Garden ideas
Twenty-two guides built around the way people actually plan a garden — by the look they want, or by the part of the property they are stuck on.
By style
Styles
What the style is, the plants that carry it, and where it falls apart.
Mediterranean garden
Silver foliage, pale stone and heat-tolerant planting. A Mediterranean garden looks generous on very little water — provided the drainage is right.
Full sun · Low water
Japanese garden
Fewer species, placed with more care. A Japanese garden reads as calm because nearly everything in it is green, evergreen and deliberately positioned.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Cottage garden
Generous, closely planted and slightly untidy on purpose. A cottage garden earns its looseness by having hard edges and real structure underneath it.
Full sun · Moderate water
Modern garden
A modern garden lives or dies on a handful of decisions — the paving module, one repeated plant, and how clean you keep the edges.
Full sun · Low water
Rock garden
Alpines die of wet, not cold. Get the drainage and the stone placement right and a rock garden looks after itself for years.
Full sun · Low water
Gravel garden
Planted into gravel and never watered after the first summer. This is the lowest-input garden that still looks like somebody designed it.
Full sun · Low water
Wildlife garden
A garden that feeds insects from March to October and still reads as deliberate to everyone walking past it.
Full sun · Low water
Shade garden
The hard part of shade is not the light — it is the dry soil under trees. Solve that and shade becomes the easiest garden to keep.
Shade · Moderate water
Coastal garden
On the coast, wind is the entire design problem. Filter it rather than block it and a surprising range of planting becomes possible.
Full sun · Low water
Formal garden
Symmetry, repetition and clipped green architecture. The most demanding style to maintain, and the only one that looks finished in January.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Kitchen garden
Productive and good-looking are not in conflict. A kitchen garden just needs its geometry settled before any seed goes in.
Full sun · High water
Tropical garden
The jungle effect comes from leaf size and layering, not from a warm climate. Most of it is achievable a long way outside the tropics.
Partial shade · High water
By space
Spaces
The awkward, specific spaces — the front, the slope, the balcony, the bit beside the pool.
Front garden
The front garden is the one everybody sees and nobody has time for. It has to look right in February and still hide the bins.
Partial shade · Low water
Back garden
Most back gardens are one undivided rectangle. Splitting it into three honest zones is what makes it feel bigger, not smaller.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Small garden
Small gardens fail from too many small things. Fewer, larger moves are what make a tight space read as generous.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Balcony garden
On a balcony the pot is the garden. Get the container size and the wind right and nearly everything else follows.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Roof terrace
A roof terrace is an engineering problem before it is a design one: load, wind, drainage, and how anything gets up there in the first place.
Full sun · Low water
Patio
Most patios are built too small and too grey. The size of the table decides everything else about them.
Full sun · Low water
Driveway and entrance
A driveway is the largest hard surface most properties have, and the one most likely to be done badly.
Full sun · Low water
Sloping garden
A slope becomes an asset the moment you stop trying to flatten it. The real decision is how much to terrace and how much to plant.
Partial shade · Low water
Poolside garden
Poolside planting is chosen by what it does not do: no litter in the water, no thorns, no roots lifting the paving.
Full sun · Low water
Courtyard garden
Enclosed, sheltered and usually shaded. A courtyard is a microclimate, which makes some difficult plants easy and some easy plants impossible.
Shade · Moderate water
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