How to Plan a Small Garden

When your outdoor space is small, advance planning is critical to get the highest yield -- and the most enjoyment -- from your garden. Flowers, vegetables, fruit and herbs can all thrive, but you need to be selective in the varieties you choose to make the most of a small area. A tiny garden space kicks your creative senses into high gear, so draft the garden plans early, leaving time to incorporate the practical requirements of successful gardening before planting season arrives.

Instructions

1. Choose first which large-sized plants you want to grow. Place dwarf fruit trees, columnar apple trees, upright raspberry and blackberry bushes and grapes that grow on trellises near the side of the house where they will receive ample sunlight, protection from inclement weather and not shade the rest of the small garden.

2. Block out space at the side of the garden for smaller, permanent shrubs like blueberry bushes for their fruit and azaleas or other flowering shrubs for their seasonal beauty. You may also wish to line one or more sides of the garden perimeter with narrow, evergreen arborvitae or holly shrubs to create a privacy hedge.

3. Plot out the orientation of your garden rows so that taller plants like corn and pole beans don't block the sun from lower-growing plants that need plenty of sunshine to thrive. Take advantage of the shade from tall plants, though, by planning an adjacent row of lettuce and spinach, which benefit from cooler shade on hot days.

4. Mark out an area at the edge of the garden where the vines of winter squash, melons and cucumbers can spread without interfering with the rest of the garden. Grow select varieties with smaller-size fruit vertically on a trellis to conserve ground space. Choose bush types of summer squash, instead of varieties that grow on vines, to produce the vegetables in a compact area.

5. Schedule successive plantings as part of your small garden plan. Instead of one long row of carrots such as you might grow in a large garden, for example, plant a short row early in the spring and another in late summer to mature before cold winter weather sets in.

6. Organize several rows in your small garden for inter-planting. This technique allows you to grow a row of lettuce, Bok Choy, peas and other vegetables harvested early in the season, next to peppers, cabbage, tomatoes and various plants that take much longer to produce a harvest. As you harvest and remove the early-bearing plants, space becomes available for the larger plants as they expand in height and width.

7. Incorporate edible flowers into your small garden plan, especially if you feel the need to produce food, but crave the beauty of colorful blossoms. Use the space under fruit trees to grow pansies and Johnny-jump-ups to use for salad and desert garnishes. Tuck one or two multi-colored nasturtiums and orange calendulas in at the end of vegetable rows, and place borage near a trellis where the plant's bright blue flowers will stand out against other garden foliage.

Source: http://www.ehow.com/how_4818747_plan-small-garden.html

How to Create a Garden Concept Plan

When designing a concept plan for your garden consider how you can make the transition from garden to house as smooth and pleasant as possible. If you have French windows or patio doors and you are not able to change the door, you can design the garden so that the view from the windows is enticing. Consider a concept plan when working with natural features or obstacles to make a garden seem natural and enticing.

Things You'll Need
Paper (Graph is suggested)
Colored pencils
Camera

Instructions

1. Experiment with ideas on paper. Make lots of copies of your initial survey sketch and tryout ideas in pencil. Decide on the most important of your requirements and sacrifice the others, allowing a few generous spaces in your garden rather than too many tiny ones. This will make the garden less fussy and ultimately give more pleasure.

2. Use photographs. Your sketch plan is useful for getting a feeling of the balance of the different areas within the space, but will not give you a picture of the three-dimensional reality of the garden. For this it is useful to look at your photographs and try out some of your ideas on them.

3. Plan for plant growth. One of the most difficult things is imagining how the plants will look when they have matured and grown, particularly trees and shrubs. This is where your overlay and photographs can help. If you know a shrub is eventually going to become 7 ft (2 m) tall, you can see what effect this will have on the garden plan in a few years' time

4. Alter existing features. You might want to move a path nearer to a fence, or further from it, to provide a wider border, or take it diagonally across the garden to create two separate spaces. Diagonal lines across a narrow garden can make it look wider. You can move a small shed, instead of getting rid of it, to a place where it is less obtrusive and can be concealed by climbers or shrubs.

5. Create a feeling of space. Small gardens can be made to seem much more spacious by designing in diagonals. A path running diagonally from one side of the garden to the other and then back again at an angle will divide the garden into three. The spaces made in this way can be separated by tall or low planting and will make the garden seem larger because the eye cannot see exactly where the garden ends and is intrigued by the planting between. Arches create a feeling of space by implying that there is more happening beyond them. A small gate under the arch will enhance the feeling of entering into a different domain.

6. Plan ahead. If your basic framework works well, later on you will be able to change how you use it. For example, if you build a brick sandpit, butting on to a brick-edged lawn, as the children grow older, you will be able to exchange sand for water and have a garden

Source: http://www.ehow.com/how_4460854_create-garden-concept-plan.html