1. Dress Up a Deck
Need more living space? Look outside! With the right small backyard landscaping ideas, you can transform even the tiniest yard into a functional and beautiful retreat. Whether you want to create an inviting space for entertaining, grow a lush garden with flowers and vegetables, enjoy a pet-friendly play area, or attract wildlife, strategic landscaping can make it happen. For best results, sketch your design before you begin and keep scale in mind.
A back deck is a good place to start. Is yours unsightly, exposed to the neighbors or too hot and sunny to use? Train a fast-growing perennial on a trellis for privacy, shade and beauty. Orange A-Peel Black-eyed Susan vine is a climbing annual that thrives in partial sun to full sun and doesn’t need deadheading. Other vines to try: Scarlet runner beans for sun or California pipevines for shade.
Photo: Doreen Wynja/Monrovia
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2. Make an Outdoor Room
You can also stretch your living space with a small patio. This one feels like an outdoor room, thanks to surrounding beds that serve as “walls.” Install pavers or bricks for a “floor” and edge them with materials in a slightly darker color for contrast. For vertical interest, plant ornamental grasses like Blackhawks Big Bluestem and English boxwoods. Large containers can hold trees like this ‘Autumn Moon’ Fullmoon maple. For color, grow ‘Grace ‘N Grit’ pink shrub roses in a large planter or as a hedge.
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Photo: Gardeners Supply Company/Gardeners.com
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3. Fill in a Corner
Turn a corner of your small backyard into a gathering place with a fire pit, benches and a side table for snacks and sips. Metal lanterns are decorative and provide a soft glow at night. Put the fire pit on a firm base of level stones or pavers and surround it with gravel or pebbles to catch stray sparks. To add seasonal color without digging, use hanging baskets, wall planters and tall, self-watering containers.
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4. Grow a Flowering Wall
“Vertical gardening is a great way to beautify a small space by growing plants on an existing wall or fence or by adding a trellis,” says Rebecca Sears, Chief Gardening Guru for Ferry-Morse. Attach planters or grow bags to your wall or fence and add herbs like mint, sage and thyme, foliage plants like sweet potato vines or pansies, violas and other flowers.
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5. Build a Grilling Station
Throw a backyard cookout with a small grilling station. If the chef likes company while they are flipping burgers, leave room for chairs. Rebecca says, “Consider using bright, container-friendly flowers in a variety of hues” to dress up the space. She recommends zinnias for their vibrant colors and summer-long blooms. For deeper tones, “Mums offer striking flowers that will attract butterflies to your backyard oasis during their peak season.” Edible ornamentals like nasturtiums are also fun to grow. “The pretty flowers have a peppery taste similar to a radish.”
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6. Grow a Sanctuary
It’s possible to carve out a private sanctuary even when space is limited. This row of North Pole arborvitaes makes an attractive screen and their upright, columnar growth habit works well in narrow spaces. Because they’re evergreens, they’ll conceal a view even in fall and winter. In this image, they’re grown alongside a raised deck with a border of ColorBlaze Golden Dreams coleus, polka dot plants, star flowers and Torenias. There’s still room for a gorgeous green lawn that’s kept neatly edged to set off the mulched bed.
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Photo: Gardeners Supply Company/Gardeners.com
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7. Landscape for Pets
Don’t forget your best furry friend when you’re landscaping says Kat Delpit, a real estate expert serving Los Angeles and surrounding areas. “Consider the comfort of the family pet. Some landscaping options are both beautiful and functional. Using your wall space for hanging potted plants is a great way to maximize the space for design and keep your pets safe.” You can also use raised beds to deter nibbling. “Also, consider lots of shade and possibly a dog path with pavers to save your grass. You can also think about synthetic turf in specific areas or even going grass-free altogether.”
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8. Go Sustainable
“The upside to having a small yard is it’s sustainable and drought-friendly,” Kat says. “In the wake of global awareness as well as the (desire for) health benefits, the ‘going green’ trend is very prominent. More and more people are looking to grow their own fruits and vegetables.” By using freestanding elevated planters and vertical gardens to grow vegetables, instead of buying foods that are transported from farms to supermarkets, you can help reduce your carbon footprint. Kat adds that you can also “improve your health and have a gorgeous backdrop for your outdoor living space.” This small yard is planted with ornamentals, but you could grow small berry bushes, herbs and dwarf fruit trees or space-saving varieties of tomatoes, beets and greens. Use trellises for climbing cucumbers, beans and peas.
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Photo: Gardeners Supply Company/gardeners.com
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9. Light Up Your Space
“No matter the size of your backyard,” Kat adds, lights can set the mood. For drama, spotlight a tree or focal point, or use recessed lighting for a relaxed atmosphere. “While hanging string lights and paper lanterns has been and still is the most popular way to add outdoor lights, there are several DIY smart lighting and solar lighting options. Solar lights for outdoor use are sustainable and can be strung up or placed in the ground.”
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10. Throw Some Shade
Hot weather can be miserable, but retractable awnings help shade a small space and make it more pleasant to go outside. Some awnings come with sun, rain and wind sensors to alert you when to put away the awning and some also have motorized controls. For permanent shade, look for a fixed awning. If you’d rather have filtered light, opt for a pergola like the one shown on the other end of this patio. It lets in some sunlight and gives you a place for hanging baskets.
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11. Grow a Moon Garden
Gardeners who work away from home all day don’t always get back in time to enjoy their yards before sunset. A moon garden solves that problem. Start with a patio, deck or other seating area surrounded by white and silvery-gray plants that reflect the light, like lamb’s-ear, Dusty Miller, Artemisia, azaleas and hydrangeas. Look for white gardenias and mock orange plants, too; their scent often becomes stronger at night, adding another dimension to the landscape. For extra light, use battery-operated candles, wall-mounted outdoor lanterns or solar-powered lamps tucked into the shrubbery.
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12. Grow a Daytime Moon Garden
Moon gardens can be as beautiful during the daytime as they are at night. You don’t need as many outdoor lights; just plant bright white, silver and cream-colored flowers and foliage. This design uses one wall of the house and borders of plants to create the feeling of an outdoor room. Add hints of color with lavender heliotropes, purple verbenas, pink Nemesias and fountain grasses like Graceful Grasses Vertigo.
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13. Warm Up to a Fire Pit
A custom-built fire pit lets you enjoy your yard throughout the fall and winter (it’s great for roasting marshmallows in warm weather, too). Be safe, and surround it with patio pavers or other non-flammable materials. Arrange chairs to make conversation easy and include small tables to hold drinks or potted plants. This backyard landscape celebrates autumn with a display of pumpkins and gourds. You could also use plants that don’t mind a chill, like kale and pansies, and switch them out for colorful annuals in the spring.
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14. Accent a Shed
You almost have to have a shed, even in a small backyard, if you have a mower and other gardening tools. Make it attractive with the right landscaping. Add evergreens and plants that go in and out of bloom so you’ll have a colorful display throughout the season. Add a gravel path to the shed that will keep down weeds and prevent dirt from splashing when it rains. This border includes ornamental grasses, blue salvias, white Shasta daisies, yellow coneflowers, pink Gaura and petunias. The petunias show up again under a potted topiary. ‘Lemon Coral’ sedum adds a lime-green accent to the front of the border.
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15. Just Add Water
A water feature makes a wonderful focal point in a small yard. This one has a pump to recirculate water over shelf-like stones and a bed of tumbled rocks in different shapes and sizes. For easy installation, choose a small pondless waterfall kit. The water attracts wildlife like dragonflies and helpful toads that gobble up pesky insects. Pot up plenty of petunias, summer snapdragons, verbenas, coleus and calibrachoas to invite thirsty butterflies and hummingbirds.
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Photo: Suntory
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16. Get Hung Up
When there’s virtually nowhere to plant in your yard, take your landscaping to the next level. This small deck is dressed up with hanging baskets. For a sunny spot, plant colorful annuals like Surfinia petunias or Sun Parasol Mandevilla. Shade-loving plants for baskets include begonias, ferns, coleus, impatiens and fuchsias. When the seasons change, switch to cool weather plants like dianthus, Dusty Miller, petunias, geraniums and cyclamens.
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Photo: Ball Horticultural Company
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17. Add a Bright Border
If you think roses only belong in big, formal gardens, consider growing them in a casual landscape instead. For a long season of color, plant reblooming varieties with masses of annuals that flower from spring until frost, like Easy Wave Plum Vein spreading petunias. Just check the height your roses will reach at maturity before you plant. Shorter varieties that don’t need much pruning are better for planting under windows and around decks and patios. Ground cover roses are among the toughest and easiest kinds to grow, and they’re great for a slope or any sunny area where you want color, not grass.
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Photo: Federal Hill Photography, LLC/Live Green Landscape Associates/NALP
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18. Grow Up With Raised Beds
Gardeners who have a small, sunny backyard but poor soil can still grow veggies, herbs and flowers in raised beds. A bed that’s no more than four feet wide is ideal for adults, so they can reach in from any side. For kids or wheelchair access, make beds 2 to 3 feet wide. If possible, leave 18- to 24-inch paths between the beds and cover them with gravel to absorb excess water, suppress weeds and keep your landscape neat and tidy.
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19. Keep It Casual
Make your backyard casual and inviting by using curved lines for your beds and borders. Curves tend to draw visitors along paths and encourage stopping to look at the plants instead of walking right past them. If your yard has a beautiful specimen tree, call attention to it with a tree ring. This landscape design uses canna lilies with begonias, sweet potato vines, coleus, caladiums and other shade-loving plants in a site that gets partial sun.
Photo: Lauren Gabrielle Harrison
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20. Get Trendy With Gravel
Gravel is always trendy in landscape design. This low-cost material is great for backyards where rainfall is scarce and outdoor watering is restricted. If you have big rocks or boulders, use gravel beds around them to turn them into focal points. (If you don’t have boulders, talk to a professional landscaper about adding them. They may need to be partially buried so they won’t move if someone sits or climbs on them.) The Japanese-style landscape shown here uses smaller stones for seating around a fire pit and includes a mossy slope, bamboo shoots and yew trees pruned in the Japanese “cloud-tree” style.
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Photo: David Mizejewski
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21. Welcome Wildlife
For an easy-care landscape, grow native plants. Naturalist David Mizejewski, with the National Wildlife Federation, attracts butterflies, bees, birds and other creatures to his garden by offering the food, water and habitats they need. Native wildflowers like anise hyssop, purple coneflower, mountain mint and swamp milkweed thrive in one of his gardens. In another garden, he grows scarlet bee balm, threadleaf coreopsis, phlox, black-eyed Susan, yarrow and purple coneflower and uses inkberry holly, blue-eyed grass and arrowwood viburnum as foundation plants. The water garden shown here holds native pickerelweed, cattails and water lilies.
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Photo: William G. Jelinek, Jr/Bill Jelinek Photography/MJ Associates/NALP
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22. Make a Hangout
Backyards are great places for kids to play. When they grow up, reclaim the space as a hangout for adults (of course, they’ll still use it, too). Add an outdoor sofa and chairs to a covered deck or patio so you can socialize or bring in a grill for leisurely cookouts. This landscape is easy to maintain, thanks to the stone steps and paved lower level. Garden beds are filled with coneflowers and boxwoods and mulched to discourage weeds and lessen the need to water. Keeping the mulch about a foot away from the plants simplifies mowing and edging.
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23. Edge With Foliage
For easy upkeep, plant foliage around the perimeter of your backyard. Ornamental grasses, sweet potato vines, hostas and other plants come in various shades of green with different leaf shapes, sizes and textures. For drama, let opposites attract and plant airy ferns with dramatic yuccas or agaves. Go formal with neatly trimmed shrubs and a small focal point like a garden ornament. Green plants have a calming, relaxing effect and typically hold their good looks longer than flowering plants. Shown here: Graceful Grasses ‘Sky Rocket,’ ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Fireworks’ with polka dot plants and Sweet Caroline ‘Bewitched’ sweet potato vines.
Photo: Gardener’s Supply
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24. Go Private With Panels
Some small backyards lack privacy. Next-door neighbors and people driving by can see in, and if you have dogs that can see out, they can bark and become a nuisance. Make a hideaway by installing decorative privacy screens or panels. Bamboo, brushwood, picket or slatted fences are other options that let in light and air but help block the view. Once you decide how tall you want your screen or fence, check your local ordinances to be sure it won’t exceed height or placement limitations. Shown here: Randolph Privacy Screens
25. Lay Out a Path
Erin Schanen, creator of The Impatient Gardener blog and Youtube channel, added an attractive, winter-proof path to her landscape. She defined the edges with an edger and loosened the soil with a compact, rear-tine tiller. After digging seven to eight inches deep, she added a 4-inch layer of limestone screenings (also known as road base) to make a firm base for the stones. She then leveled and tamped them with a hand tamper. “Metal edging was added to help keep a clean edge along the grass. Flagstones and reclaimed bluestone of varying sizes, including a handful that spanned the width of the path, were arranged and leveled with sand,” says Schanen, who partners with Troy-bilt to offer gardening advice. “The sand helps fill in gaps under the stones so they sit level and helps prevent weed growth. After the stones were set, quarter-inch decorative stone was poured in and brushed into the cracks to fill the gaps.”
26. “Plant” Around a Fireplace
Even if you don’t have much room, you can fit an outdoor fireplace into your backyard and grow flowers. The key is using large pots that you can move around on the hearth and replant when the seasons change. No hearth? Surround the fireplace with pots placed on another level surface or the ground. Shown here: Sundiascia diascia (a new form of diascia with upright, peach-colored blooms), white and blue lobelias, Princettia (a new, compact style of poinsettia available in white and shades of pink and red), Senetti pericallis (a magenta hybrid of Cineraria) and Surfinia petunias in Deep Red, Summer Double White and Purple Majesty. This homeowner’s whimsical sign adds a finishing touch.
27. Put in a Pond
A pond or water garden feels like an oasis in a small backyard. If it has a circulating pump, you’ll hear the soothing sounds of moving water, and tiny splashes make the surrounding area seem cooler even on hot days. Add a few aquatic plants like dwarf sweet flag, pickerel and parrot’s feather. Build your own pond or look for a kit that comes with a pump, liner and other accessories you’ll need. This pond gets filtered sun, so it’s planted with ‘Lemon Coral’ sedum, ‘Heart of the Jungle’ elephant ear, Artemesia, wishbone flowers, and Graceful Grasses ‘Baby Tut’ and ‘King Tut’.
28. Pick the Right Plants
Small spaces don’t mean missing out on color, texture, and excitement, says Ryan McEnaney, of Bailey Nurseries. “Choosing the right plants for the size of your project allows you to add personality and your own sense of style, no matter how large or small your garden. Shrubs and trees generally take up more space, but many new introductions have been bred for more compact mature size and are a great fit.” Using small shrubs and trees as the “bones” of your backyard means you need fewer plants and save money. “New plants like ‘Little Hottie Hydrangea’ give you the amazing flower power of panicle hydrangeas while staying only 3 to 5 feet tall and wide, even after years in the ground.”
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29. Plant in Pots
“Another way to add variety to a smaller space is planting in decorative pots,” says Ryan, who is also the author of Field Guide to Outside Style: Design and Plant Your Perfect Outdoor Space. “I love using compact shrubs in decorative pots because they’re instantly elevated off the ground, bringing their multi-season beauty to eye level without waiting for them to fill in. One shrub and a few annuals for draping texture and you’re done! As long as the shrub is marginally hardy in your region, you should be able to bring it into your garage or shed over the winter and enjoy it again next year.” These containers hold Summer Wave Large Amethyst wishbone flowers, reblooming ‘Let’s Dance Rave’ and ‘Let’s Dance Blue Jangles’ hydrangeas and other plants.
Photo: Tracy Walsh Photo
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30. Choose Compact Color
Ryan adds, “Using plants that stay compact at maturity, like this Summer Crush hydrangea, are great for adding year-after-year color to the landscape without creating an overgrown mess in the future. Remember when picking out plants for your yard to check how big they’ll get over time. In this planting, I paired Summer Crush with Paint the Town rose, ‘Palace Purple’ coral bells, ‘Shenandoah’ switch grass, butterfly weed, and ‘Blue Zinger’ sedge, allowing for varying textures, colors, and heights while keeping the entire planting restrained for the small space.”
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Photo: Todd Hyer
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31. Turn Slopes Into Terraces
A bank or slope can erode from heavy rainfall, and mowing can be a nightmare, but terracing your backyard can turn things around. Consider calling a professional with earth-moving equipment to smooth out a serious slope or carve out the terraces. You may need to bring in more dirt, and build a retaining wall to keep it in place. The good news is that terraces make your yard much more usable. This homeowner added rectangular planters and filled them with hollies and dwarf Fothergillas. The new terraces left enough room for a beautiful green lawn and patio.
Photo: R&R Landscaping
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32. Layer Your Look
A lush lawn makes the smallest backyard beautiful. Landscape around yours with leafy bushes, small trees and fountain grasses in different heights, Rebecca recommends, “to help give your small space dimension. Start by choosing plants of different sizes and widths and then try layering them by placing dwarf trees and bushes in the back, followed by shorter shrubs in the front.” Various shades of green and different textures keep your landscaping interesting. Bring in coneflowers, daisies, small hydrangeas and other ornamentals for color.
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Photo: Chris Brown Photography/ProvenWinners.com
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33. Plant Around a Pool
Swimming pools take up a lot of backyard space, especially when you bring in lounge chairs and umbrellas. Pot up colorful flowers and foliage that can take the heat and sun and place them around the pool deck. Another option: Plant a showy hedge of flowering shrubs to help screen the view and complement the colors around the pool. This hedge features ‘Limelight’ panicle hydrangeas that mature at 8 feet tall and wide. The beautiful blooms change to pink, red and burgundy as they age.
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