Landscaping Design Features for Gardens in Urban Areas

If you live in a densely-populated urban area, such as Ascot, Esher, or Cobham, chances are that even if you have a garden, it’s likely to be a small one.

Those with small outside spaces can often feel left out when looking for fun and interesting landscaping ideas, because so many gardening websites and magazines seem to assume that everyone has space for huge projects incorporating railway sleepers, extravagant floral displays, and expansive paving, decking and dining areas.

Here at Urban Landscape Design and Construction, we understand that to make the most of a small town or city garden, you may need to get clever. Here are five of our favourite tips that will give you the best chance of making a lot out of a little.

Make Use of Your Vertical Space

Even if you don’t have much floor space to play with in your garden, you can still use any walls and fences to take your planting and floral displays upwards. Attaching trellises will give climbing plants such as sweet peas, ivy and clematis something to wind around. If the sides to your garden are strong enough, you can even add shelving or other means of displaying pots or hanging trailing plants. 

You could also try running a few beams above your garden to create a pergola, then plant a vine at the bottom, and in summer you’ll have a covered retreat for al fresco dining and the outdoor life in all weathers. You’ll also get to enjoy a spectacular display when the leaves all turn a stunning shade of red in the autumn!

Pots and Containers

You may not have space for beds or a lawn, but you can still use pots, containers and raised beds on wheels for bedding plants, veg and even small trees and bushes. Not only will they leave more space than if you were to dig beds and borders into the ground, but you can also move them about to create new layouts as the fancy takes you!

Adding hanging baskets and window boxes to the general display is another great way of applying further varieties of texture and colour to the space you have available.

Grow In Layers

Using a combination of ground-level plants and plants in raised beds behind them can add height to your garden, but can also give the impression of greater depth than actually exists.

Attract Wildlife

Even a small garden can become a home for wildlife if you choose the right kinds of plants to attract pollinators and find places to hang feeders where the birds can feel safe. You could even have a small garden pond – something the size of a washing-up bowl buried in the ground and adorned with a few water plants will be enough to attract not only the insects that like to live in such environments, but also the larger creatures that like to eat them. You might even get frogs and newts!

Light and Mirrors

You may not be able to make your urban garden any bigger, but you can make it seem bigger with creatively placed mirrors! It’s a well-known trick for making rooms look larger than they actually are, but you may not realise that it can work just as well outside. You need to make sure that you get them in the right position so they catch any sunlight and reflect it back into shady areas. 

Whatever the size of your garden, the team at Urban Landscape Design and Construction has the creative imagination and skill to make it into a beautiful space for you to enjoy. Working across West London and Surrey, including Cobham, Ascot, and Esher, we’ve been transforming gardens since 2015. View our gallery to see what we can do, then get in touch with us to discuss your plans and ideas.