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Easy Small Garden Design Updates

Easy Small Garden Design Updates

Small gardens might not seem desirable, but there’s lots to love about a smaller space.

They never require a lot of maintenance and you don’t need lots of cash to get them looking good. A small garden might seem frustrating from a design point of view, but with a little bit of creativity, you can have a garden that’s just as beautiful as a big one. Here we’ve collected our favourite ideas for updating your small garden, so your outdoor space can be stylish too.

bright pink wall with plants

Go for Colour

Think of your garden as an extension of the house, as another room to decorate. Your fence or your external walls can be painted just as an interior wall can. A coat of paint in a vibrant colour will give you a fresh feel or go jewel toned for a richer feel. Alternatively, unify your colour scheme through potted plants. Pots are perfect for rented gardens or gardens where there aren’t any flower beds, just gravel or concrete. Lots of pots filled with lots of plants at different heights and different textures helps fill out your garden without any landscaping.

Light it Up

A quick and easy way to transform your garden is to play around with lights. As the nights warm up and we want to spend more and more of our time outside, you can extend the opening hours by adding outdoor lighting. Fairy lights, lanterns or rope lights, there are plenty of options. String chunky outdoor fairy lights for a Mediterranean feel.

Open up the Space

An age-old trick that always looks great is a mirror. It helps to bounce the light around, making the area brighter, as well as giving the illusion that the space is bigger than it is. Positioning is key with a mirror though, as you wouldn’t want the sun to shine in your eyes or to burn your artificial grass, so think about whether your mirror will get direct sunlight. Whether you go for a long straight mirror for a modern, urban look or you go for something more ornate and foxed for secret country garden style, a mirror can really open up your outdoor space.

Keep it Cosy

Small gardens are cosy, so why try and make the space anything but? Make sure your garden is like an outdoor living room and opt for sofa-style furniture. Pile them high with plump cushions and soft blankets, get some outdoor speakers and you could even install a fire pit if you have the space!

Rethink Planters

A living wall is a great way to get your small garden area looking lush and full of plants, without taking up precious lounging space on the floor. A self-sufficient vertical garden, they’re usually attached to the walls of a building. Keep it simple and go for pots that you hang on the wall, hang some shelves to pop your plants on or try your hand at creating a vertical garden planter to fill the entire wall. Which ever one you opt for, it’s sure to revolutionise your space.

With just a few, simple updates, you can transform your small garden and change the way you use it altogether.

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Our 5 Favourite Gardening Blogs

Our 5 Favourite Gardening Blogs

One of the best ways to get inspiration for garden design, information about care and maintenance and a sense of community is through garden blogs. With information on everything from encouraging wildlife into your garden to growing veg to figuring out your new design, you can discover everything you need for a happy, beautiful garden with blogs.   Here at Namgrass, we have a few gardening bloggers that we love, and we want to share them with you.

The Middle Sized Garden

As the name suggests, this blog caters to those of us with gardens that are bigger than a courtyard, but smaller than an acre. Aimed at people who need a bit of inspiration, or who are in need of hints and tips to help them turn their garden into a space they love.

With gorgeous imagery and a mix of helpful articles, you can read about gardens you should see if you’re travelling, garden design trends and even decoration for garden parties. If you have questions about your garden – from which hedge is the right one to how to find a gardener – then this blog should be your first port of call. www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk

Veg Plotting

With over ten years under her belt, Michelle at Veg Plotting is an experienced gardening blogger. More of a personal blog, she tackles a number of different subjects, ranging from her experimental “try it and see what happens” allotment to her weekend wanderings in London in search of green walls.

She’s like a friend updating you on the latest she’s been up to with #mygardenrightnow, interesting things she’s discovered and any gardening insights she thinks might help you too. vegplotting.blogspot.co.uk

Wildflower Hour

Wildflower Hour is a blog, a podcast and a twitter hour with the mission of helping everyone love wild flowers. Every Sunday between 8 and 9pm, the people behind Wildflower Hour encourage everyone to share photos of the flowers that they’ve found in Britain and Ireland.

Whether it’s to share the beauty, to find out if anyone can ID the flower you’ve found or just to enjoy a flood of wildflowers in your feed each week, we love the idea. Do you know how to recognise a basal rosette, for instance? They also create a half hour podcast where a group of enthusiastic botanists talk about wildflowers and nature in general. You don’t have to be a plant nerd to listen either! www.wildflowerhour.co.uk

Rusty Duck

Each post of Jessica’s, the lady behind Rusty Duck, reads like a story. She’s been documenting her adventure in the country with wildlife that has no concept of a garden boundary, and a cottage renovation.

Relatable (how many of us have chased squirrels away from the bird feeder like a banshee?), funny and always entertaining, Jessica’s blog posts never fail to evoke a reaction, whether it’s laughter or understanding. Rusty Duck has won many accolades which proves that her blog really is as good as we say it is!

Wildlife Gadget Man

Did you know that the hedgehog population of the UK is falling dramatically? Your garden can provide hedgehogs with food, a safe place to sleep, and help them hide from predators.

Wildlife Gadget Man’s website can help you turn your garden in to a haven for wildlife. His website is a really useful resource if you’re interested in that Venn diagram between attracting wildlife, technology and gardening DIY. It even has a section on wildlife blogging if you’re interested in starting up your own blog. From building birdfeeders and making hedgehog homes to nest box camera guides and more, it’s filled to the brim with helpful information to make sure that your garden is ideal for wildlife. wildlifegadgetman.com

Do you have any favourite garden bloggers? Do you have any that you love that you don’t see here? Let us know on Twitter @Namgrass