It's a common assumption: the bigger the garden, the bigger the design challenge. In our experience, it's often the opposite. Some of the most demanding projects we take on are compact city gardens — courtyards, terraces, and narrow plots tucked behind Georgian townhouses or new-build developments. Less space doesn't mean less thinking. It’s usually more!
Everything has to do more than one job
A large garden can afford to dedicate a whole area to seating, another to a herb bed, another to perennial planting, another to a lawn. In a small city garden, one space often has to be a dining area, a place for pots, a route to the bin store, and somewhere to sit with a coffee — all at once. Every element earns its place through multiple functions, which means the planning has to be far more deliberate. There's simply no slack to "figure it out later."
Proportion and scale become unforgiving
Get the proportions slightly wrong in a big garden and it may go unnoticed. Or push everything to be a little bigger and it will still feel smooth. Get them wrong in a small one and the whole space can feel cramped, awkward, or oddly empty. Paving widths, the height of a boundary, the size of a single specimen tree — in a confined plot, these choices have an outsized effect on how the whole garden feels to be in.
The details carry the design
With less square footage to work with, small gardens rely much more heavily on craftsmanship and finish: how a joint is pointed, where a downpipe sits, how many colours are present and how often they are repeated throughout, how planting meets hard landscaping. These details would barely register in a sprawling garden, but in a small one they're often what you're looking at directly, up close, every day. This even goes down to the maintenance. If the owners don’t have hours of time each week to spend gardening, the upkeep of the terrace, lawn and planting must be considered.
Respect for neighbouring properties
In a large country garden, you can usually plant large trees or hedging for both interest and screening. But in a city garden, it’s important to note the effect this may have on neighbouring properties. You don't want to spend good money on a maturing conifer if a request comes in down the line to remove it due to shadowing nearby houses or gardens. On the other hand, there is the consideration of who looks onto your garden and where. Lots more to think about than just “where gets the evening sun”.
There's nowhere to hide a mistake
In a large garden, a slightly awkward transition or an underperforming border can be absorbed into the wider landscape. In a small garden, every square metre is visible, all the time, usually from the kitchen window. A poorly placed step, an ill-fitting material, or a plant that's the wrong scale isn't a minor flaw — it's the focal point. Design decisions in a small space have to be right, because there's no room for them to fade into the background.
Small doesn't mean simple
None of this is a complaint — it's what makes small city gardens such a satisfying design challenge. But it does mean they deserve just as much design thinking as a much larger plot, sometimes more. If you're working with a compact outdoor space, it's worth treating it with the same level of care you'd give a garden five times the size — because every decision within it will be seen, felt, and lived in far more intensely.
