Small garden, need inspiration

katejo

Sarahlou2 wrote: »

Hi, we have recently purchased a house and I've attached a link to a picture of the small garden we have. I'm currently seeking inspiration to turn the garden into something more attractive but as cheaply as possible. Our previous house was rented accommodation with half grass and half paving with some easy maintenance plants. My boyfriend does not want grass and he has considered laying decking but I don't think it's practical and needs constant maintenance. Wondering if anyone has any ideas please?

m.imgur.com/osBF2Dq

I have just had a quick look at your image. My garden was a bit like yours and I have just had a makeover. Send me a personal email and I can send you a few photos. I have replaced grass with a combination of paving and Cotswold buff stone plus small raised flowerbeds.

tori.k

Whats your budget?

Sarahlou2

We want to keep costs as low as possible really. Anything we can do ourselves to make it nicer without spending hundreds of pounds

getmore4less

Buy little(or even seed) and grow into big stuff is cheap.

Ownership of the walls is the key as you need to know what you can attach to them for stuff to grow up or if you can paint them

If you can't then you may need to be creative.
A couple of poles in the corners could be used to attach wires across the walls and there are plenty of fast growing plants that won't attach to the surface, many will take a good hack back and recover if access is needed.

tori.k

Sounds like you DH is pretty handy, The cheapest budget option is just cleaning everything up, throwing some paint on the walls, then replacing the current lawn area with bark chippings.
You could take it a little further with using a paving stencil mould on the current concrete to print tiles adding some fan trellis along the walls for climbing plants, rubber chippings would give you a colourful alternative to bark for the little one.
As your sharing a small space with little ones Id personally keep with very simple at this stage just create a nice space to sit& BBQ with storage to clear the kids stuff at the end of the day and in a few years when its not so much a play area and you have a bit of budget for some hard landscaping for then look to create a grown-up contemporary courtyard for entertaining.