Book Review: Really Small Gardens
© Valerie Adolph
Jill Billington. Really Small Gardens. Published by Quadrille, 1998. London ISBN 1-902757-06-8
This is the Royal Horticultural Society's "practical guide to gardening in a truly small space" and it is a very comprehensive guide to planning a small garden. The author has covered all the planning bases in a down-to-earth, practical style.
Written by a garden designer whose tiny gardens have won awards at the famed Chelsea Flower Show in England, this book has a wealth of ideas for gardens, courtyards, rooftops and alleyways - all presented with the eye of the artist.
She spends time helping the reader deal with the elements of a small garden that a reader might be stuck with. She offers ideas for gardens that might be too shady, too hot, too exposed, cursed with clay soil, overlooked by a hideous brick wall, or containing ugly sheds, manhole covers and electricity meters. Not only are the ideas suggested, but at the back there is a how-to-do-it section to help you make the vision a reality. I found this very valuable. It's all very well saying "Hide an ugly brick wall with a trellis covered with vines", but how do you get a trellis to stand up against a brick wall? This book explains it.
Then having dealt with the problems, she moves along to the possibilities. These is so much you have to choose when you plan any garden, and a tiny space takes more planning than most. Would you like formal or informal? Crammed with plants or restrained? Would you like to "borrow" the surrounding scenery or exclude it at all costs? Jill Billlington will take you through the planning for whatever kind of garden you are dreaming of.
I found one of the most helpful sections to be the one dealing with perspective, or how to make a small garden appear larger than it is. It had never occurred to me that having large leaved plants close to the house and smaller leaved plants further away would create the illusion of a larger garden. The same goes for flowers too. Also, having flowers of strong colour - reds for instance - close to the house and pastel shades further away gives the impression of a larger garden.
Lest you thought that gardening was a pastime for gentle souls, in the chapter titled "Illusion" the author has included sections on concealing, exploiting and trickery. It sounds more like Las Vegas than Chelsea Flower Show. But this is where she gets down and dirty with concrete ideas for hiding anything you don't want to see and drawing to everyone's attention the best aspects of your garden.
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