21 Garden Design Ideas for Small Gardens

Following a garden style can make it easier to choose which plants to include in your small garden. It can also help you create a more cohesive space and get planting with a plan! There are so many different garden style ideas to choose from. From a quaint English cottage garden to a serene tropical oasis.

Garden design ideas for balconies, patios, and other small gardens

Ultimately your space has to reflect your own personality and style, but if you need a little inspiration, here are 21 popular garden style ideas to inspire your small space.

1. Tropical sanctuary

Looking to become lost in a lush tangle of large glossy leaves, trailing vines, and shades of green? Small sheltered gardens can often provide a unique habitat for tropical plants even in cooler climates like the UK or Northern states.

Shade loving plants with a tropical look, like Fatsia ‘Spiders Web’ or Coral Bells, work really well in tropical-style gardens.

Create a focal point with a banana palm. Bring in unique shapes with a glossy-leaved paper plant (Fatsia japonica) or passionflower. And create dense, jungle vibes with a tree fern or bamboo.

Need some inspiration to style and design your shady garden? Use these shady garden design ideas to inspire you.

2. Mediterranean Garden

Fragrant herbs, star-shaped oleander flowers, juicy citrus fruits, or maybe a slim cypress tree. A Mediterranean garden, often known as a Tuscan garden, is typically full of drought-tolerant and sub-tropical plants.

Fill yours with pots overflowing with succulents and Italian herbs, a potted lemon tree, and a mini pergola coated in grape or jasmine vines. Olive and citrus trees are both great container trees for a balcony garden.

3. Wildlife friendly

Provide a safe haven for visiting wildlife with a garden designed to meet your needs and theirs. Create a mini pond for newts and frogs, a slim border of wildflowers for bees and butterflies, and a log pile or bug-friendly ‘hotel’.

If you’re looking to attract birds, try planting some plants for hummingbirds or flowers that produce lots of berries or seed heads.

4. Butterfly Garden

If you’re hoping to attract lots of butterflies you could create a butterfly friendly garden! Choose plants like verbena, red valerian, lavender, or coneflowers. Many pollinators, including bees, love these plants. If Monarch butterflies visit your area, consider supporting these vulnerable butterflies with Monarch friendly plants!

5. Contemporary

If you’re looking for a slick and uniform, a contemporary style can often be utilized in a way that makes a space feel bigger. Textural plants, subtle lighting, neutral colors, clean lines, and simplicity are key elements that can give your garden depth and a modern twist.

Use low growing shrubs to create short hedges in clean lines. Evergreen plants like dwarf conifers or box trees are perfect for adding uniform color and structure to a garden, especially in winter.

A vertical garden filled with herbs and trailing plants is a great way to fill your garden with texture and color in a contemporary style.

6. English Cottage Garden

A classic favorite. The cottage garden is known for its relaxed and informal charm. To create your own small cottage garden create borders bursting with delicate textures and fragrant scents, like a lavender bush or climbing sweet peas.

Bobbing heads of delphinium, sunflowers, hollyhock, sage, and old garden roses are traditional cottage garden flowers that you’ll find in gardens throughout the Cotswolds, UK.

You don’t need limestone walls and large borders to create your own cottage garden, you can easily recreate the informal and natural style of a cottage garden using containers. Bringing useful herbs and sweet scents to balconies or any small garden space.

Dwarf sunflowers are a great way to bring in the cheerful bobbing heads of sunflowers without the excess height!

7. French Potager

The French equivalent of the humble cottage garden. While the cottage garden creates order with dense floral borders, the French potager allows your garden to adopt a more natural intention. It has a larger focus on plants for the kitchen, with plots that combine companion plants.

Zucchinis sit amongst marigolds, and herbs, flowers, and fruits all grow together into a productive and attractive mix.

8. Formal

Keep things neatly arranged with a garden filled with clean lines, sharp edges, symmetry, or geometric patterns. Carefully chosen shrubs, shaped-box hedges, and sculptures can all bring a smart edge to a small space.

9. Rock Garden

Rocks can add a natural character to small urban gardens. Emulate a Southern Californian semi-arid desert with an arrangement of succulents, or bring a taste of the mountains home with your own arrangement of alpine plants or low-growing, dwarf conifers.

A rockery is a must, and it can be filled with a variety of low-growing plants or textural grasses. Popular rockery plants include sedges, succulents, trailing flowers, and of course the wild strawberry. Heather is also a wonderful fuss-free plant that thrives in rockeries.

If your garden space is tight, or you have a balcony, you could create a container rock garden.

10. Japanese Garden

Waterfalls, stone, moss, and bridges are a few of the elements most associated with a Japanese garden. Traditionally the garden is supposed to highlight natural features in a landscape but in a small garden, you could place stones or create your own layered borders to give the space depth.

If you have space for a small tree or shrub then a cherry or azalea will blend in perfectly. Or, for year-round greenery, a Japanese pine. Japanese Acers are beautiful small trees that grow well in containers.

11. Coastal Garden

Whether you live by the coast or not, a coastal garden is a wonderful way to pay homage to the ocean and keep its essence close. Coastal plants are hardy and tolerant to wind and sea spray, however, there is still a wide variety of textures and colors to choose from.

Sea holly, driftwood, pebbles, grasses, and agaves are all happy by the sea, but can also be used to create a small coastal-themed garden inland too.

12. Minimalist

In a garden where less is more, simplicity is key. You might opt for a focal sculpture, an ornamental grass border, a neutral-colored deck, a subtle water fountain, or a wall of bamboo for privacy. Stick to minimal colors and textures and favor clean lines and understated details.

Some of the best evergreen plants for a small garden like carex and dwarf conifers are great for a minimalist style garden.

13. Water garden

If you’d like to be lulled to sleep by the trickle of water, but don’t have a woodland stream at the bottom of the garden, a water garden could be the key. Let ponds and water features take center stage.

Create a small pond or even a small waterfall feature. Lilies, iris, lotus, water hyacinths, ferns, and flowering rushes will thrive in a water garden. For something more manageable in tiny spaces, you can even create your own small container pond.

14. Woodland Garden

A woodland in a small garden? While you may not have anything close to an acre, it’s definitely possible to recreate the peaceful charm of woodland within a small garden. Stepping stones, moss, deciduous trees, and low-growing ground cover plants are all great elements to include.

To create a canopy, opt for small trees like birch or Japanese maple. In the dappled shade below you’ll need shade-loving plants like ferns, fatsia, lily of the valley, primroses, and foxgloves.

15. Kitchen Garden 

If you’d like to become more self-sufficient, create the ultimate mini kitchen garden and harvest a bounty of crops in even the smallest of spaces. There are lots of fruits and vegetables that grow vertically to choose from that can be trained up poles.

From beans and cordon tomatoes to cucumbers and pumpkins. You can even grow dwarf fruit tree varieties too — like the ‘Pix Zee’ mini peach tree.

For extra nutrition, you could even grow grains in a small garden too, like rye, oats, or quinoa!

Dwarf vegetable varieties

If space is limited, dwarf vegetable varieties like dwarf tomatoes or dwarf beans can be grown in smaller patio containers. Their compact size makes harvesting easier, and they’ll also take up less precious garden space, while still providing amazing harvests!

16. Native Garden

If you’d local to support local flora and fauna, try creating a garden full of native species! Discover which plants are native to your climate and area and create your own native wildflower patch or a mix of local shrubs. Native bees, bats, and other mini locals will thank you for it.

17. Medicinal Herb Garden

Fancy growing your own herbal remedies? Discover herbal plants with medical properties, like echinacea or chamomile. You could even create your own homemade products, like a soothing lavender bath salt mix, or herbal tea. Plants hide lots of amazing medicinal potential.

18. Xeriscape Garden

If rainfall is sparse, a xeriscape garden could match your space perfectly. This landscaping design involves choosing drought-resistant plants and other botanicals that can limit water run-off and evaporation. Incredibly important with our changing climate.

You could even create a xeriscape garden with containers, adding a mix of cacti, succulents, and Mediterranean plants like figs, olives, or thyme that can tolerate periods of drought.

Other low maintenance plants like sedum and New Zealand Flax would work well too!

19. Creative & Playful

If little ones need entertaining, how about creating a garden that is calling out to be explored. Hardy plants, a mini water fountain, a vegetable planter, or a border filled with interesting textures and shapes can be a great way to involve children in a small outdoor space.

Discover our guide on how to create a child-friendly small garden space, with creative design ideas, toxic plants to avoid, plus child-friendly and easy-to-grow plants you could include!

One of our favorite mini garden projects for children is definitely a mini container fairy garden.

20. Vertical Garden

When space is really limited there are still lots of effective changes you can make to maximize your small garden — especially with a vertical garden! A wall filled with strawberry pots, or a mix of evergreen climbing plants can make enclosed spaces feel larger.

You can even create a vertical vegetable garden, filled with climbing beans, cute mini pumpkins, or a columnar apple tree.

Vertical gardening is one of the best planting layouts for small gardens. Along with square-foot gardening and keyhole gardening!

You might like | How to Grow Apple Trees in a Small Garden

When space is limited, growing unusual, colorful vegetable varieties is a great way to bring color and interest into your garden. Check out these pea varieties with pretty pods or these unusual squash varieties.

21. Moroccan Courtyard

A traditional Moroccan courtyard mixes formal styling with vibrancy and allure. To create your own mini riad garden retreat, make use of tiles, wide seating, and vibrant colors like cobalt blue and rustic orange.

Create a focal point with a water fountain, lantern, or large decorative pot. Cacti, aeoniums, pelargoniums, and citrus trees provide color and interest, while leafy palms and olive trees in pots provide botanical lushness.

Even within a small garden, you can still mix and match different garden style ideas together. So don’t feel limited to only one!

Designing your garden on a budget? Find clever (and cheap!) design hacks in my list of budget friendly ideas for a small garden.

Looking for more small garden design inspiration?

Here’s a selection of posts that can help you transform your small garden space!

• 3 Ways to Take a Small Garden from Average to Extraordinary
• 32 Small Garden Design Ideas to Maximize Space
• The 5 Best Planting Layouts for Small Gardens
• 11 Space Saving Tips for Mini Garden Spaces