Ideas For Small Back Gardens Uk

If your garden is on the small side and you're struggling for inspiration this year, take a look at the below ideas for small gardens. We've handpicked a selection of brilliant designs from the recent years of Britain's most prestigious Flower Show.

1. Get creative with planting

The IBC Pocket Forest (2021) by Sara Edwards

Ideas for small gardens: almost anything can be grown in a container, from pond plants to trees, as Sara Edwards proves with the IBC Pocket Forest container garden. Photo: Jayne Lloyd.

If space is so tight there's no room for planting in the ground, plant in containers. Anything can be pressed into service, as long as water can drain out of the bottom. In her Container Garden at Chelsea 2021, Sara Edwards recycled Intermediate Bulk Containers and found they had ample space for a multi-layered scheme of trees such as birch and rowan, with mid-storey shrubs and underplanting.

The Claims Guys: A Very English Garden (2018) by Janine Crimmins

Artisan gardens RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 — Ideas for small gardens: In The Claims Guys: A Very English Garden, Janine Crimmins used a restrained palette of similar coloured plants to create impact in a small space. Photo: Jayne Lloyd

This garden uses a restrained amount of plants in dense blocks to create more impact. The beauty is in simplicity. Lines of box anchor old-fashioned roses, catmint and a circle of daisy-flowered Erigeron karvinskianus,while groups of foxgloves and delphiniums add height and structure.

Greening Grey Britain (2017) by Nigel Dunnett

The balcony on Nigel Dunnett's Greening Grey Britain garden shows how vertical space creates room for big plants. Vertical planters and sweetcorn maximise space going up, while creeping ivies head south to dangle over the balcony edges.

City Living (2017) by Kate Gould

This garden by Kate Gould is jam-packed with brilliant ideas for a small, urban garden. Removing sections of paving to create a showpiece for planting is a great way to break up large expanses of paving while reducing water run off, and thus the risk of flooding.

Most gardeners worry about how best to conceal their bins. A simple but effective raised bed ingeniously makes the bin store in this garden much more attractive! Why not try it yourself? Just think – in summer, you'd be able to harvest some strawberries while taking the rubbish out…

2. Add water

The Hot Tin Roof Garden (2021) by Ellie Edkins

Large circular corrugated steel containers were the stars of Ellie Edkins' beach-inspired yet urban garden. One was made watertight and filled with water to allow pond plants such as pontederia and rushes.

The Facebook Garden: Beyond the Screen (2019) by Joe Perkins

Facebook Garden Joe Perkins — Ideas for small gardens: Don't be afraid of installing a water feature, even when space is tight. It will bring in the sky and add reflections that help expand the sense of space, as in The Facebook Garden by Joe Perkins. Photo: Jayne Lloyd

One third of this small garden is given over to water, with an overhanging deck. Inspired by trips to the Atlantic coast of northern Spain with his children, Joe's garden includes tidal rock pools complete with lapping water, sedimentary rock formations that echo the Basque coastline, and planting from coastal habitat.

Green Switch (2019) by Kazuyuki Ishihara

Chelsea flower show — Ideas for small gardens: as well as finding space for a waterfall, the Green Switch garden also showcases acers and their suitability for small spaces. Photo: Jayne Lloyd

Kazuyuki Ishihara is a longtime favourite at Chelsea and a genius at small gardens. In last year's Green Switch garden, two waterfalls and a pond are positioned in a tight space between two urban glass structures. The ripples in the pool provide fluctuations of reflected flowers.

3. Create movement with winding paths and elevated layers

Guide Dogs 90th Anniversary Garden (2021) by Adam Woolcott and Jonathan Smith

Celebrating 90 years of British guidedog partnerships, this narrative garden looks back to The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association's 1930s origins, when veterans wounded in World War I were paired with the first guide dogs, and illustrates the journey of somebody with sight loss, from fear and darkness to enrichment and joy. The path that winds through and up to the garden's raised rear, shows how movement can make a space feel larger.

Arcadia (2021) by Martha Krempel

In this Balcony Garden – a new category at Chelsea 2021 – designer Martha Krempel made the 2m x 5m space feel much bigger by building upwards with a wooden pergola-type structure supporting a swing chair. The vibrant crimson leaves of parthenocissus complemented cushions in autumnal tones.

Family Monsters Garden (2019) by Alistair Bayford

Alistair Bayford Family Monsters garden — Ideas for small gardens: Alistair Bayford's Family Monsters garden shows how concealing part of the garden behind layered planting makes it feel larger than it is. Photo: Jayne Lloyd

Focussed on an elevated central space framed in corten steel and edged by silver birch trees, this serene garden provides a sense of safety for those who venture to its centre.

The Greenfingers Charity Garden (2019) by Kate Gould

Greenfingers Garden Kate Gould — Ideas for Small Gardens: It won't always be possible, but being able to create two separate levels immediately doubles the space available in The Greenfingers Charity Garden by Kate Gould. Photo: Jayne Lloyd

Kate's garden for Greenfingers is a two-storey design featuring many exciting elements, including a Chelsea first: a water-powered lift to reach the upper level. The result is a mass of space split into distinct areas in which children can play, relax and reflect.

4. Encourage wildlife

RHS COP26 Garden (2021) by Marie-Louise Agius & Balston Agius

Created to mark the year the UK hosts the 26th UN Climate Change Conference, this feature garden at the 2021 show demonstrated how gardens can play an integral part in protecting our planet. It was full of ideas for how gardens – large and small – can support the environment, work with nature and manage the changing climate. In one part, paving was lifted to create small pockets of extra planting – a great way to make patios greener, in every sense.

RHS Queen's Green Canopy Garden (2021) by David Dodd

In this naturalistic garden of grassland and wildflower meadows, coupled with Jay Davey woven hay-bale sculptures and trees to promote the Queen's Green Canopy campaign to 'plant a tree for the Jubilee', were patches of clover-studded grass. Let it stay and flower in your lawn and you'll be rewarded with masses of visiting bees (clover is their favourite flower) – you only need a small patch to make a difference.

The Warner Edwards Garden (2018) by Kate Savill and Tamara Bridge

This garden is inspired by the Northamptonshire farm that houses Warner Edwards Gin distillery. Bee-friendly plants such as strawberry, borage and angelica reflect the farm's apiary, while two traditional straw beehives are secreted in niches in the boundary wall.

Greening Grey Britain (2017) by Nigel Dunnett

A narrow bug hotel in the garden takes up barely 30cm x 30cm of ground space and provides multiple habitats for invertebrates, an important part of a healthy garden ecosystem.

5. Plant a statement tree

Finnish Soul Garden (2021) by Taina Suonio

Taina Suonio's Finnish seaside garden features a sauna and is planted with natural Baltic seaside vegetation, which happens to include trees that would be a superb choice for a small garden, such as silver birch and rowan.

Balcony of Blooms (2021) by Alexandra Noble

Alexandra Noble chose to plant two spindles trees (euonymus) either end of her Balcony of Blooms. Choosing a multi-stemmed tree or small shrub like these often gives you more impact in a small space than something with a single trunk. The joy of euonymus is their contribution during autumn – colourful changing foliage and bright berries.

The Boodle's Secret Garden (2021) by Thomas Hoblyn

Another superb tree choice for a small garden – although they do have a tendency to sucker so you may have to be prepared to keep on top of unwanted shoots if you don't want it to spread out of bounds – is Rhus typhina. Its delicate frond-like leaves are beautiful all year, but it's the exhilarating colours its foliage takes on in autumn that will make you fall in love with it.