Be grateful for gravel
Though garden landscaping costs can be high, it is possible to reduce them simply by utilising garden design ideas that would make your outdoor space easier to maintain in the long run.
For example, in parts of your garden other than seating areas, you don’t need to be too fussy about how solid the ground is. Here, relatively cheap gravel would suffice — especially as it can be laid with ease across landscape fabric, where it can prevent weeds from poking through.
In preparation for gravelling over a section of grass, you could use a lawn mower to trim that grass and make sure the soil is both compacted and reasonably level. Other than that, though, there really isn’t a whole lot of groundwork required for a gravelling project.
‘When planning to pave, you can reduce the cost by infilling with gravel,’ Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) judge and award-winning garden designer Paul Harvey-Brookes have advised in a Real Homes article detailing an array of budget garden ideas.
Go young with the plants you buy
When seeking to decorate your garden with plants, you could be tempted to buy some already sporting the kind of look you know you want. After all, when you source a fully grown plant, you can see for yourself what visual effect you are actually getting.
However, perhaps one of the most cost-effective ideas for a small garden is to pick up smaller, younger plants instead. In doing so, you can save money but still give yourself a plant that, if looked after as it should be, remains capable of reaching the same size as a mature plant.
Horticulture and landscaping lecturer Julie Kilpatrick has told Real Homes readers that young plants also ‘adapt far quicker to the environmental conditions specific to your garden.’
She further explained: ‘Mature plants look great in the short term but they might take so long to settle that younger plants will catch up and may even overtake them.’ These words of warning are a good reason for you to think twice about simply relying on starter pots from a garden centre.
Weave festoon lights into your garden design
How much time can you spend in your garden in one go? This can largely depend on what you actually do in that open-air space — and here are just some activities you could pursue there:
- Watering plants
- Painting the fencing
- Barbecuing
- Playing with the kids
However, the fun would have to end for the day as the night hours beckon… unless, of course, this garden is sufficiently illuminated through artificial means.
While you have many different options when it comes to how you light up your outdoor space, you could particularly benefit from renting these LED festoon lights from the HSS Hire team.
These lights present an effective option for low-level lighting and can easily be strung out along fences. Since it might only be on the occasion that you want to use your garden at night, it could financially work out better for you if you rent garden lights rather than buy them.
Assemble a DIY garden bar
You might not exactly have had ‘garden bar’ on your ‘budget small garden ideas’ bingo card. However, a garden bar can actually prove a surprisingly practical feature if you opt to build it yourself, as you can make sure it follows specifications accounting for what little space you have.
This bar can essentially comprise a wall-mounted wooden pallet to which a drop-down platform is attached with a steel chain. Ideal Home has posted in-depth instructions on how to build a DIY pallet bar, for which you will need a few supplies — including:
- 3 wooden pallets
- Assorted sandpaper
- 1.5m length of steel chain (4mm x 32mm)
- Screws
- Eye hooks
You will also require some installation equipment — but we can help you there. Since drilling will be involved at various stages, we will be happy to provide you with the means of renting not only a drill but also drill bits.
Make a vintage-style signpost
As far as budget small garden ideas go, this one has to count as pretty quirky. However, for visitors especially, it can add a large degree of amusement to the backyard experience.
You would make this garden sign from reclaimed timber, starting with one long sturdy piece for the holding post. Our team at HSS Hire can lend you a jigsaw with which you would be able to cut points at one end of a wooden piece in order to create a pointer arrow.
After repeating this process to make multiple pointer arrows, you can proceed to paint words on each of them with weatherproof garden paint. Here are some ideas for what words you could put on those signs, obviously depending on what is actually in your garden:
- Herbs
- Vegetables
- Sunflowers
- Garden bar
Once you have finished painting the arrows, it would then be just a matter of nailing them to the long post before anchoring this into a planter or flowerbed.