Summary:
A small flower garden is one of the best design features for creating an outdoor entertainment space. This article discusses the advantages of a small garden, three types of garden plots, three classic garden styles: a Mediterranean garden, an English Cottage garden and a shade garden, with garden accessories included for each. The article ends with three crucial tips to make the most of your small space.

Details or Sample:
A small flower garden has many advantages:
• It is easier to create an “inspired” small space than a large one
• It will yield all the blooms needed for cut flowers
• It is a perfect backdrop for an intimate, outdoor entertainment area
• It costs less, yet leaves some money for unique, and better quality, plants
• It requires less maintenance, leaving time to enjoy your garden and guests

The first step to success is choosing a “theme,” or “style,” for the garden. A theme tends to focus purchases, with less temptation to buy random mixtures of plant materials and accessories.

A themed garden need not match the architecture of your home, but giving your home’s style a thought or two is a good idea. An Asian-styled, minimalist garden may not be in harmony with an English cottage, but may be perfect for a 1950’s Mid-Century Ranch. The goal is a unified look, and a look that is beautiful to your eye.

The theme should consider how much sun or shade, or mixture of the two, your garden receives. If you are longing for a woodland garden filled with ferns and mosses, but your garden is a sunny spot, you’ll have to rethink your style.

The Garden Plot:
• If your space backs up to a wall or fence: Use a trellis or netting to guide plantings and colors upward. Create a wall or fence with yews for a shade garden, or most evergreen shrubs or boxwoods for sun.

• If your space borders a concrete or stone patio edge or sidewalk: Use the ready-made border to define the space. Continue the look of the hardscape by tucking rocks and pebbles, tiles and small statuary, in and around bedding plants.

• If your space is freestanding: Add character with corner anchors – small spreading junipers, a planted,” squatty” pot, or maybe a garden gazing ball. Bring the eye “up” in the middle with long-stemmed flowers, or plant a tall pot or birdbath, with a large, substantial plant specimen surrounded with flowing, “drapey” vines.

Three Themed Garden Ideas:
A Mediterranean Flower Garden:
Choices for blooming plants and cutting flowers in a sunny garden space are vast. Daisies, black-eyed Susans, sunflowers and zinnias add height and brilliant color. Dramatic angel wing begonias thrive in the sun. Colorful lavender and salvia are Mediterranean garden staples. Add at least one pot of Rosemary herb and a sage plant for authentic Mediterranean ambiance.

Vining plants are abundant in subtropical locals - the fresh green of sweet potato vines, trumpet vines, morning glory, or clematis provide an opulent backdrop for cutting flowers.

Subtropical Accessories: A Mediterranean Garden needs the warm textures of natural woods, terra cotta or glazed pottery. Add a wall-mounted fountain if you have a garden wall. Split a terra cotta or brightly colored glazed pot in half, and place the “broken side down” with Portulaca moss tumbling out and along the bed border. Place a low wood flower box along a border and fill it with dwarf common marigolds for eye-popping color.

The English Cottage Garden:
A cottage garden’s signature is the look of a natural garden...the flowers appeared there because it was just the perfect place for them.

Wildflowers, zinnias, old-fashioned climbing roses and shrub roses are at home here. Daffodils, dahlias, peonies, chrysanthemums and daylilies can be strategically planned, yet look romantically muddled in a perfectly English way.

Sweet Williams and violas are easy to grow, perfect for borders, and decidedly “cottagey” in personality.

Cottage Accessories: .....(CONTINUED)

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Written by: Aariana Adams
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