Top Tips for Lawns in Small Gardens

When I bought my last property, the backyard was half-covered in a vegetable garden. I was young, single, and lacked anything resembling a green finger. Plus, I was not much of a fan of vegetables.

So, the first thing I did was dig out all the vegetables and covered the vegetable patch with grass seeds.

Before too long I had a big, boring, featureless, square-shaped lawn area.

This made it easy to mow, though I did need a lawn mower with a fair bit of grunt. However, the yard was lifeless and certainly wasn’t adding value to the property. It didn’t encourage me to use the area on fine days.

Here is what I did to create a small garden with a lawn that made the yard an attractive feature and became an enjoyable area to relax in throughout the year.

It also found that smaller cheaper lawn mowers are fine for small gardens because the size of my lawn had reduced.

You may find some of these tips can enhance your small garden too.

Alternatives to Lawn

I dug up the lawn down both sides of the section and built up the dirt. This gave the garden some height, then I planted a variety of bushes, shrubs, and flowers. I also added some trees along the back.

This added color and variety to the yard.

Another option is to put in a tiled section where you could place a small outdoor table and two chairs and perhaps a bar-b-que or pizza oven.

You might even want to put in a vegetable garden!

Give your Lawn some Shape

I made the garden sections into curved shapes and added wooden edging that could be shaped to fit the curves. This removed the boring square patch of lawn, making it far more interesting to view and enjoy.

Use Clever Storage

If you have a garden, you will start accumulating garden tools and a lawn mower. While I initially kept these under the house, once a wife and children came along, we bought a kit set hut for the children to play in. When they outgrew it, we were able to make use of it for our garden equipment.

You might buy a small garden shed and a small foldable lawn mower plus garden equipment that can be hung on hooks to keep the shed tidy and to easily fit along the walls.

Put in a Path

If people are regularly walking over the same area of lawn, this could soon create bare patches.

A concrete path is one option or put down some paving stones. Make sure to dig down deep enough so that you can easily push your lawn mower over the top of the paving stones without damaging the mower’s blades.

Aerate Your lawn

If you get a lot of rain at times, waterlogging can easily occur. This could lead to poor grass growth and moss and weeds overtaking the lawn.

Solve this issue by regularly aerating the lawn by driving a fork into the lawn to make holes 10cm deep, then gently rock the fork to loosen compaction. Add some sand into the holes to keep them open.

A quality grass combined with colorful varieties of vegetation, paving, tiles, and landscaping materials can completely alter the look and feel of small gardens just as effectively as for a larger garden area.