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There are millions of small space gardening ideas and designs you can try to makes the best use of the many tiny and tight spaces in your home to grow vegetables, flowers, herbs, and even fruits. But where do you start? Which idea or design is best for your tight spaces? Learn more about the 7 creative small space gardening ideas & designs.
Whenever gardening is mentioned, many people imagine the outdoors away from the house where there is plenty of soil, sunlight, and direct room for rainwater to get to the plants. However, you can create a small-space garden away from the farm or yard using creative gardening ideas.
In this article, we explore seven creative small space gardening ideas and designs you can try for both short and medium-term growing of vegetables, flowers, herbs, and a host of other plants.
Let’s get our hands dirty!
1. Go Mobile with a Mobile Garden
Where space is exceptionally tight and limited, get creative enough to make the most of it using a mobile garden. The trick here is to transform any planter into a movable garden by adding a caster or wheels to its base to ease mobility.
Image Credit: Hgtv
Regardless of the type of planter you use for this project, your plants will grow better because you can occasionally move them outdoors or indoors, depending on sunlight availability and other prevailing weather conditions.
When there is plenty of sunshine, move the planter outside to let the plants dance in the sun. You can always take them back in when it gets too cold and icy, like in the winter.
Galvanized planters are an excellent choice for this unique idea, and you can either use low-lying ones or go tall with a long, vertical planter to maximize upward space.
2. Enter Like a King with a Garden on the Steps
What other creative way to make use of the front and other staircase steps in your home than to make a garden on them?
Image Credit: Themicrogardener
It is a sight to behold every time you get on the steps. After a long day of work, you can always come home to a relaxed atmosphere and the beautiful scenery of flowers up the steps. And each time you leave the house, you’ll feel like a fairy bride walking down the aisle at a wedding!
The beauty of this idea is that all you need are some planters to complete this container gardening design. You can grow various container plants or fragrant flowers to spice up the setup with their sweet odors.
If your kitchen is close, be sure to grow some herbs and other edible plants like onions, especially the varieties that grow vertically instead of the ones that spread wide on the ground.
3. Pallet Herb Garden
Using pallets is another creative way to explore vertical gardening by setting them up against a vertical surface such as a wall or fence.
In many homes, the fence remains idle all its lifetime. However, you can grow vegetables, herbs, and flowers easily along the fence using this idea.
Image Credit: Gardenerspath
Since there are different tiers on the pallet, it’s possible to do a combination of a flower, herbs, and a vegetable garden in one pallet. The vegetables and herbs can occupy the topmost tier, and the colorful flowers the lower ones to ensure food safety at all times.
The combination here means that the flowers can attract insects or bees to them and provide chances for your vegetables and herbs to be pollinated easily for maximum productivity.
But you should take care not to plant any type of flower here because some have awful odors.
4. Establish a Fruit Garden
Fruit trees that grow vertical can be a great option where garden space is tight. The trick here is to go for any dwarf fruit tree that can thrive in tight spots. Dwarf varieties of apples are easy to grow in such a setup not only directly in the soil but also in containers.
Image Credit: Themicrogardener
You can try a citrus fruit tree or a peach tree where space is limited, while fig trees would do well growing directly in the garden.
Whichever fruit tree you choose for your small planting space, ensure it doesn’t take too long to mature or start growing fruits. You can only wait so long when you have a small garden.
5. Use Multiple Small Space Gardening Practices
Successful small space gardening calls for the clever application of tried and tested gardening practices suitable for any limited space.
The most common practices include succession planting, companion planting, and growing compact varieties of various plant crops or edible plants.
Succession planting works best for vegetables like beans, lettuce, spinach, and onions that grow fast and die out within a short time.
As such, you have to keep planting new ones in regular intervals of two to three weeks to ensure you always have a constant supply of each crop.
Companion planting refers to combining various plants in one garden, and this could include a mix of your favorite flowers, herbs, and vegetables.
Image Credit: Milorganite
Compact varieties are a better option for small-space gardening than larger varieties of plant crops like eggplants, berries, pepper, and tomatoes.
6. Establish a Window Sill Flower Garden
Flowers and ornamental plants add to the beauty of any living or working space, be it the home or office. If you are too short on gardening space and still want to grow some live plants, consider using window sills as hanging flower beds to host your favorite flowers.
Image Credit: Gardenerspath
The good thing about this idea is that it is easy to water the flowers when you open the window, and you also don’t have to worry about sunshine if the sunlight can reach the window directly most of the day. It means you don’t have to keep moving the flowers, a tedious thing to do.
7. Ditch the Yard for Containers
While the small garden in your backyard may offer more room for on-the-ground gardening, containers are better when you want to practice some gardening indoors.
Image Credit: Gardendesign
It doesn’t have to be that all gardening happens outdoors. Change the narrative by growing some container plants indoors.
Potted plants are perfect for indoor gardening as long as you find suitable locations for them where their safety is easy to maintain.
Bottom Line
Small space gardening doesn’t have to be complicated. If you are armed with plenty of ideas and designs, only you can limit yourself by failing to put them into practice.
Gardening is an excellent way to spend your time and bond with nature as you also enjoy delicious meals prepared with organic foods you grow yourself. Just grab one creative idea and try it out, and when you succeed in it, it’s time to explore yet another one.
Get gardening!