Small garden, Huge impact: Inside Nicki Chapman's private courtyard garden

I wanted a beautiful sanctuary for me, but also to encourage the birds and the insects to come in as well. These are a brilliant demonstration of what you can do in a really small space. If you've got a courtyard or perhaps an alleyway, you could do something like this. A very warm welcome to Chappers Courtyard Garden. I love that as an introduction. Hello, I'm Nicky Chapman. I'm a TV presenter and a radio broadcaster and I'm absolutely thrilled to show you around my small, but I like to say, perfectly formed city garden. I get really excited, super excited, talking about my garden because it's very personal and it is my happy place. People talk about their gardens like they're their children and that's certainly how I feel. And this is my place. This is where I feel it has its own personality, it has its own character, it has its own charm and it allows me in. Now when we bought the house, it was made up of flats, so we had to convert it back into one property. We had the garden landscaped and it was lovely. We had huge palm trees that just grew and grew, outgrew the garden, but it was quite hard. The edges were hard. It was a lot of concrete and I thought we need to change this. And so when I decided that I wanted to change, I thought, well, do I go for something completely different or do I mend the garden that I've got? And it was quite a brave decision because no one wants to get rid of anything, but sometimes needs must. And my priorities were a beautiful space, somewhere that I could work, important for the wildlife. I wanted them back into my garden, especially the birds. That was important for me. More greenery and trees. And with the help of a lovely designer called Mark Gregory, that some of you will know, I think we've achieved it. So would you like to see around my garden? Because I'd love to show it to you. Come on then. I have a city garden, an urban garden, quite a small space. But what I love about these so much is whatever time of year, whether I'm looking out of the window into my garden or I'm actually out here, perhaps reading and working, they are so colourful and full of life. So at the moment, I think you might have got them at their best. I've got my lupins. We've got some African daisies down here. The bumblebees are going crazy for them. So they just look really healthy and beautiful and just bursting with colour and vibrancy. So during the winter and spring months, I'll have my lasagna planting. So it means I get colour 12 months of the year. And I think in a way, these are a brilliant demonstration of what you can do in a really small space. If you've got a courtyard or perhaps an alleyway by your property or where you're renting, you could do something like this. They don't always look this good, by the way. I will add that. Got them on a good day. I wanted to have more wildlife in the garden. They didn't come into my old garden for some reason. I had very big trees and I wanted a beautiful sanctuary for me, but also to encourage the birds and the insects to come in as well. And the one thing I really wanted was an area that I could socialise in, but some big borders. If you think how small my garden is, it really is. This border is enormous and I didn't want a little strip down the side. I wanted to incorporate colour. Now, people have birdsong in their garden. Me? I've got some builder down the road, so bear with, but that's living in a city, isn't it? So what have I got here? Well, right, the focal point has to be my Amelanchier and it is struggling. It's about five years old and we've had really hot summers and we've also had drought and not an awful lot of rain in London, although we did have a big downpour last night. And it is struggling. I have a running battle with the pigeons in my garden. I know, please don't write to me. I'd like them to go elsewhere because they break all the branches. They sit and they eat the berries, which I understand, but it is struggling anyway and it's not looking fantastic. So I'm going to have to make a judgment call on the Amelanchier. Perhaps we'll give him another year. As you can see, I love my Alliums, which brings me on to the other little beasts in my garden. Squirrels, they always win the battle, sadly, and one of them broke one of these Alliums this morning. Can you believe he ran up? They're called summer drummers. I asked everyone on social media what they were called because I couldn't remember. I bought the bulbs last year and I couldn't remember. But look, look at the size of them. They must be nearly six foot. And talking of Alliums, if I can draw your attention to these ones, look at them, these high tops here. There's a bee having a field day. They're just beginning to turn. It's been a great year for me for Alliums and I've got some at the back as well. Green is important in my garden. You've got the Taxus balls here. Now this border is a hard edge and I wanted something soft and I wanted structure all year round. So I've got them scattered all over the garden and I love that dome. I love the effect that it gives and they're bright, bright green this time of year. And then in contrast, you've got the foxgloves that are scattered through. Looking at my color palette, I obviously love pink, don't I? And I like white. And Carol Clyde gave me a great piece of advice about foxgloves, which I'll share with you a little bit later on. Nestled at the back, can you see the hydrangea? I talk about my passion for my plants and my containers and that hydrangea did so well during the spring, early months. And it's beginning to turn, but I couldn't throw it away. It doesn't fit in this garden, not where it is, but I don't care. It's loved and it deserves a spot. So it's at the back and then I've got some new hydrangeas that I only planted up this year and they're just beginning to come through. They're going to be that beautiful greeny white. And then the last thing I want to mention is this, my hedge, because I've got a barbecue behind here and it's a really good way of dividing up the garden. So you don't see the ugliness of the barbecue, but it is part of the way we live our lives. But you have this incredible border. It is doing so well this time of year. It's quite wild, isn't it? It's got a cottage feel. So here we are in the center of the city with a cottage feel border. Not all of us can live in the country, sadly. Some of us have to live in towns and cities and you can hear there's a lot of background noise in my garden. And it's so funny because sitting here, there's builders and we've got planes going overhead because I live quite close to Heathrow, you turn off from it. When you're sitting around and you're surrounded by all this gorgeousness, that outside noise just disappears and through it all I can occasionally hear birdsong. I'm really lucky, probably the crown in my presenting year has to be working alongside the experts at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and I always seize the opportunity to ask their advice about my garden. And I was talking about foxgloves to the wonderful Carol Klein and she gave me a piece of advice. So if you go to a nursery or a garden center and they're there but they haven't come into bloom and you're like, what color is it? What color am I buying? If it's cream, cream white, the leaves are super soft, they're like rabbit's ears and the stem is green. If it's pink, just look at those leaves, completely different texture, quite sharp and the stem has a pinky hue to it. So I've shown you my containers, I've shown you this wonderful border that's quite wild at the moment and cottage-like. Let me show you the back of the garden. Here we are at the back of the garden, it literally is a stone's throw from the kitchen and as you're standing in the kitchen and looking out we've got big bifold doors, your eyes drawn to this beautiful water feature that we had made especially for this space. We love it and when it's running and hearing that water go through, it's so calming and relaxing. Also when it's not running, all the animals like to have a little drink, yeah, but we love it. It's the focal point at the back of the garden and in a way being in the center then you've got these wonderful hornbeam trees. Now these have been bleached and it gives you privacy, it gives you a little bit of seclusion, somewhere for the birds, but it works so well and in a small garden I was a bit scared about having trees because I thought, yeah, the roots etc etc. These give you structure and they look so lovely and I do have leaves for about nine months of the year and then in the winter it looks a little bit skeleton-like, but it's beautiful, it's worked so well, it also dampens the noise from neighbors etc which I love. So with my Amelanchier and these I've managed to get trees in a very very small space and again quite a wild looking border, nothing's too uniform here. I like a garden to be a little bit whimsical and so on my travels, be it the Malvern Spring or Autumn Show or RHS Chelsea, I buy these. I bought some at Hampton Court as well and they're dotted all around the garden and again in the winter when there's not an awful lot going on, you've got color coming through, everything is looking very lush, very healthy and these are going to need a prune soon but I'll have to get an expert in, I'm not going up that ladder. Another bonus of going to Malvern or Hampton Court or the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is often there's a few plants that need a new home and I was talking to Jamie Butterworth who worked on Monty Don's Dog Garden together so successfully, that partnership, wow, incredible and he had some plants left over and I was like anything that you don't need Jamie and he kindly donated them to me, a few of these, they're going to go in the back of the garden. He did tell me to cut them back and then I'll get another full head of flowers as well. So this was on Monty Don's Dog Garden and it's now going into Chapper's very small garden in London. I think that there's another one here, so yeah, that's a job for me to do. The thing with gardens is they're never finished, they're never ever finished and in a way they're going to look lovely in that corner. You don't want them to be finished, do you? You're constantly wanting to improve, some things work, some things don't and just pottering, it makes me so happy. I'm going to be honest, I do have the experts coming to help me, yeah, with the pruning and some of the maintenance and encouraging me to grow other things, not just go for one variety of plant, to try and stretch it because we know it's better for the environment. But it is looking so healthy, this is my happy place and if you said to me you've got to work from home every single day in the sun shining, oh my goodness, I think my life would be complete.