The smallest spaces

Design and construction

Small spaces

We like small spaces. Outdoor small spaces are actually good sized rooms and there is so much we can do with them. Just think of the bathroom in your house and how wonderful that can look. Small spaces are often attached to apartments or terraced houses where access is all through the property. Over the years we have amassed a great assortment of protective equipment for work through the house. We put down hardboard, carpet underlay, polythene sheets and cover everything. We clear up at the end of each day, and then have a good clean and hoover on Fridays to get you all tidy for the weekend. There’s no doubt that limited access is difficult for us and you but the overall benefit of turning that horrible space outside into something wonderful and useable soon outweighs a couple of weeks of upheaval.

You have to think practically about the amount of material that‘s going to come out of the garden or courtyard. Bringing materials in is relatively simple as new materials will be clean, packaged and can be organised in small component parts. Taking things out will be the thing that causes the problem. If you have large overgrown shrubs these will need to be cut up into small bits as you can’t drag huge branches of things through your hallway. Everything that comes out needs to go into a clean bag or bucket and be carried through. 

If there are level changes to implement, then we may need to remove part of your garden or even bring in more. Walls may come down, fences may need replacing and all of these things will have to be removed. Sometimes it’s less expensive to build a much bigger garden simply because they have a back gate, a drive where we can site a skip and wide pathways for diggers and wheelbarrows. Labour time is always the most expensive element of any project and if you pay for good labour too, then your costs will go up.

We just completed a roof terrace in Brighton, (it’s in 25 Beautiful Homes this month. Did I sound modest – cause I’m really quite excited!) and that cost over £14,000. The problem was that their apartment was absolutely gorgeous and we didn’t want to bring a single thing in through the building. We rented a scissor lift and took everything up the side of the building (and took everything out down the side of the building too). The massive standard magnolia tree that stands in a pot on the terrace was the scariest thing we’ve ever moved. There was a gale force wind blowing. The tree needed three people to lift it, the scissor lift was extended to its maximum height and we still had to lift the tree up five feet and over a parapet wall. I stood on the terrace and watched the thing swing backwards and forwards in the wind as the guys strained and heaved the pot up onto the wall. We did it of course, but how on earth do you cost in something like that?!


Plants

Dicentra Spectabilis

A good one after Valentine’s Day, this is commonly called Bleeding Heart... but despite its name, it’s such a pretty plant and perfect for the cottage garden. The flowers hang all along the plant stems and really are heart shaped. The pink variety is a little too vibrant for me, but I love the white form – which is called Dicentra Spectabilis Alba. The plant flowers quite early in the season, along with all the pretty things like Aquilegia, and will do really well in shade too. It will grow in the sun as well, but does prefer a good moist soil. The plants clump up each year and send out more stems and will die down after it’s flowered. It starts to look quite tatty at the end of its flowering period, so I cut mine hard back and let something else take over to flower later in the season. Apparently it can be quite toxic, so care should be taken if the stems should break or if you need to dig it up and move it around. I do find that all these plants that are supposedly toxic are quite okay with me – like hyacinth bulbs and euphorbia – but perhaps that’s just from a lifetime of plants.


Things to do

Buy baby plants

If you have a sunny windowsill, this is a good time to buy starter plants from the nursery. They sell tiny plants that you can start off yourself, and they’re really good value. Twelve geranium will only cost you £2.99 and they are provided in small cardboard plug pots. Take these home and pot them on into slightly larger pots. Keep them well watered and as they grow, pot them on again. They’re going to be cheaper than buying fully grown plants because the nursery can get them out of stock and into your home much more quickly. They’re saving on light, soil and space. You can buy all the usual bedding plants that you use for pots and hanging baskets, and it is expensive to buy the plants later in the season. Try growing on your own petunia, and you really will save a lot of money. There’s a good deal of satisfaction too, when you have nurtured something from a tiny plant.

I bought two trays of red geranium last year and ended up with 24 wonderful large plants that flowered right the way through the summer. A couple are still going strong in the conservatory and my mum still has six too. Not bad for £5.98.

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