Gardening Small

August 9th, 2011

   Building a great garden in a tiny yard is a whole lot different than landscaping a typical quarter-acre or more suburban yard.

Some of the best gardens come in small packages, like this Buffalo Garden Walk garden built by Arlan Peters and Dom DeFillippo.

   No place that I’ve seen gives a better example of how to do it small than Buffalo, N.Y.

   I’m just back from my second visit to the annual Garden Walk Buffalo, which stages the nation’s largest walking garden tour. This year, 370+ homes were on the tour. And almost all of them were very small city lots. (To see photos from last year’s tour, click here.)

   You won’t get very far before you realize that lack of space is no excuse for not having a great garden.

   Some of these folks don’t have any soil at all, and their gardens are still amazing.

   Many of them lay out whole pot gardens on top of their side-yard asphalt driveways and concrete back-yard pads.

   One fellow made a series of raised beds by boxing off his asphalt, racquetball-court-sized back yard. It had been totally paved for parking. He brought in about 8 inches of soil that went right on top of the asphalt. You’d never know it. The plants were thriving.

   Three lessons came to my mind that we all can learn from Buffalo’s small-space gardeners.

Here's a cozy little garden space or "vignette" that makes the most out of small Buffalo back yard.

   1.) Make cozy spaces. Even in yards no bigger than kitchens, what really looked great was having dedicated little spaces.

   One of the nicest examples is carving out a corner for a little water feature. That could be a simple waterfall dropping water into a small pond, it could be a waterfall dropping into a buried container with a pump at the bottom, or it could be a plug-in fountain. The sound and motion really adds a lot.

   The most common cozy-space example is a sitting nook. Almost all the Buffalo yards had a spot to sit.

   Some of the best ideas I saw were a bench underneath a vine-covered pergola; a couple of painted Adirondack chairs under a small tree on a postage-stamp plot of grass, and a wicker living-room set on a paver patio with potted plants all around.

   Some gardeners took advantage of little spaces behind small sheds to build “secret gardens” or get-away sitting areas. With fencing (which most Buffalo city yards have), the canopies of small trees and the use of vines on trellises, it’s amazing how private a space can be when neighbors are a sunflower-seed-spit away.

   Arbors are great ways to separate spaces, and paved walks are a big plus for giving a nice flow to a small yard.

   Few gardeners in bigger spaces achieve these kind of cozy yards because they don’t break their open yard into smaller bits. They tend to plant around the perimeter with a patio off the back door and one, big, open grassy yard in the middle. Really, the idea is much like how we break the inside of our houses into small parts (rooms) through the use of walls and doorways.

This statue at the Guercio residence in Buffalo is a good example of an eye-grabbing focal point. The mirror behind the statue gives the illusion of more space than the garden really has.

   2.) Focal points. Here’s something else most people overlook: little eye-grabbers that add a ton of interest and personality to a garden.

   These are things like statues, fountains, birdbaths, decorative urns, antiques, found objects, signs, bee skeps, gazing globes – basically any accessory that you like.

   Focal points work especially well at the end of a path or down the middle of a view when you turn a corner or head into a new area. They also look natural as a separator between two groups of plants.

   I’ve seen time and again what a huge difference a focal point makes as a finishing touch to a garden. Your plants might look great, but they usually look so much better when you add just one well-placed accessory.

   Give it a try if your yard is focal-pointless. It might be that one little subtle thing that you’re missing.

   3.) More onesies and twosies. In bigger gardens, you run the risk of having a jumbled mess if you don’t work in bigger masses. However, “masses” of one or two are fine when you don’t have a lot of space to work with.

   So long as you mix and match your colors and textures, lots of variety is the way to go. A small yard with a few masses of a few plants won’t have nearly the interest or seasonal change.

   The Buffalo gardens also show the value of opting for plants with colorful leaves. These give color all season and not just when the flowers are out.

   Good examples are coleus, sweet potato vines, coralbells, hosta and pretty much anything that’s variegated.

   It’s much harder to describe how to build a small garden than to actually see them. It’s a long way to Buffalo, but the ideas you’ll get are worth it.

   Garden Walk Buffalo is the last Saturday and Sunday of July. Mark July 28 and 29, 2012, on your calendar now if you want to see it.

   Lowee’s Group Tours and I ran a bus trip up to see it this year, and given the interest we had this year, we’ll probably do another one next year. Check my Talks and Trips page for details when the 2012 trip lineup is ready.