9 Design Ideas for a Small Country Garden

Country gardens are a broad collection of ideas and approaches that rely on similar key design elements. Popular among English manors and estates (and everywhere else), they bring a departure from Victorian-era cottage gardens with a pleasing balance between the wild and natural and a series of well-designed, seemingly effortless, vignettes. They offer a seamless blend of maximalist planting and well-defined spaces.

The idea of the country garden is to embrace nature while complementing and unifying the home with the landscape. Country themes evoke a timeless, easy stability, as if they’ve been there all along, but aren’t overly prim. Unexpected views and focal points unveil surprises, and incorporating blooms, fruits, and vegetables makes them prosperous and functional. Birds, pollinators, and garden diversity flourish.

Focus on the Border

A well-defined, fully-planted border is the key ingredient to this charming style. Tailor the size to your space, but make it as broad as possible with a clean edge. It can be curved and organic or straight and tidy – whatever your space allows.

Borders are transitional areas that form a distinction or boundary between spaces. They serve as unifiers between zones and define an area. Perennials fill the border with swaths of color, texture, and movement.

Plant Selection

Use varying heights and textures to layer the border. If you have the room, incorporate a small specimen tree. Use flowering hedges and evergreens as a backdrop for blooming perennials. If you don’t have space for trees or shrubs, rely on rugged perennials and include natives for a well-rounded garden system. Dwarf and compact varieties save space in small settings. 

Because of the limited real estate, be selective with your chosen plants, focusing on repeating the favorites and those with similar characteristics. Use clustered groups of low-growers and groundcovers at the front of the border to anchor a small display. The style’s aesthetic is naturalistic, easygoing, and carefree.

Define Garden Areas

The country style creates garden rooms, or distinct spaces that connect to the garden at large through plant selection, meandering paths, and repeated materials. At a small scale, a singular space can be its own room. Depending on your scale, include paths to connect spaces or uses, like seating areas, patios, and the entryway. Focus on the entrance and arrival to set the tone.

Defined borders often have a backdrop, such as a wall, fence, or hedge. A backdrop adds cohesion to the space and gives the eye a place to rest. A variety of materials create backdrops, including plant forms, structures, and implied boundaries. 

Trees and hedges screen a space, while walls and gates physically bind it. The border itself implicates a space as its own. A grassy patch or path adds visual separation.

While we don’t meander in smaller spaces the way we would in a sprawling countryside landscape, using local elements applies it to the broader scope. When it comes to hardscapes, low walls, or accents, aim to use natural and native materials. Local stone or other resources from your region give a settled, fitting quality.

Use Structural Hedging

Shrubs, even compact ones, are unifying elements of the country garden style. Clipped hedges like boxwoods and yews add definition to the abundant blooms they surround. Use evergreens, either narrow and columnar or low and spreading, as year-round anchors.

Repeating plants and similar characteristics is one of the easiest ways to create unity in the landscape. It helps achieve abundance without becoming muddled or overwhelmed. Repeated plant sequences organize the overall experience and lend a sense of rhythm.

Create Focal Points

Strategically placed focal points capture attention and draw the eye in a specific direction.. In small country garden designs, this may be a topiary or showy specimen, a wall fountain, an arch, an arbor, or a sculpture. It can be as simple as a well-situated bed of blooms or a cluster of containers. 

Well-placed seating adds to the appeal; plan your view from where you’ll be sitting or strolling to enjoy the focal point.

Go Vertical

A valuable way to take advantage of all available space is to grow vertically. Verticality adds dimension and visual interest. Tall plants, hanging baskets, living walls, trellises, and obelisks take a small area to new heights. They maximize growing area without taking up much room.

Consider a climbing rose, clematis, or passion flower to adorn an arch or climb a post. These become beautiful focal points, soften structures, and define an area.

Dedicate Space for Fruits and Vegetables

These gardens traditionally have a dedicated herb and vegetable area. A small raised bed or even a container or hanging basket filled with crops and herbs you’ll use makes the spaces versatile. 

Espaliered or patio fruit trees add vertical interest while producing sweet rewards. Beds cushioned with companion plants attract beneficial insects and promote healthy pairings. 

Feature Lush Containers

In addition to growing vertically is the ability to rely on container arrangements. Even the largest manors use pots to accessorize, highlight specimens, and punctuate a space. A topiary, a single shrub, or loads of blooms evoke the small country garden design.

Use potted arrangements to feature color, fragrance, and form – all adding seasonal interest. Flank the garden entrance and seating areas. Create a potted focal point in the border or at the end of a path. Using containers only is a way to imbue the country with inspiration, even if you don’t have in-ground beds. Opt for a large container or group multiples for impact at scale.

Incorporate a Grassy Swath

Grassy areas are characteristic of the style to define beds, unify spaces, and offer a spot to gaze. They frame the layout and give the eye a place to rest. A patch of grass, even a small one, allows for relaxing, playing, and letting pups roam.

Depending on the size of your growing area, choose whether a plot of grass is a fit. Prioritize the border and any garden goals/preferred uses first. 

Modern country gardens get creative with waterwise solutions and less intensive lawns. More and more, we’re realizing the importance of balancing lawns with richly planted zones that enhance ecological services. There’s charm in a shaggy deep green carpet, whether a tidy lawn or a walkable turf alternative, to break up the space with a little sweep of green. Decide, too, if you want the maintenance even for a bit of grass.

Add a Water Feature

Larger-scale country gardens often reveal a pond, lake, grotto, or rills to discover as one strolls. Bring in the idea at a smaller scale with a fountain or pool, bringing in one of nature’s major elements. The elemental blend heightens the senses and complements the blooms and leafy greens. 

Water brings tranquility and benefits diversity, too, with a place for birds and pollinators to drink. It also cools a space, at least visually and audibly, in the heat of summer.