51 small garden ideas from the House & Garden archive | House & Garden
By Jessica Wilkins
Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story Small garden ideas: The small garden in Tanya Burr's north London house was designed by our Rising Star for 2026, Tabi Jackson Gee, with a sofa from Cox & Cox, and a table and chairs from Crocus, making it the ideal spot for relaxing and entertaining. Climbers cover the fence for a soft backdrop.
There are plenty of small garden ideas to make your patch of outdoor space a blessing, however tiny it may be. It’s been proven time and again what a huge benefit having a garden makes to our mental health, and no matter its size, it can provide a space for growing flowers, harvesting a kitchen garden or simply relaxing on a sun lounger. A sprawling country garden full of flowers would be ideal, but even having a small garden, balcony or tiny roof terrace can provide solace in spades.
The only problem with small spaces is that they can be harder to design, but there’s no need to be daunted. Arm yourself with the right small garden ideas and design tips and tricks and you’ll have the tools you need to make it a tiny sanctuary for you to enjoy all through the warmer months. It doesn’t matter if you have a balcony garden, a small patch of patio or even a small front garden, you can make it a space to be proud of with the right planning and planting.
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- How do you design a small garden?
- How do you make a small garden look nice?
- Small garden ideas from the House & Garden archive
How do you design a small garden?
Start by thinking about what you need from your garden and how you can plan it to fit those elements in. There are some excellent garden design apps out there that can help you with the basic structure. Chances are you’d like a pleasant place to sit on sunny days, so carve out some space and have a look around for some stylish garden furniture, set up a parasol and prepare for some outdoor dining. We also love using lighting in the garden, especially solar lights, which can help you to make the most of the space after dark. And in a small front or back garden, if there’s no room for a garden shed, you’ll want some sort of garden storage to stow away your garden tools, toys and anything else that has a tendency to end up outdoors.
Read MoreHow to choose paving and decking for your garden
How do you make a small garden look nice?
It’s time to consider planting. Perhaps you just have room for some plant pots for pretty seasonal plants and herbs around your table and chairs. You may have space for a romantic border that will make your city garden look more like a country garden. Or it may be that you want to learn how to grow vegetables, in which case see our garden editor’s guides to creating a kitchen garden and making a compost heap.
However small your garden is, we believe you can make something beautiful and functional there, so read on for more inspiration. If you’re a novice gardener, consult our essential guide to gardening and landscape design.
Read MoreA garden designer's tips for redesigning a small outdoor space
Small garden ideas from the House & Garden archive
Having made the bold decision to turn a three-bedroom maisonette in a Victorian terrace into his one-bedroom home, interior designer and avid art collector Romanos Brihi has made the most of the reconfigured, expansive interiors. A coffee table from Tyson stands on Commune’s ‘Sitio Outdoor’ rug from Christopher Farr. The banquette has cushions in Clarence House’s marine ‘OD Misha’ and striped marine ‘OD Cabo’, plus Nushka’s striped ‘Silk Jajim’.
‘The smaller the garden, the more important it is to curate its contents,’ says designer Sheila Jack, of this small west London garden at the home of Australian expats James and Olivia Markham. Having renovated their house, they wanted a garden that was in harmony with the interiors and that would allow them the enjoy the same sort of outdoor lifestyle they were used to.
She has combined a clever planting palette featuring a mix of foliage with curved motifs that echo the interiors. A beautiful multi-stemmed Tibetan cherry (Prunus serrula) planted near the house provides year-round interest, with its gleaming coppery brown bark, spring blossom and autumn leaf colour. At its base, set among a froth of ferns and knotted cranesbill, a clay water bowl captures reflections of the sky.
Libby Lord has crammed the small garden in this enchanting Regency cottage in Shropshire with all her favourite flowering plants.
‘The garden is little more than another green-clad room,’ say Benedict and Daniel of their small garden in Hackney, but it’s heaven on a summer's eve having a drink after a long day. It feels worlds away from the dusty streets of London.’
A charming terraced garden in this Chelsea townhouse lends itself to long summer lunches, helped along by a handmade table topped with moroccan tiles and chairs from Neptune.
At the back of a charming Maltese house restored by the owners of Villa Bologna Pottery, a small courtyard has been brought to life with considered corner planting, director’s chairs in a Basque stripe found in St Tropez and a mosaic table from Morocco. It is perfectly in keeping with bright and airy Mediterranean feel of the house.
The garden in this handsome Grade II-listed townhouse on one of west London's prettiest garden squares is small, but built for entertaining, with an outdoor table set just outside the kitchen.
At the back of Rita Konig’s west London flat, garden designer Butter Wakefield has created a leafy haven. Butter has created a magical courtyard space, filled with shade-tolerant planting (plenty of topiary and leafy plants) along with flowers in containers, and climbing plants that adorn trellises on the walls.
The hard landscaping was one of the most crucial aspects of the project, with large stones laid throughout the space in a pleasingly irregular fashion. But what gives it real structure and character are the shrubs and topiary dotted through the space.
‘In many ways the garden was built somewhat back to front,’ Butter explains. ‘We lifted the trees and structural planting into place before the hard landscaping began, which was very unusual for us. We did this so we had enough room for all the various root balls. What we didn’t want to find was that we couldn’t fit all that we wished for in – the planting took precedence over all else. We had never designed a garden this way round ever before, it was both challenging and rather exciting.’
Next up was the laying of the stones themselves. ‘With the help of our very patient hard landscaping team, we set out each beautiful big stone one by one,’ explains Butter, ‘making sure the paving and pitcher detail changed direction often and looked lovely from all views. We went to site every day, for many weeks to check the setting out and adjust/swap/add/subtract any stone we felt wasn’t quite right… It was a very time-consuming process, but it was also unique, interesting, and felt somehow very bespoke.’
This garden by Jinny Blom feels like a secret urban jungle thanks to her use of lushly textured foliage in myriad shades of green, where Rhus typhina mingles with the banana Musa basjoo and Agapanthus africanus. Huge square stone paving slabs are juxtaposed with the original old brick walls, and a wooden swing seat from Carl Hansen & Søn is suspended from the Japanese-inspired bespoke oak pergola.
The back of this 18th-century Huguenot weavers' house in Spitalfields is typical of these houses, with rusty red woodwork.
Climbing hydrangea and pots of ferns and herbs soften the small north-facing courtyard garden of a beautiful Spitalfields townhouse. The small courtyard garden has been levelled and laid with reclaimed York stone, edged with sunken beds planted with evergreen shrubs. Window frames, fences and doors are painted black.
Outdoor space is a rarity in Manhattan, and terraces and roof gardens are often a best-case scenario. In legendary restauranteur Keith McNally's new SoHo apartment, pots and planters are used to maximise planting without a large footprint. Large trees and greenery provide privacy, without blocking his magnificent view over the Empire State Building.
This small garden, which is enclosed by flint walls was reimagined by Lucy Taylor, who overlaid the cement terrace with reclaimed bricks, and rebuilt the raised beds. ‘Pretty much all the garden was replanted but we kept the ancient pear tree. We replaced the gate but matched the previous Brunswick Green paint colour as a nod to the history of the house.’
At Nina Campbell's house in Chelsea, there is a tiny courtyard garden lined with greenery in planters.The garden originally had a low wall on to the street which Nina extended to make the space private. There is a bin store hidden behind the wall of roses, and the space is a haven for birds.
Designed by Marian Boswall Studio, the tiny garden of this Chelsea townhouse is a place for relaxing and entertaining. The seat cushions have been made up in a fabric by Zak+Fox at George Spencer Designs.
This light-filled Victorian cottage in south London is blessed with a beautiful oasis of a garden, centred around an ancient mulberry tree. Steps from the house wind up past leafy foliage to a terrace where the tree stands.
This small London garden, attached to a former vicarage, has been kept natural and beautiful with a lawn edged in lovely borders. The sprawling tree creates a naturalistic element in this city garden.
In this London house transformed by Veere Grenney, the house has a lovely little garden designed by Alex Hoyle. The furniture is by the American firm Munder Skiles.
Charlotte Boundy's petite but pretty garden in Shepherd's Bush, which is accessed from the kitchen.
This part of Fiona Golfar's garden at her Cornish house is full of helpful ideas for small gardens. Antique mirrors reflect light around the space, which is filled with plants in containers, a rustic table and benches, and cosy sheepskin coverings.
The small space at the side of garden designer Laura Heybrook's Oxford house is put to good use, with pleached hornbeams, topiary and Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’ in a terracotta pot.
Because decorator Chloe Willis's London apartment takes up half of the original terraced house, the garden is long and thin. To draw your eye, Chloe introduced level changes and raised beds, breaking it up into three spaces and planting geraniums and climbing roses in the seating area ‘so that it feels secluded and romantic rather than just small’.
At Thea Speake's basement flat the small courtyard garden outside the open-plan living area and Thea’s bedroom is a sun trap, and looks lovely with simple furniture and striped yellow cushions.
At this Cotswold barn, the outdoor dining area is hidden away amongst the shrubbery, an idea that would work equally well for small gardens. A Maison de Vacances tablecloth from Cutter Brooks and Maisons du Monde metal chairs brighten a bespoke table by Londons Calling Antiques.
The backview of an East London terrace, where the garden aims to have a sense of cohesion with the main house and its extension.
Annabel Bevan added mirrors to the courtyard garden of her London house to create a sense of space. Annabel and her family moved to London from Bahrain, and the garden reflects the middle Eastern style of the area. The 18th-century patisserie table was bought at Violet Grey Antiques.
If you don’t have much space, plant upwards. Jos and Annabel White’s six-storey town house in Manhattan's West Village has window boxes full of flowers and trailing ivy framing the patio windows.
With its mix of clean lines and natural textures, the townhouse of interior designer Emma Sims-Hilditch pays homage to its London setting, while serving as a reminder of her rural roots. Designed by Charles Harman, the garden features a Neptune dining table and custom bench. Cushions are in a mix of fabrics from Christopher Farr Cloth.
At Paul and Caroline Weiland’s west London townhouse is this charming garden by Butter Wakefield. The garden was inspired by the one Caroline loved at the Stockholm hotel Ett Hem,, and designed to be an integral part of the living room room beyond the Crittall windows. White gravel and lime chippings are flanked by paths of London brick, with a small terrace created from reclaimed cobblestones.
The ground floor of a London house by Emily Todhunter looks out onto the garden created by Tania Compton. Lush planting and wide borders take up a lot of the space but create an oasis feel, heightened by the blue tile-lined water feature in the centre.
In her own London garden, a typical long narrow space, landscape designer Emily Erlam has constructed a series of elegant terraces, each with its own mood, which provide structure for Mediterranean plantings and natural canopies. Using spoil from the recent renovation of the house, levels were built up to form four elegant tiers separated by simple brick retaining walls. Each of the terraces has a distinct atmosphere and purpose: ‘Some of the spaces are for a few people and some are for just one or two, but all have a shared quality of intimacy and shelter,’ she explains.
While Daisy Garnett’s Brixton garden is relatively spacious for London, her approach to the patio and to containers is one any small garden owner can learn from. Daisy’s growing collection of pots on the terrace brings seasonal colour and interest to the area for most of the year. In an array of different shapes, sizes and materials, they contain plants ranging from large shrubs to tiny annuals. The large terracotta urn from Mallorca was a gift from her father.
In her London home, designer Bridie Hall has a tiny patio which she imbues with the idea of a country garden via verdant planting and a sweet mismatched bistro table and chairs.
In this Bruges garden by Piet Blanckaert, the trees and shrubs bordering the reclaimed Belgian Blue stone terrace are clipped and pollarded so as not to dominate the space. Edged by a serpentine hedge of cloud-pruned box, a narrow canal reflects vegetation and sky. It creates an illusion of space in the small courtyard.
The strict, geometric layout of Jinny Blom’s small garden is reinforced by a backbone of structural planting: great big squares of box – ‘I’ve always loved box in squares, long before Christopher Bradley-Hole did it at Chelsea,’ she says with a twinkle in her eye – and a bold peppering of big-leaved, exotic plants that give the garden a distinctly contemporary feel. The bottom right corner of the garden is planted with Geranium ‘Patricia’ and a multi-stemmed Catalpa x erubescens ‘Purpurea’, which is perfect for small gardens if pruned every year.
The outside of Cameron Kimber’s house in New South Wales is covered in charming clapboard. Gravel, generous tubs, and a lovely white bench come together to create a welcoming entrance to the house.
The double level wall in this Cornish cottage garden draws the eye up and makes the space seem large in the process. It's a clever trick also used in interior design to trick the eye.
The founder of JamJar flowers knows how to create a beautiful garden, even in a small space. This garden at her Brixton house has a romantic, countryside feel thanks to furniture gathered from various antiques markets.
This west London garden belongs to designer Butter Wakefield and is filled with an abundance of geums, foxgloves, nepeta, roses and geraniums; a wildflower meadow sweeps across the centre of the lawn, which is handsomely framed by clipped box pyramids. Disguised behind a trellis is her workstation – apple crates overflow with knapweed, daisies and wild carrot and there are planters of orange, salvia and cow parsley.
The compact garden of a restored weaver’s house in Spitalfields is in its infancy, but has shown surprising results already. ‘The shrub Tzbouchina generally needs greenhouse conditions in this country, but, as it’s protected on all sides, it's flourishing,’ owner Olwen says.
Pots are grouped on the deck of an admittedly rather large Kensington garden by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, however this corner shows an idea that can be translated to rather more humble spaces. The wall of foliage cocoons the deck area with the pots adding a contrasting note to the decking and greenery that creates the illusion of space and makes the garden appear rather grand.
This sunken terrace garden at a 19th-century terraced house designed by Bryan O’Sullivan has a living wall of plants designed by the landscape artist Elizabeth Staveley of LandARC.
Diamond pattern paving leads back to a shady seating area in the garden of a timeless townhouse in Bray decorated by Christopher Howe.
Jinny Blom’s small city garden is a neatly walled space, replanted only months before this photograph was taken. Clipped box cubes contrasts with a clever planting scheme that mixes large-leaved exotic plants with cottage-garden favourites. A wide pond is traversed by a clever walkway.
Suzy Hoodless’s low maintenance garden features Kettal’s ‘Riva’ armchairs, designed by Jasper Morrison for outdoor use, on an AstroTurf lawn.
This chic Belgravia townhouse features a compact paved area with a large mirror to visually enlarge the space. Modern furniture is balanced by an abundance of climbing plants softening the walls.
Grasses are planted in front of the original wisteria-hung loggia at this house designed by William Smalley, while a stone table makes a great permanent dining space.
Louisa Jones developed a passion for David Austin roses when she was planning the garden of her Victorian cottage in south west London. She planted an arbour of roses to separate the patio and lawn of her country-style city garden.
A small vegetable garden sits in front of the guest house at this elegant Georgian home in Oxfordshire. The guest house was the conversion of a former garage behind the house, which means that friends who come to stay can be independent.
Smart small garden ideas from Sam McKnight
After several years working in publishing, Clare Foster felt like a change of direction and took on the role of sub-editor at Gardens Illustrated. She stayed here for nine years, rising through the ranks to the role of editor. Clare joined House & Garden as garden editor in 2005: ‘I ... Read More
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