You may only have a small outdoor area to call a garden, but there is no reason why you cannot make the best of it; no reason why you cannot take that limited amount of space and transform it. You can make your garden an elegant space that reflects your sensibility, taste and sense of style. Here are some small formal garden design ideas that may help you create the look you want.
1. Immaculate Hedges
Perfectly shaped and even hedges will probably do more to invoke that formal aspect of a garden than anything else. Not only hedges, perfectly pruned trees and bushes will help create the sense of order in a garden.
2. Symmetry
Clearly demarcated and neat, well tended flower beds, flowers in graded size in terms of the heights of the shrubs, help create a sense of order. Create a symmetrical map on paper as a blue print for your formal garden to predict what the final look will be.
3. Formal Seating
Rather than a casual recliner or a couple of mismatched gliders and chairs, opt for well matched furniture sets. Wrought iron chairs and table topped with glass can be an excellent choice to evoke the formal look.
4. Manicured Lawns
A well looked after; evenly green lawn is a must for any formal garden. Not only that, a beautiful lawn is a joy to behold and somewhere you will want to spend time.
5. Formal Walkways
A formal paved walkway or stepping stones will serve a dual purpose – they will add to the formal look of your small garden and also help keep people off the lawn and out of the flower beds (read kids and other people when you entertain).
6. Gazebo
A gazebo adds a touch of class to a formal garden, looks beautiful when you’re entertaining and is just the place to spend a lazy, sunny afternoon with family and friends. It can be as simple or elaborate as you need.
7. Well Tended Arbors
Arches and arbors with flowering creepers add definition to a garden and look beautiful too. In the alternative you can have just the arches/arbors in your garden without adding the creepers or climbers (they can require quite a bit of maintenance).
8. Other Aspects
A pretty fence with a matching gate, trellis along one wall of the house (with or without a creeper such as ivy or a flowering climber such as bougainvillea), a boundary wall and boundaries for the driveway may be other aspects you want to look at.
