This Small Garden Will Change How You Think About Space - Incredible Viewer Garden Tour

We sent out a request for you guys to send us photos of your beautiful gardens and it's incredible how many of them are actually here in the Raleigh-Durham area that we live in North Carolina. And this is one of those. This is a small back garden space and I think a lot of folks could relate to this size space. I mean I think she said it was what 4,500 square feet or something like that. So we're talking about a tenth of an acre. What could you do in a tenth of an acre? I think you'll be amazed by what you can do in a tenth of an acre. So we're going to go through and just point out some of the interesting design features here. This is a little bit different than our garden. Well a lot different. I mean ours is a plant collector garden. And when we do these gardens I hope you guys can appreciate some of them will be small spaces, some of them will be large spaces, some of them will be formal, some of them will be plant collectors, some of them will have more of a designed you know space and feature and carry plants you know and use mass planting and those kinds of things. And everybody's going to do it different. That's the beauty of this and what I've really wanted to get folks to get out of this channel for all these years is basically these are all these are all individual things and they can all be designed together differently. Everybody's going to create something different from that. So I hope you get some of that. You'll definitely get some of that out of this garden. Number one there is a ton of tiny little space here. This is you know 10 probably 10 or 12 feet wide maybe at the most. So if I went in here and I just planted the boxwoods and the few annuals and the perennials and hosta and coleus and all of those things that kind of get the same height the liriope and the you know if I did if I did that across this whole bed then it wouldn't look as interesting as what has been done here where things have been limbed up and to get height without getting a lot of maintenance. So if I put a shrub here that got this tall it'd probably be out on my sidewalk so instead these podocarpus are limbed up into tree forms like this. This hydrangea paniculata you know the exact same thing you know going on here. Even the fatsia that you're going to see in the garden have been you know kind of limbed up in the back line back there. Another thing I want you to see here is the different foliage textures. So there's a euonymus as kind of a screen back here with a small kind of tip more typical you know leaf shape that we see on most leafy evergreens but she's got it next to the fatsia and a hosta sitting in front of it and there's brunnera here and all these broad leaf foliage plants that contrast with that. So you get the color contrast, you get the texture contrast, you get the you know all of those all those things contrasting well together. This is her problem spot. So we've started the video with her problem spot because these trees over here and it's not about the shade that the plants are appropriate for the shade conditions it's about the roots coming over here. So it's kind of mounted up over time she's been adding organic material to it and or they've been adding organic material to it to try to stay above those roots a little bit but these trees are really good at it at taking from it. So this is probably again they're challenging they're challenging space. The other side of the path here has again there's brunnera down that I mentioned a second ago down below and then gardenias up above that they would have bloomed here a week or so ago and there's palms mixed with ferns and juga and all kinds of different textures going on here. So again when she when they started this project this was just some turf and Leyland cypress to screen a road or parking lot that's back here behind us. I love all the stones you know on the corners here and this was completely flat so they actually came in here and created a bit of slope in here. So we've fallen along again another a conifer that's elevated up above and then that gives you that planting space to get other interesting things underneath it. A few ornamental trees here there's a redbud up in the back I don't know if that's like forest pansy or something it's probably lost a little bit of color just because we're so hot this season and it's dry that's again that's the kind of challenging spot. There are roses that are you know elevated up like that the calla lilies are super super interesting the foliage is always so striking we're right on the edge of where you know the callas come back reliably once they come back a year or so. Nice beautiful seeding area back here yeah this is Colorado blue spruce up you know elevated again we're really it's got it's a little hot here for it but it's a you know beautiful looking plant. There's probably other blue conifers that you could probably find that are on a stick as well if you're you know I call it on a stick but you know as a standard yeah as a stand as a standard. So where there were Leyland cypress in the back there are now Italian cypress so you get the Italian cypress are a foot and a half wide back there. They're super lucky this is a church parking lot back here and the church is actually on the other side of the parking lot so they really don't need a tremendous amount of privacy they just need you know you can have a thin barrier basically which is what we've kind of done at our house. I'm not trying to necessarily not see it entirely I'm trying to just create you know some little barrier like that. Good morning welcome to our garden here in North Carolina in Raleigh in zone 8a. My name is Ingrid and I'm thrilled to share our labor of love with you with all of you today. Seven years ago we started from scratch with our approximately 4,500 square feet garden backyard and we worked very closely with Land, Fish and Design. They have a very creative team and we work under the supervision of Mike and Daniel so they did all the hardscape for us and they also did the initial plant structure. I especially love that Mike did the travertine in a zigzag he created it in a zigzag pattern to create a visual interest and he also added all the different levels in the garden to transform a previously completely flat space into a dimensional space. I guess what I personally like about the garden the most is the layout. The layout is as such that you don't see the whole garden all at once so instead it takes you on a journey of discoveries along clear designated defined places specifically for dining, leisure, quiet sitting areas next to water features and of course the sound of water always adds that magical and serene touch to any space. You will also notice we don't have a lot of a big variety of different plants in our garden. Instead I love to create patterns using the same plants to create eye movement as well as a sense of calm and space I guess and then with regards to the color scheme due to our space being so small I've employed an analogous color scheme featuring mostly blues and purples. Not only do they have a calm effect they also recede due to their cool undertones and yeah and in addition to that I also added copious amounts of white to create a moon garden effect at night because our family spent most of our time outside here in the evening. So I guess I just love being creative in everything, literally everything I'm doing whether it's cooking or interior design or painting in my art studio or plants in our garden. So with that being said I hope you enjoy it. So before we started there were only grass here it was completely flat a flat terrain and we had leyland cypress trees and they had some kind of disease so we had to get rid of all of them so that is how it this whole project started. Right well you guys traveled a lot in the past and so you weren't able this was the first place you were able to settle to really do this right? Yes absolutely yeah and I also love to tell stories I mean most a lot of some of my inspiration for adding certain plants in our garden comes from memories growing up in South Africa as well as living in Victoria BC for six years and yeah so you will notice lots of South African plants and just plants in general that I grew up with in my parents garden. I love this little spot you have the acarus here this may be ogon but you can use everillo carex for this you could use other there are other variegated liriope for this you could use a gold you know there's lots of gold textured grassy like plants that we could use here and then you have the boxwoods behind it elephant ear back there the fatsia in the back again more of these this tree form uh podocarpus or standard podocarpus there yeah and in a repeat yeah and then like Steph just said a repeated element so you know this garden is going to have you know repeated elements to you know have a theme through the you know throughout the garden where again ours is just one of everything if you come to our open garden it's and that's just our thing we love collecting various plants and we also have a kind of a small space so we want as many as possible this is more of a place that you can come out and really just kind of immediately go oh it's super calming super super super calming space and and strangely within 4 000 square feet here uh it has different rooms so we have you know there's a seating area and a dining area and you're going to see a small pool and a putting area we're going to get to down there so literally it's been divided into these little into these little rooms that change as we go the patio is very very striking as well uh this holly fern you know just tucked in around you know tucked in around this container that has the lavender in it the lavender's flowering the in the holly fern and then the stone and then there's an elephant ear behind it and then there's the beginning of a dry creek bed so again created took what was just a flat space with kind of a tiny slope and turned it into something something far more interesting then you got the large japanese maple here which will probably need some you know some tough love at some point in the future it's coming out on the patio quite a bit and uh it's trying to uh eat a couple of other things but underneath it because it again because everything's limbed up there's hosta and i see uh japanese painted ferns under there uh there's another maybe that's another holly fern under there i'm just spying it as stuff is spying it with the uh with the camera back there there's a farfugium under there stuff is saying okay all right so lots of different uh textures you'll notice there's a mixture here of shade and sun things another you know benefit of having some you know having the shade on that side of the garden even though it's going to be in the sun at some point today it's not long enough that you can't mix things uh just a little just a little bit you know rounding this corner you start to pick up the water sounds and again we're in the city and uh this just kind of makes the the surrounding noise uh disappear and what was a flat space um here's something you know creating it more of almost a slightly mountainous feel really this abelia is a standard as well so that's being elevated yeah the mondo grass the black mondo grass is super super striking uh we have ours in such a dry area that it's just not spreading at all uh this this has a little bit more moisture it's near this pond and it's and it's really doing what i think we intended when we planted our black mondo to do as well it just hasn't done as much of it but the water sounds fantastic i love how there's plants tucked in there there's ferns and hosta and other things tucked in the back back there and water lilies as well where you uh you know it looks very natural doesn't look forced at all there's some blue fescue under here stuff under the rose lots of blues lots of blues and whites used in this garden look great yes and she she'll talk about that you know she talked about that as well where you know there's a lot of white used and so when you're outside in the evening you know what are you going to see you know what colors are you going to see plus this is a garden with long shadows we're filming this this morning and i don't know how you know the sun will peek through here and there that's when these whites really show up and these variegations show up and these chartreuse colors show up as well but there's so many details in here yeah there's yeah we have this beautiful uh whipcord sedum there's a farfugium back here tractor seat plant see that you can see why it's called a tractor seat plant another bruce another blue spruce um love the cast iron plants and that cast iron plant has a white tip on it you see that that little subtle white tip on that cast iron plant i'm sure in the evening as the sun is playing tricks with it you can they can really really stand out boxwoods and you see how many details are here you have the moss growing on the rocks because of this uh dry creek bed is keeping it slightly moist um you know again a created space back here and there's a there's a sedum collection within it uh yeah there's thyme and uh all kinds of uh i see i see lemon thyme over there uh we've seen we've seen lots of uh little little sprigs of edible things out here as well fatsia repeated as we're going down the line another japanese maple and these these elevated you know limbed up trees are also what's allowing this mixture of shade plants with things that will take a little bit more need a little bit more sun because you're still getting enough enough light in it uh there's a an exercise pool here so you know small a pool that you can get in and swim and it fits right into the it fits right into the space the path goes around it and it's even with their back even with their back patio back here i don't know what cameo cypress this is i guess yeah it probably is rheingold so that'll turn kind of an orangey color in the fall or winter but the rest of the season look how good look how good that plant looks it doesn't it appears that it's been pruned a lot and i'm sure it has to be pruned sometimes but this one kind of grows a roundish roundish like this got a weeping um adidor cedar back there i don't know which wouldn't know what variety that is we have feeling blue at the house another thread like cypress back there what frankie boy yeah that's probably frankie boy several boxwoods again little details little you know lots of small growing plants and you know so you're looking you're looking at a nine square foot 10 square foot space back there and there's two different boxwood varieties it looks like there's two different boxwood varieties there's lamium heuchera that frankie boy a fern one of those mouse ears hostas back there crazy right i mean and there's some stone with moss growing on it just an interesting little 10 square feet there that you know you can look at and see all of that color contrast and a couple palms in the garden and of course these windmill palms allow themselves to be limbed up which gives that opportunity underneath to have the oxalis and there's lavender oxalis black mondo lemon coral sedum there's time growing out of the back of it on a rock back here two white roses which are really going to shine at night just a beautiful a beautiful spot there again another spot that's probably i mean this is i mean how this is six or eight square feet with a palm as the center spot of it and you see all the little details in there and then of course you know a couple little a couple little other other things added to the garden that birds might come and take advantage of the water that's there maybe a tamukiyama japanese maple or some sort of lace leaf weeping japanese maple and even it you know is limbed up and other ground covers are planted underneath it there's a cryptomeria japonica that's probably globosa nana in a container and then that creek bed just continues continues through here and wraps around what is a what is a practice putting green we see the little details everywhere in here and then that gets the water you know off of the uh property she's they're making a couple changes back here there's these three tree form roses i think one of these roses is moving uh she said and there's going to be a path going back in here into this corner you know we have one of these in the front garden at our house where we i trap in my design i cut a trail off a little too early and it doesn't allow you to get to one corner of our garden and i think this year i think i'm going to figure out how to solve that she's in the process of figuring out or they're in the process of figuring out how to solve that this year of you know not having an entire corner of the garden cut off from you know people being able to enjoy it and this is a much harder thing to garden you know this where this path has been cut into this small space and defined and that dry creek bed has been added to it this allows you to design much more easily it's much more easy to design a space that's this wide than it is a that's basically from here to that corner back there's probably 30 feet and it's really hard to figure out what to layer into when you have that kind of depth when you turn the camera toward this way and the bed is only and the bed is only six or seven feet deep then you have your tall evergreen magnolia probably an emerald arborvitae here below it which is going to stay narrow and then there's smooth hydrangeas a container with annuals in it a juga down at the ground a calla lily coming up in there a yucca coming up you know it's like you know there's just all of a sudden you know with this narrow spot it's much easier to think through you know the layering of the small stuff along the path of course this even this piece of driftwood that's in front of it there so this is it's a pretty nice little putting area here it's a little four hole mini golf situation and it's surrounded by really really nice landscaping here's an Arizona cypress which we would think of as a plant that gets 40 or 50 60 feet tall and is kind of a Leyland cypress or green giant replacement but here it is as a standard and it just needs to be you know two or three times a year come out here you're done you know it's like literally three prunings a year and the the yucca underneath it the color guard yucca underneath it looks looks fantastic there are three of these little gem magnolias along here one is flowering right now actually the terminal ends on these are blooming i can see where there were blooms earlier oops i knocked that one off but there's a cone right here forming where the flower was earlier the seed will set in the middle of that but there's one of the open flowers on that and then you know the neighbor over here you know where this gate goes out their cars are parked over there so there's some bamboo in a container that just creates enough of a subtle block that you you know don't have to you know look directly at it necessarily some low growing nandinas in the back and again you see little you know pieces of pieces of art throughout this garden definitely an artist you know you can you can we can all see that when we're you know looking at these spaces you know that the person you know has an eye for something more than just plants and more than just you know it's it there's a a design element that's one step above where my where my mind actually works it might be why i'm a one-of-a-kind plant collector because i don't know that my uh you know that i think at this uh at this level the you know we film with jay sifford and other landscape designers and up at margo's garden up here in north raleigh as well and now another one where you see you know what a designer's eye can do there are a couple spots where star jasmine have been used one in the front garden so this is an hoa community you got to get everything approved so the front garden is very very different than the back garden here as a lot of you are probably experiencing in your hoa communities but they did put in a living wall in the front garden so as you walk up to the house you have the you always have a you know garage wall or some wall you're trying to get covered up they did this on the front garden wall and then again in the back garden to the the star jasmine was planted it looks like there's one two three four five i think added to this and grown up here high enough that when you sit on the patio up at the top it's a screen for the house that's next door so evergreen vine is a great choice and we'll get there a little quicker i mean if you had to buy you know if you had to buy a shrub you know this is how long is this nine years or something now okay i can't remember i can't remember what she said seven years maybe you know to grow these emeralds and these magnolias and that kind of thing but if you had to go out and buy one that was already that tall to screen this or get one that would reasonably get there in five or six or seven years that'd be a lot of money the five vines you can buy like this and really quickly can get that covered up the mixture of texture and color and the repeating elements are super calming and when you come into this you know you you walk into this gate and you hear that get that water sound we're a little bit further away from it right now but if you're up on their patio area or anywhere and that's in the middle of this garden it just makes all the background noise go away as soon as you come into this place it's super calming this is really great garden design there are a lot of different plants here so she would say that she's not a plant collector and that she's you know repeating things and trying to do swaths but ultimately uh in this 4,000 square feet there are a lot of different plants here so um i think that she's underdoing the number of plants that she you know she knows a lot of plants and has that has used a lot of plants and they've you know designed a lot of plants into here uh they're all they're all super interesting but again more in more in groupings uh that kind of thing i think this putting this dry creek bed and turning this in to having the vision to say okay this is just a kind of a flat lawn space with Leyland Cypress and what do you do with it i think a lot of people would take the dying they were the Leylands were dying take the Leylands out maybe leave the lawn and then do some sort of thin strip of additional screening plants in here uh whereas having the vision to say hey let's actually change the terrain a little bit let's bring a machine in here and create what almost feels like mountainous or you know it's you know the the terrain creating terrain out of this and creating uh movement out of this and allowing water to you know there's a lot of water coming from these gutters so having a place for that water to get out of here but also then harnessing that water and planting around it as well uh things that would like more moisture really really great design space a lot of organic material you can tell has been used here so i would imagine we're in a significant drought right this minute but everything looks pretty lush i'm sure obviously it's being watered and uh but i think it's probably requiring a little less than it would otherwise because of the way the soil prep has been done and you can tell it's all elevated just a bit so i think you know the mulch over time has really built a kind of a pretty superior soil i love all these standards these little lollipops throughout the garden are really an important component of this garden creating some different height within these spaces it's really i think it's one of the the most difficult things for people to figure out i'll frequently do consultations and you know everything the person's planted is three to four foot tall leafy evergreen plant you know and i'm guilty of it as well probably on landscape jobs that i did for many many years of just these are all the easiest plants to use and so let's let's put all these in and then you when you look back on it it's this combination of boxwoods and abelia and indian hawthorns and you know whatever else all of these three to four foot tall uh meatballish plants which i love we have lots of them in our garden because i think they help settle the eye and that's how they're being used here they're more to settle the eye a bit uh rather than yeah like the three boxwoods behind me you know as seasonal changes happen in this garden those will be the same but they're not overused uh to the point of that the theme of the garden is three to four foot meatballs um you know throughout the garden so please continue to send us uh your amazing gardens we have with pictures if you would that's that's super super helpful and what we're doing is just when we go out on the road if it happens to sit in the middle we have a couple more scheduled at this point for later in the year already uh and we want to show off all different types of gardening and all different types of gardens i think that we've seen we're going to see all different types and i hope you guys can you know enjoy the the amazing ability uh that folks have yeah and don't and please don't be intimidated by anything that you're seeing along the way we don't want to we we don't want to just show off one particular type of garden at all we would love to show off all kinds of things especially folks who've watched the channel been inspired by the channel absolutely love to come and see those and it can be a small space it doesn't have to be like a complete entire garden if you've turned one corner of your garden into something that that that you come home to and you're proud of please send us those photos this is um you know it's not some sort of gardening competition uh this is you know we want we really do want to come out and see you're incredible uh the work that you guys are working you know working with uh one thing i would say is we didn't ask the question about deer and rabbits in this garden i don't think that there's probably any rabbits probably coming in here out in the front garden has you know has some turf that the hoa probably uh requires out here but i will ask and i'll put that on the screen if there's ever been deer jumping in here she seems to have the similar design that we had at margo's garden it's up in north raleigh where it's a it's a it's a fence that a deer can definitely jump but they would have a hard time landing in here so creating a space near that fence where it's planted is probably making it more less comfortable to jump in here but maybe occasional one does get in here thank you guys so much for watching