The Garden
Those overlooked portions of your property--tucked alongside garages or sideyards--are frequently relegated to wastelands of scrubby lawn.
But Anne Roth, a landscape designer for Roger’s Gardens in Corona del Mar, believes that a little planning and planting can go a long way in transforming a small space into a beautiful garden.
“Our American version of an English cottage garden, what I like to call an English country garden, is ideal for a small area because you can pack a lot of plants into a small space,” she says. “And because it’s small, it’s easier to maintain.”
She helped Donna and Bud Nichols of Newport Beach transform an 180-square-foot sideyard into a picture-perfect English country garden filled with hundreds of colorful plants.
The Nicholses are lifelong enthusiasts, but their schedules limit the time they can spend tending to the garden.
To make matters worse, their property rests on heavy clay soil, and through the years they’ve had to contend with drainage problems.
They discovered that the source of water seeping into the house foundation came from a sideyard abutting the garage. The small yard had been a grassy playground for their children and the site for a table. The area was rarely used once the children left home.
“Since we had to do major work and put in a large concrete wall beside the house to protect it from water, we decided this was the time to transform that sideyard into the English garden we’d been longing for,” Donna Nichols says.
After several meetings with Roth, during which they showed her photographs of English gardens they admired, Roth prepared a plan.
“We didn’t change a thing,” Donna Nichols says.
After the drainage construction, work on the L-shaped sideyard began.
The first step was to remove the aged lawn that had been taken over by Bermuda grass.
“You want to be sure to eradicate [weeds] so they can’t invade the new garden,” Roth says.
Next came the hardscape.
A walkway of used bricks in a herringbone pattern was placed through the garden past three informal planting beds and a small patio containing a chaise, love seat and ornamental flower cart.
When designing a garden for small areas, Roth likes to include meandering pathways that utilize most of the space and serve to create and define distinct planting beds. If personal preference isn’t for used brick, she suggests flagstone or 24-inch round stepping stones, set in sand or mortar. Gravel is another option.
A fence was installed along the property line abutting the garage. The 6-foot white wooden fence includes 18-inches of lattice to support a lush cover of vines.
Roth specified four Bower vines (Pandorea jasminoides ‘Rosea’) selected to provide a green veil of privacy. The evergreen vines produce pink trumpet-shaped flowers each spring. Spring color is intensified by a border of foxgloves in front of the vines.
In selecting plants, consider their size, light and water requirements. Because the Nichols wanted a cutting garden filled with roses, delphiniums, larkspur and other seasonal flowers, all the plants have the same water requirements.
The portion of the sideyard next to their house has a northeast exposure, in shade most of the day. Plants that need little direct sun were selected.
Foundation plantings include a Camellia japonica ‘Nuccio’s Pearl’ and dwarf hydrangea ‘Pink Elf.’ In front of the shrubs are sky-blue columbines, cyclamens, ferns and liriope.
A 5-foot planting bed near the small patio showcases a Mayten tree (Maytenus boaria), a graceful tree resembling a small-scale weeping willow. This is one of Roth’s favorite trees for landscapes because it’s slow-growing and easy to control by pruning for size and shape.
“When designing gardens for small spaces, it’s important to select dwarf varieties of plants, trees or shrubs,” Roth says. “You don’t want to overwhelm the space by [using] plants that aren’t in scale.”
Small gardens can contain a single clump of a specific plant, such as stock, that would be lost in a sweeping landscape where repetition of the same plants is often the rule.
A gap between the Nichols’ house and garage was filled in with the construction of an arbor.
An iceberg rose and a buddleia shrub are the permanent plants in front of the arbor, covered by a climbing Eden rose. Seasonal color comes from larkspur, scabiosa daisies and bedding plants.
After they finish blooming, Donna Nichols replaces the annuals with other cutting flowers, including cosmos, snapdragons and zinnias.
The garden cart is decorated with an eye-catching sea horse. A New Zealand hybrid tea rose provides a fragrant backdrop to the cart, overflowing with colorful pansies, petunias or other seasonal plants.
Along the garage wall, one existing plant was permitted to remain: “A very nice Phoenix palm was already growing there, so we just created a small planting bed with a tropical feel,” Roth says.
The 8-foot palm is now accented by sturdy 2-foot begonias (B. ‘Richmondensis’) and leatherleaf fern (Aspidium capense), which Nichols uses in her cut-flower bouquets.
And what would an English country garden be without sweet peas?
Donna Nichols’ prized sweet peas grow against an iron trellis against the garage wall.
She values the beauty of the garden as well as its ease of maintenance.
“It’s easy to work with because it’s so small,” she says. “It’s so easy to change out the annuals when they’ve finished blooming.”
