How to Garden in Narrow Spaces

Modern houses are built on smaller lots with smaller yards, with many on zero lot lines (no space between the house and the edge of the lot). All isn’t lost if you have a yard the size of a postage stamp or a narrow patio with tiny planting beds around it. There are some tricks to gardening in narrow spaces while still creating a gorgeous outdoor oasis. Here’s how to garden in narrow spaces.

What You’ll Need

Trellis

Twine

Vines

Hanging baskets

Climbing plants

Instant Green Thumb

You can find many of your favorite plants in columnar (tall and narrow) varieties. Look for these plants when shopping for your narrow garden:

‘Crimson Sentry’ maple

Columnar hornbeam

‘Cleveland Select’ pear

‘Graham Blandy’ boxwood

‘Sky Pencil’ holly

‘Skyrocket’ juniper

Landscaping Narrow Spaces

Limit Your Plant Picks

In narrow landscape beds, there usually isn’t room for more than two rows of plants. To make the narrow garden look interesting, but not chaotic, choose no more than three types of plants, and plant them in big blocks of color along the bed.

Grow Up

Another way to use space is to plant tall, skinny plants that primarily grow up, not out. You can also make good use of space by planting climbing roses or vines. Make sure that you have a sturdy trellis firmly screwed into the wall for the plants to scramble up. Tie the plants to the trellis as they grow.

Just Grow With It!

Make vines do double duty in the garden by growing them like trees. In the left side of this picture, you can see a big pink bougainvillea vine growing up a trellis anchored to the wall. The vine remains fairly flat against the wall until it is about four to five feet off the ground. Once the vines reach the top of the wall, they’re allowed to grow and flower, approximating the top of a tree. This is one way to add height to narrow gardens without the large root systems of trees. Coral honeysuckle vines are also good candidates for this type of growing and trellising.

Use Containers

If there’s no room for plants in the ground in your narrow gardening space, place long, narrow containers along the fences or walls and plant those. You can plant shrubs, trees, vines with trellises, annuals, and perennials in containers to create gardens where there’s little space or no soil.

One way to elevate containers to different heights is to use wrought-iron plant stands. The wrought iron is relatively thin and doesn’t take up a lot of visual space. These plant stands can place plants at different heights along a wall or fence.

You can also hang hanging baskets all the way along an overhang bordering a narrow garden area. For a neat, orderly design, use hanging baskets made from the same materials with the same plant combinations. The key with narrow spaces is to be creative, and think up!