Whew! Purchasing and building a home is a lot of work! Our manufactured home has been delivered to our site, but now we’re waiting on the contractor to finish up the brickwork, flooring, garage, and driveway. We still don’t have a move-in date as of yet, but we’re beginning to plan our landscaping for our very tiny front yard and back patio. I’ve been scouring Pinterest.com, Sunset Magazine, and Better Homes and Gardens magazines for ideas for such a small area.
Let me begin by saying that while our back patio is our priority, our community requires that we begin in the front and work our way to the back for aesthetic reasons. Thankfully, the front area is so small that we don’t foresee that area being too difficult in terms of planning. Our main focus for the front revolves around greenery and drought-tolerant plants and pavers.
Our back patio, however, will be a work in progress over the next year since we really want a deck, but have to wait until the dust settles financially, if you know what I mean! So, I’ve been planning a patio design based on mobility – plants that can either move up to the eventual deck or stay put with the plants acting as a border along the edge of the deck.
Solution: Planters that will be used in copious amounts if I have my way. Not only will they be somewhat movable, but I think we’ll have more planting options keeping certain plants contained. For example, I really like the idea of using horsetail, also known as puzzle grass, as a privacy screen. However, it’s an invasive plant spread through spores. Keeping it contained will allow us to monitor it a little better and place it where it can actually function as a screen.

Since we live in an area plagued by drought, many of the plants we choose will be drought-tolerant. I personally love the look of succulents, but my husband isn’t a huge fan, so we’ll use a combination of flowering plants and shrubs. Based on our growing zone, there are plenty of examples of plants that bloom in both the winter and summer that we both like. I look forward to searching my local nurseries for plants we both agree on, like Rosy Red Achillea and White Yarrow.
We also don’t have a huge space, only about 20 feet by 23 feet, so the planters will most likely be narrow and long to maximize space for patio furniture or situated in corners like the planters above.
We’ll soon have a schematic of exactly which plants are going where for both the front area and back, so as we progress on our design plans, I’ll post them.
Have you planned a garden for a small space? What solutions did you use to make the most of a tiny area?