Garden ideas come in all shapes and sizes, varying hugely depending on climate, soil, local planting traditions, how you want to use your garden, and how high or low maintenance you need your garden to be. Within the English garden world alone, you can find formal gardens, romantic cottage gardens, modern city gardens and much, much more. Increasingly, the gardening world is moving away from water-intensive, high-maintenance gardens and looking more towards resilient, drought-tolerant styles such as those that are traditionally associated with the Mediterranean. Biodiversity is another key principle of today’s gardens, and a reason why many designers are minimizing the size of their lawns and looking to meadow-style planting to encourage wildlife. Gardens are also a brilliant way to help people get more in touch with the food they consume, and edible planting and kitchen gardens are increasingly popular, even in small gardens.
Garden design isn’t limited to the actual planting, of course. There are plenty of other elements that can make or break a garden, such as patios and terraces, greenhouses and garden rooms, pools and ponds. These are expensive things to install and difficult to change, so it’s worth getting them right the first time. We’ve gathered together a few of our favourite garden ideas and styles of planting, for both front gardens and back gardens, all drawn from the House & Garden archive, along with advice on how to get going with each.
How to lay out a garden
Before you start, think about how you are going to use your garden and what you need to make that happen, Top 50 Garden Designer Angel Collins explains in our piece How to design a garden from scratch in 17 steps. The first thing to think about is a seating area with some pretty garden chairs – preferably this should be near the house and if possible facing southwest.
How to design a garden cheaply
Gardening doesn’t have to be expensive, as long as you know what you’re doing and plan ahead. Tabi Jackson Gee. Her two top tips? Play the long game (especially if you’ve just moved house) and don’t binge-buy at the garden centre. Keep reading for her full cheap garden ideas and a guide on making your garden budget go further.
The garden trends to know for 2024
Garden ideas from the House & Garden archive
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Eva Nemeth1/17The cottage garden
“The English country garden, more specifically the cottage garden, is so intensely romantic and full of charm that even the most ardent minimalists would struggle to deny a soft spot for them,” says garden designer Lottie Delamain, looking at this beautiful part of Libby Russell’s Somerset garden. “Blousy, abundant and floriferous, they’re a tangle of girlish colour, soft shapes and accidental magic. But underneath it all, they’re actually quite hard to pull off and often true labours of love.
“The overriding feeling you want from a cottage garden is abundance – bordering on overgrown and ever-so-slightly out of control, rangy height, borders spilling over paths and clouds of colour artfully mingled in a decorative tangle. Plants that give height, that dance and sway and stretch long limbs towards the sun are all very welcome – think hollyhocks, angelica, foxgloves and verbena. And these don’t necessarily have to be planted at the back, they can be front-row, leaning perilously over paths. Equally at mid and low levels, choose plants that create an airy haze of flowers or flop lazily over edges – Alchemilla mollis, Gaura, Dianthus carthusianorum.”
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Andrew Montgomery2/17The kitchen garden
Tom Hoblyn’s walled garden in Suffolk, with its neat beds divided by low box hedges, is a dream kitchen garden. The key to such gardens is the arrangement of beds and the definition of pathways, although there are plenty of easy ways to do it. As our garden editor Clare Foster notes, it’s best to “sketch out a plan with a number of beds divided by pathways that can be covered with gravel or bark chips. Beds can be edged in brick or stone, or you may prefer raised beds made using wooden sleepers, Corten steel or recycled plastic.”
There are other styles to think about if you’re planning a kitchen garden, such as a French-style potager, “a space where ornamental plants grow side by side with edibles like vegetables and herbs,” as garden designer Tabi Jackson Gee explains. Such gardens might look purely decorative at first, with their espaliered fruit trees, box hedging and perennial flowers, but look closer and you’ll find lots of productive crops in the mix.
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Christoper Horwood3/17The city garden
There are of course no limits to what you can do in a city garden, depending on the size and shape of your plot, and your individual taste. That said, there are a few common layouts for the typical terraced or semi-detached townhouse garden, which tends to be long and narrow. A terraced area is a good idea right outside the house, particularly if you have french doors to open onto it. Beyond that, a small lawn or beds can follow, perhaps with a shed or garden room at the far end. Make sure you include evergreen planting that will look good all year round–you can’t escape the view from the kitchen, after all! Lucy Williams’ garden, pictured above, is a great example.
Containers are very much your friend in a small garden: they can enliven an area of terrace or decking, and can also easily be moved around if you want to switch things up. Our garden editor Clare Foster also recommends that you “trick the eye by growing large plants, which will make the space appear bigger. Choose ones with bold foliage, such as Fatsia japonica, or two or three large topiary specimens to create focal points. If you have the room, plant a single tree, such as a crab apple or a multi-stemmed Amelanchier lamarckii, available from Barcham.”
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Andrew Montgomery4/17Topiary gardens
Topiary is the hallmark of many an English formal garden, as you can see in the beautiful image of Mapperton, above, whether it is used to plot out the structure of the garden via hedges that mark out boundaries and pathways, or used more whimsically in amusing shapes. If you want your garden to look good in winter, topiary is one of the best ways to do it. “The structural elements of a design, including hard landscaping, cleverly placed trees, hedges or clipped topiary, knit everything together and give the eye a focus in the winter months,” says Clare Foster. “A heavy frost or a light sprinkling of snow can highlight the sweeps, lines and curves of these static elements, lifting the winter garden into a magical realm to quicken the heart and cheer the eye.”
“In terms of evergreen plants to use for topiary, there are dozens to try as alternatives to the popular box and yew. Bay (Laurus nobilis), common privet (Ligustrum vulgare) and Japanese spindle (Euonymus japonicus) can all be clipped into any shape you choose. Phillyrea angustifolia is another popular topiary plant, while hollies, elaeagnus and conifers such as Thuja occidentalis and Cupressus macrocarpa can also be used. Garden designer Arne Maynard has popularized deciduous topiary, using clipped hornbeam and beech to form striking domes and chess-piece forms that draw the eye and give weight and pace to the winter landscape.”
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Eva Nemeth5/17Roof gardens
If you are lucky enough to have a roof big enough to grow plants on, there’s no excuse for not creating a beautiful roof garden. This will essentially be a container garden, whether you use smaller containers or larger planters. One of the most important considerations, therefore, is how much weight the roof can take. Once that’s established, you can plan a layered scheme, ideally one that mimics the shapes and sizes of beds in a garden on the ground.
A very different option worth considering is the green roof, which essentially adds a layer of planting onto a roof via a substrate, in which grasses, sedums and small flowers can be planted. These have many benefits, such as providing microclimates for insects and bird life and reducing the surface runoff of rainfall to positively affecting the heat produced by urban environments and purifying the air by turning carbon dioxide into oxygen. Then there are the direct advantages for the owner such as providing insulation in winter and reducing the need for air conditioning in summer.
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Eva Nemeth6/17The herbaceous border
The herbaceous border, spilling over with flowers, is one of the hallmarks of the English country garden. Largely relying on herbaceous perennials, which die back each winter before coming back to life in spring, these borders have a full, romantic feel which is nevertheless highly structured.
This large, curving border in our garden editor Clare Foster’s garden was created from scratch in spring 2018. With the help of her family, Clare dug over the border, enriched the soil with compost and planted it with a mixture of grasses and herbaceous plants, carefully chosen to ensure interest in each season. Shown here in July, it includes magenta Penstemon ‘Garnet’, pale Scabiosa ochroleuca and tall spires of Verbascum chaixii ‘Album’ in a haze of Stipa gigantea.
As garden designer Angel Collins says in her guide to designing a garden from scratch, “for most borders, start with the principle of the front, middle and back row, where you have three different height requirements: tallest at the back, shortest at the front. Next choose three perennials for each row which flower at different times of the year and repeat these in groups of three or five plants, making sure they are not in lines but groups. There is a danger that this could look overly neat, so try to encourage a bit of a wriggle in your planting–it doesn’t matter if your group merges into a different row.”
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Sabina Ruber7/17Rose gardens
Roses have long been an indispensable part of the English garden, loved for their scent as well as their gorgeous, many-coloured flowers, which come into their own in June and bloom throughout the summer. Roses can be planted in borders and beds, they can climb up walls and make beautiful container plants as well. Plant roses among other flowers and plants, rather than on their own in dedicated rose beds; this makes things fuller and more interesting, and will ensure that you have blooms all year round. Visit some classic English gardens for inspiration on how to plant roses; Kiftsgate in Gloucestershire, pictured above, is one of our favourites.
For borders and beds, Hazel Sillver advises that you “opt for repeat-flowering varieties, which have the colour to blend well with a tapestry of perennials and annuals.” For walls, “a climbing (not a rambling) rose is required,” while ramblers are best for pergolas and planting around trees.
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Ngoc Minh Ngo8/17Shade gardens
Not every garden (or every part of a garden) can be gloriously sunny, and that is often viewed as a problem, but there is something very atmospheric and beautiful about shady spots. As Lottie Delamain explains, “shady gardens have hidden depths – rather than relying on ostentatious blooms and washes of colour, their character comes from texture, form and scale.”
Susanna Grant, shady plant champion and author of shady planting bible Shade, advises that you “look to nature for inspiration – “if you have tree shade, look at woodland planting. Early flowering bulbs, when the canopies have not yet filled out can be echoed in your garden and I love drifts of Tiarellas, Tellima grandiflora and Luzula nivea for a shady meadow-like vibe”.
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Elsa Young9/17Balcony gardens
Gardener Charlie McCormick has a lot of experience with balcony gardening, having had his own in London. “The advantages of a small outdoor space is that they are quite easy to maintain, giving you plenty of time to potter and enjoy the space” he explains. When it comes to planting on a balcony garden, Charlie’s advice is that “you can rarely choose which direction your garden, balcony or terrace is going to face so adapt your planting to suit its situation and exposure to sun and shade. Hostas are good in the shade and they are particularly easy to grow (just beware of slugs – consider banding your pots with a copper ring to ward off devastation). A surprising number of perennials enjoy a spot away from direct sunlight. Foxgloves, agapanthus, lavender and star jasmine are good in sunny locations. Accessibility can affect small spaces so it’s good to have a think about what size planters to use on a balcony or small deck and also consider how the garden is going to be watered before installing them. Pots dry out quickly so will need regular watering in the warmer months. It’s worth putting a simple automated watering system if you know you will occasionally be away or don’t fancy endless trips with a watering can.”
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Eva Nemeth10/17Front gardens
Of course, a lot of our gardening attention should go into our back garden as that’s where we spend our time, but front gardens should not be left to languish. However much space you have, a front garden can be a space for experimentation and can encourage you to innovate in ways you might not have expected, including – of course – thinking creatively about the most efficient use of space, and how plants and other garden features might interact with whatever sit in front of your house differently to what’s behind it.
Our Garden Editor, Clare Foster, has plenty to say about front gardens: “The most important first step in any front garden is to ensure that your hard surfaces are permeable. Flooding is becoming an increasing problem as weather events become more extreme with global warming, and rainwater needs somewhere to go, so the more permeable surfaces and flower beds you can have in your garden the better. Plan a gravel driveway that you can soften round the edges with self-seeding plants such as poppies, fennel or valerian, or choose permeable block paving with space for flower beds all around. Any area of mixed planting will also improve the soil underneath, acting like a sponge to soak up run-off after heavy rain. In terms of planting, choose tough, low maintenance plants that will give as much seasonal interest as possible. Plan a simple layout to give continuity, starting with structural shrubs. Frame a path or front door with yew spheres or a low hedge of lavender, and then infill with colourful seasonal planting: tulips and honesty for spring, geums and salvias for summer, and Japanese anemones for autumn.”
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ANDREW MONTGOMERY11/17The mediterranean garden
Mediterranean gardens suit sunny, dry climes, so they are not perhaps an option we immediately think of in the UK. However, they are sustainable and beautiful if you do have enough sunshine to maintain them. That’s the one and only rule: sun. As gardener Lottie Delamain explains, “Mediterranean planting has many virtues, not least that it’s very low maintenance – as Olivier Fillipi, the celebrated Mediterranean plantsman says, they are gardens “without a gardener. No one is there to weed or water, no gardener comes to mow, or treat or fertilise.”
As in their natural habitat, the plants we associate with the Mediterranean like free-draining, poor quality soil and not too much attention. So, ideally you’ll need a sheltered, south-facing spot with free-draining soil (i.e. not heavy clay). The usual cast of plants that feature in a Mediterranean garden are also those that are undemanding in terms of water; they have evolved to thrive on the sun-baked coastal plains and mountains bordering the Mediterranean sea. Often evergreen, (another plus) these plants also tend to have silvery grey-green foliage designed to conserve water and reflect the harsh sun. Drought-tolerant plants such as these are becoming more and more appealing as our once green and fertile isle is subject to longer, hotter summers due to the changing climate.” Her final word of advice? “Gravel, which is often associated with Mediterranean gardens (as opposed to lawn or paving) will further reduce your maintenance bills and up your sustainability credentials – it acts as a weed suppressant and also help with water drainage.”
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Jason Ingram12/17The naturalistic garden
When it comes to naturalistic gardens, Piet Oudolf is the man to look to. The gardener is widely recognised as bringing it to the fore, translating a desire for a wilder, more natural style of planting into something that can be achieved at home, because here is the great misconception about naturalistic meadow planting: it is not a simple replica of nature that you can just abandon to do its thing, but a stylised and contrived rendering of it. As Oudolf says “I try to create nature as you would wish to see it”.
Gardener Lottie Delamain has the lowdown on how to recreate this look at home, suggesting “swathes and large groupings of long-flowering perennials and grasses, naturalistic shapes and lines (no rectilinear symmetry here), an abundance of colour and variety of form and an appreciation for plants long past their flowering “best” are some of the hallmarks of this style of planting. Thanks to this, naturalistic gardens look good well beyond the traditional late-Spring-Autumn window, and in fact often look their best in the depths of winter.” When it comes to planting, Lottie’s advice is “the backbone of naturalistic planting schemes are grasses, which form the visually quiet and restful stage on which the other players perform. Grasses are used as a matrix plant, to knit the more showy characters together harmoniously. In a smaller space, in order to achieve a similar look, selecting fewer species and having larger groupings of them is key. If you have a larger space, this style of planting is great way of covering large areas with (relatively) low maintenance planting.”
Sabina Rüber13/17Pools, ponds and rills
As the temperatures of summers in the UK increase, garden designers have seen an increase in clients requesting water features in their gardens, ranging from plunge pools for a quick, cooling dip, to entirely natural swimming pools. They are an excellent way of encouraging wildlife in your garden and providing for that ecosystem. Surprisingly, you do not need to have a big garden to have a water feature and even a tiny city garden can have a rill running through it to provide a cooling element on hot days. It’s not a small undertaking however, and adding a water element to a garden is a large build, so it’s best to consider one as you start a landscaping project. Consider what you want from your water feature – wildlife, somewhere to swim, a focal point – and take it from there.
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Owen Gale14/17The container garden
A container garden is where your plants are in pots, planters, repurposed sinks, apple crates, old wine boxes or other forms of container, rather than planted into the ground. Container gardens are therefore brilliant in rental gardens where you can’t plant anything permanent, on small balconies or roof terraces or when you inherit a garden with mean borders and acres of patio, but don’t have the budget to re-landscape. They work brilliantly in city gardens with little space, as you can still have abundant greenery without sacrificing space for garden furniture, and you can move your containers around to accommodate parties and the like.
This small London garden was designed by Piecs Beeching, who used a pretty bench as a focal point and added an abundance of potted plants for colour and protection from neighbouring gardens. By using plants of varying height, Piers has created a sense of scale in the space that could surely give you some front or back garden ideas.
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15/17Patios and terraces
We all love a lawn but a patio, terrace or patch of decking provides a brilliant social space in a garden, somewhere to centre some garden furniture, plants in pots and create a distinct area for eating, relaxing and socialising. The first step towards your patio transformation is to tidy your existing space. Throw away old plant pots and broken containers, sweep the terrace and prune back overgrown shrubs or plants that overhang the space. Give yourself a blank canvas and then step back and imagine the elements you would like in your revamped space, from seating area to storage.
In her London house, Neisha Crosland has created a patio that is accessed from the kitchen and living room, which is the ideal position for it. She has other patio spaces dotted throughout the large garden – but this one features a low table so is more of a drinks space than somewhere to eat. Garden furniture is the easiest way to define the space.
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Paul Massey16/17Garden rooms and sheds
If you have the space for an outbuilding in the garden, consider a garden room or shed – depending on what function you need it to perform. A garden room is an extension of a house, and as such can serve many purposes; Fiona Golfar’s (pictured) is her writing room; Beata Heuman has a wallpaper-adorned summer house; and others function as extra guest rooms. A shed has many iterations and long gone are the days of dusty, cobweb-adorned horrors, instead they can still be beautiful while being purely functional as spaces to store gardening items.
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Eva Nemeth17/17Greenhouses
For the enthusiastic gardener, a greenhouse is a must-have, enabling you to take care of your tender plants in the winter and sow seeds in the early spring. A restored Victorian greenhouse makes for quite a special and characterful addition to your garden. There is a huge range of options out there, starting with affordable, ready-made options that you can buy and assemble on a pre-prepared concrete base, to bespoke greenhouses that can cost tens of thousands of pounds and which will perfectly dovetail with the space you have in your garden. Traditional greenhouses are rectangular in shape, but you can also buy lean-to versions that can be situated against a wall, or charming octagonal shapes that might fit better into a tricky space.
When siting your greenhouse, it’s traditional to orient the ridge east-west, maximising the amount of light you get in winter, though this is not essential. If you live in a garden where strong winds prevail, make sure the gable end of the greenhouse (the strongest part) faces the wind. Stay away from sloping ground when positioning your greenhouse, and also keep clear of overhanging trees.
