How to make a small garden look bigger

How big is your garden? Maybe it’s tiny. Luckily there are some simple ways to make a small garden look bigger. Here are some top tips to extend the look and feel of your garden to create a lovely entertainment space.

Hot tips to make a small garden look bigger

Create visual mystery

The best tip of all? Create mystery. If you can look out of your back window or door and see the whole garden without interruption, change it. Add visual barriers to give the illusion of hidden delights. Maybe place a fence with a gap in the middle or to one side half way down the garden, paint it, or grow scented and flowering climbers up it to give you a magical doorway into the remaining area. Make a new wall if you like, and make it curved for an even more spacious feel.

Hazel hurdle fence panels are fantastic, letting some light through and giving you a beautiful woven look. Leave it plain, paint it, or grow climbers up it. Think about scented climbers like rambling roses as well as evergreens.

A thick hedge with an arched doorway cut into it looks stunning, and some hedging materials grow really fast. Think evergreens for a year-round effect and use these fast-growing ones:

• Privet comes in many colours including different greens, yellows, and variegated varieties. It grows around 60cm a year and gets thicker and denser when you trim it regularly
• Laurel has the same kind of fast growth with bigger leaves and also comes in a variety of colours, tough and evergreen
• Blend hornbeam with natives like blackthorn, hazel, and hawthorn to create a varied hedge that attracts more wildlife to your garden, as well as giving you the illusion of more space
• Bamboos tend to grow around 40cm a year and make a beautiful barrier. There’s a huge variety of different bamboos with colourful stems, from black to yellows and greens
• Withies, aka willow stems, are fantastic. Poke them into the ground in spring and they’ll grow into little willow trees that you can trim as they grow so they get leafy from the bottom. Bend and weave them together to create a gorgeous living barrier. Choose plants with different coloured stems for a great look in winter. The stems can be yellow, light and dark red, browns, and various greens
• Some people hate and fear leylandii because it grows so fast. But like all plants it’s only a problem if you let it go mad! Just keep it trimmed like you would any hedge and it’ll behave itself

You can also cut ‘windows’ into a thick hedge like this to create mystery and make it look like there’s more space.

Make a small garden look bigger – Change the space dramatically with colour

There’s one totally reliable way to make a small garden look bigger in no time, and it involves paint. Whether your garden walls or fences are brick, stone or wood, using a rich, dark colour on them pushes them visually apart. It’s a dramatic effect that can also help preserve the fence or wall against the ravages of the great British weather.

Think charcoal grey, a madly trendy colour at the moment. Aubergine or a deep red are gorgeous, as is deep purple, because they all contrast so beautifully with the greens of the plants. Take a look at this living wall in purple. Isn’t it amazing?

A pale colour will draw the walls or fencing inwards visually, making it feel smaller. But it also makes the space feel lighter and brighter. If you have a dark city patio overlooked and surrounded by other buildings you might want to use a pale paint for the walls or fences. You’ll appreciate the light it delivers. Try a pale salmon pink for contrast, the kind of colour you find on rural cottages in some parts of the country, a lovely lilac, or a fresh pale blue.

Throw the light around with garden mirrors

Can you hang or otherwise fix mirrors to the walls, fences? Maybe hang them in trees and bushes? We sell some beautiful arched mirrors specially made for the garden in fashionable colours. But you can use almost any kind of mirror outdoors. Hang them individually. Or make an interesting group hung together as a piece of cool outdoor artwork that hurls brightness around the space when the sun shines. Mirrors also look amazing after dusk when you light up your chiminea, fire pit, firebowl or BBQ.

Make a small garden look bigger with circles

Is your lawn square or rectangular? Cutting it into a circle will let your eyes take longer exploring the area, giving you the illusion of more space. Plant lushly in the curved triangles left behind.

Plant high plants in front of low ones

Another reliable way to make instant mystery is to plant up your flowerbeds a different way. Most of us instinctively place low plants at the front of a bed and tall ones behind. When you do the opposite, putting tall specimens at the front of a bed and lower ones behind, you give your eyes something to look through, peering into the view beyond.

Make curved paths that take you on a journey

A straight garden path is nowhere near as good as a curvy one to make a small garden look bigger. When your eyes are inspired to wander rather than land on their final destination straight away, you naturally feel the space is more generous.

Plant something dramatic in the middle

Plant all around the edge of your garden and it’ll feel limited. Plant something beautiful in the middle of the lawn to make the whole space feel bigger. Weird but true!

Use Keter garden storage to get rid of clutter

There’s nothing quite like a cluttered garden to make it feel small and cramped. Buy beautiful garden storage from Keter that sits back subtly against the background, giving you a place to stash your stuff as well as handy garden seating. Plenty of their garden storage boxes also double as stylish garden benches, and they come in a range of lovely, calm, cool greys and browns.

Keep it simple and use the right scale

The more stuff you cram into a small garden, the smaller it’ll look. Another reason why Keter garden storage is such a good idea!

Also, make sure the things you put in the garden are the right scale. Adding an enormous garden furniture set to a tiny patio will make the whole place feel awkward. Choose small, neat garden furniture for small spaces and it’ll feel bigger.

Create ups and downs

Can you add height? How about digging down to make a sunken area? A variety of heights and different levels instantly makes an area look bigger.

Make zones or ‘rooms’

Split the area into different ‘rooms’ for the illusion of space. Think about rooms in a house and see if you can do something similar to make a small garden look bigger.

Use containers and window boxes instead of making flowerbeds

Rather than use up valuable entertainment space with beds, use planters – large and small – for your plants and flowers. Then, if you need to, you can move them out of the way for alfresco parties. The same goes for window boxes, a brilliantly simple way to free up more floor space for fun outdoors.

We wish you loads of fun figuring out how to add mystery, change the ambience, and make a small garden look bigger!

PS. You might also like to read our post about six ways to use Keter garden storage.