mulch (avoid pure white as it shows dirt).

In the borders, plant white hydrangeas with a bright green grass like Carex oshimensis 'Everillo', and mulch with matching gravel for a cohesive look.
Choose simple, lightweight seating (metal or plastic you can easily pack away or store overwinter). If you’re mainly relaxing rather than dining, go for lounging chairs and a low table instead of a full dining set.
Over time, you can add interest along one side such as a few matching pots with an Acer or Pieris (Forest Flame); a simple water feature (bowl pond or bird bath); or a plant ladder with shade-tolerant evergreen plants like heuchera

Focus on colour, shape, and texture to create interest without clutter. Stick to a small number of easy plants, mostly just watering, feeding in summer, and light pruning in spring.

Most of your budget could focus on the shed, pots, gravel, and seating. Plants are cheaper and easy to replace. It's a simple, low-maintenance garden within budget that looks good all year. It can be built gradually over time.

White Pots B&Q - £110 each;
Bay laurel lollipop trees 100 cm - Laurus Nobilis from Bamboo Kings - £30 each plus £15 delivery.

(AI generated images, but the design ideas are all mine).

You could spray the weeds then get rid of them. Paint the fence a cheerful colour. Paint the bottom bit of concrete white masonry paint. Pressure wash the slabs. Buy a bit of decking and put over a corner on a diagonal. Buy a small cafe type table and 2 chairs and parasol. I'd ask someone to make me a few large wooden planters and put down both sides length ways and fill with easy to care for plants like pansies, lobelia, forget-me-nots, geraniums, fusiad and little marigolds then fit some light planters to hang down from top of fence posts with trailing lobelia, florisempen begonias and pansies. If you ask people with geraniums or fusiad they will often give you a cutting which grows just by putting it in water until it grows roots then can be potted up. You could get a few fairy lights to drape about decking area too. I think you could do that for £1k.

I painted my fences and garden picnic table (wooden, like a pub table) a lovely intense blue and they look fabulous with lots of white flowers and greenery.

It's Cuprinol Barleywood. We have to redo it every few years but it's not too onerous.

AI knows everything.

Except what it feels like to actually garden.

Add planters or borders around the edge or along the sides that gets most sun

Make the borders deeper than you think!! At least one meter deep. You don't have to be into gardening to tend to it if you choose low maintenance options.

Having depth to your planting allows larger shrubs and different height plants. You can also have climbers and something in front of them.

A small tree artfully placed will also look beautiful and makes a garden look complete. Choose based on what has a suitable ultimate height. A dwarf one might be best if your garden is already shaded.

A neighbour has a similar sized garden to this. She decided not to have a lawn at all and instead had a meandering path in a loop of the garden with a big raised bed in the middle. It's fantastic, they even squeezed in a pond. They have lots of climbing plants and trees and it all looks overgrown in a good way, like a secret garden.

Personally I'm a fan of a herb spiral if you can pick up some free bricks. I use my parsley, oregano, chives and rosemary all the time! And I suck at gardening and haven't killed them yet. We have a small bay tree, lots of strawberries and a redcurrant bush too. I am more invested in low maintenance plants I can also eat.

Personally I'm not a fan of pots because I'm too lazy to water them.

Recommend seeing what neighbours have and thrives.

Strongly recommend avoiding bamboo. Extremely invasive and a pita to remove. I also agree on avoiding lights you can't turn off because of wildlife.

Start with weeding the borders, jetspray the paving and paint the fence green.

Plastic furniture and add some pots with bamboo style plants and add a few lights.

As others have said, decide what you want from the garden and then put that in the sunniest spot. That's probably your seating.
The garden is an oblong, filled with square paving, up against fencing. It's all a bit angular and boxy! Try to get some softness, some curvature in there.
The borders are too narrow. If you are not careful your plants will end up looking like soldiers standing to attention.
Do a lot of planting at the far end using taller plants. This will blur the back boundary, make it look like the trees beyond are part of your garden and make the whole thing look bigger (this is called a 'borrowed view').
It's tempting to get fixated on the view from the house but don't forget that you want a nice vista from your seating area, too. Have a focal point to look at: a tree, a water feature, a fire pit, some statuary, etc.
If you do small things in smallish gardens, you make the garden look even smaller. Be big and be bold!

What way does the garden face? What time of day are you most likely to use it? Those questions should be the absolute basis for whatever you do.

Paint your fences a dark colour, dark green or even black. It's counter intuitive but, once you have have climbers over them and plants in front of them, they visually disappear and you don't get a closed in feeling. Plus plants really 'pop' against a dark background and show off their colour and shape.
Reserve a significant part of your budget for a couple of big, tallish things to help dissolve the boundaries. Acers are great, lovely colours, some have interesting bark in winter, interesting leaf shapes, they like shade and do well in big pots. Try and avoid lots of small plants scattered at ankle level which can look a bit 'smarties on a carpet'.

Firstly I’d decide how I wanted to use the garden and plan around that. Do you want to grow veggies, sit on a comfy seat with a cuppa, do you have kids that want their toys out there?

Do you want to use it in all weathers or sit in the sun in an evening.

Furniture can be expensive but I’ve seen some nice pieces in Asda. Weeding and some patio magic t(B&M do cheap version) to clean the paving will make a difference. Supermarkets and B&M have some cheaper plants at the minute.

Think about when you are most likely to sit in the garden (early morning coffee/evening drinks/weekend lunch), work out where the sun falls at that time of day and put your main seating/table there. You can always have another lightweight chair to move around to catch a sunny spot at different times.

Black fence