Planting a small-scale paradise

Chicago Tribune (MCT) - The tiny dooryard of a townhouse. The back porch of a six-flat. A balcony on the 12th floor. Or the 20-foot space between deck and garage behind a 19th century cottage.

No question, small gardens have different challenges than a sunny half-acre. "There's no space to waste," says Vermont designer Julie Moir Messervy (jmmds.com). "Every square inch is important."

That doesn't mean every square inch should be packed with plants. In tight quarters you have to edit, to focus the experience of the garden, to make space for people and to rest the eye.

Chicago garden designer Rinda West (rindawestdesigns.com) talks about "the need for void to define space." In a large garden, it might be a lawn; where space is small, West says, it may be the paving of a patio or a small area of ground cover.

Like any garden, a small plot needs layers: the lowest layer of perennials, annuals, ground covers; the middle layer of knee- to head-high shrubs, vines and tall grasses; and the high, often overhead layer of trees.

The walls that define many small gardens offer vertical space to create the mid-layer. West loves climbing roses. Clematis and other vines also can climb a trellis or wires along a wall or scramble over a screen or fence between gardens.

Those walls or screens serve another purpose: Creating the sense of enclosure that lets us feel like our gardens buffer us from the world.

Messervy urges the small-space gardener to begin by examining the garden from all angles, including inside the house. "How much of your neighbor's yard are you seeing?" she says. "How much does it impinge on how you feel when you are inside your house as well as outside?" Look for visual holes, she says, and think how to plug them.

The buffer need not be a solid 6-foot fence. You might get that getaway feeling with a fence that screens you when you sit at the dining table but has a lattice panel at the top for neighborly chatting when you are standing. Or it could be a screen of plants, such as columnar dwarf evergreens or tall grasses.

Think also about organization and circulation, West says. Will there be enough space around the seating so people can scoot their chairs back? How will you move around from the house to the back gate or the grill?

Harmony matters. If the home and garden hang together, both feel larger. So choose every piece of furniture and pot, as well as the overall style of the garden, in light of your architecture. "You've got to work the details," says Messervy.

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Her new book, "Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love" (Taunton Press, 249 pages, $30), is an inviting guide to creating gardens as an extension of living space.

Too much harmony is boring. There's always room in a garden for surprise, for a sense of a destination, West says. But a destination need not be the place where a path ends. It can be the place where your eye naturally lands: a special plant such as a contorted dwarf conifer set off by a bit of openness, or a single perfectly chosen ornament.

A small garden requires careful choices. Too many different colors, textures and shapes are overwhelming and cluttered. "You have to be much more selective," says Richard Hawke, plant evaluation manager at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Even in a small space, West says, you get better impact from fewer species and a mass of each.

Avoid plants that will burgeon beyond bounds. The wide range of plants available includes many smaller species and cultivars that have been bred to stay compact.

No matter which plants you choose, there will be pinching and pruning. "It's almost easier to have a large landscape," says Hawke, who has a small garden of his own. "It's harder to have something small and keep it in line."

Containers provide wiggle room. They can create a whole balcony or roof garden of pots. You can move them around to escape migrating shadows or switch out the plants during the season. You can tuck pots away to make room for a dinner party or use them to fill spots in beds where a plant didn't work out.

It may require a bit more thought and discipline, Hawke says, but "you can still have a full landscape even though you have a tiny garden."

GOOD PLANTS FOR SMALL GARDENS

Seek out species that are naturally small or cultivars that have been bred to stay compact, rather than fighting plants that want to grow big. Here are three to start:

1. 'Jolly Bee' geranium (Geranium 'Jolly Bee'): Mounding perennial, about 12 to 18 inches tall, has large blue flowers from late May through frost. Scrambles a bit as the season goes on.

2. Tennessee coneflower (Echinacea tennesseensis): At 20 to 30 inches, it's shorter than the classic native purple coneflower, but with much the same character.

3. Peach Drift rose (Rosa 'Meiggili'): A Zone 5-hardy, disease-resistant plant about 18 inches tall and 2 feet wide has lots of little roses, reblooming off and on. Pink, red and coral versions too.

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