Maximizing Small Outdoor Spaces: Tips from an Award-Winning Landscape
Small spaces can feel like they limit your options when it comes to landscape design. How can you fit a spa, multiple fire features, and beautiful plantings in a narrow yard—and still maintain space for hosting? It can feel daunting, even impossible, to create the space of your dreams in such close quarters.
Good news: There’s a ‘but…’
In this blog post, we’re sharing with you the ins and outs of a very small landscape that makes lots of space for year-round Northern Michigan memories. With careful planning, design, and execution, our team was able to transform a dated backyard into a private lakeside resort, complete with a fire pit, spa, custom stone deck, and much more. Keep reading to explore this space and get our expert tips on how to create your own dream landscape, no matter what size yard you’re working with.
The initial design
The layout of this landscape includes a small strip of land at the side of the house, and another between the home and the lake. Over the years, the original landscaping materials had become worn down and were showing obvious signs of wear and tear.
The clients wanted a space with a new (and totally unique) upper stone deck, low-maintenance plantings, and a space where they could gather around a firepit or unwind in a spa while enjoying the beauty of lakeside living. This was a tall order for such a small space! But our team was up to the challenge.
The design of the space was kept intentionally simple to avoid “visual clutter.” The materials used were a light-colored ledgestone and a contrasting black granite, creating visual interest, and the monochromatic plant palette contains slow-growing plants that require little maintenance. Keeping some lawn area was important to visually soften the proposed patio space, but artificial turf was used in favor of sod for ease of care. After all, it would be an extra challenge to get any lawn mower into this space!
The construction process
Work on this landscape began with the shoreline, then worked backwards towards the house. The upper stone deck was a feat of engineering, necessitating multiple layers of supports to withstand the weight of the granite and ensure the integrity of the structure. The hot tub also required a good deal of creativity, as it’s actually a stone enclosure built to hold a standard luxury unit. However, the unit the client selected had maintenance access panels on all four sides, whereas most units only have maintenance access on one side. To accommodate this, our team modified an ATV lift and placed it underneath the spa, enabling it to lift the empty spa out of the enclosure for regular maintenance and upkeep.
The small space our team was working in posed a challenge throughout the process, creating limited areas for material staging and necessitating careful coordination. But challenges are just opportunities to learn and grow, and our team created a space that surpassed our client’s expectations.
The finished small space landscape
Despite its small size, this landscape was made for hosting. The upper stone deck feels like a natural extension of the indoor living space, with infrared heating and a TV built into the ceiling, comfortable seating, and both mesh and vinyl screens that turn this into a space to enjoy all year long.
Below the deck sits the spa in the custom enclosure, and nearby is a combination fire-and-water feature that helps disguise the noise of this narrow neighborhood.
The centrally located fire pit and wide patio create ample room for family and friends, while thoughtful plantings add privacy and promote a feeling of calm across the space.
Landscape lighting used throughout means this space can be enjoyed well into the evening, and decorative fire bowls add a finishing flair to this landscape, making it a beautiful sight to behold even from afar.
Tips to create your own small space landscape
Now that we’ve seen everything a small space has to offer, how do you go about creating your own? Here are some of our expert tips to help you design a small landscape you can’t wait to come home to:
- Decide what’s most important – In this landscape, a totally unique stone deck was of the utmost importance to these clients, and it was something they weren’t willing to do without. The rest of the landscape followed from this very specific goal. As you think about your dream landscape, find the thing that’s most important to you—the one thing you’re not willing to leave out—and use that as the starting point to your landscape design.
- Simplicity leads to spaciousness – In a small space, keeping things simple creates a feeling of more space by removing visual clutter. Maintaining a minimalistic approach to material selection will give your eyes less to work through, leading to an appearance of a larger area.
- Keep the space open – When working in a small space, don’t make it smaller by cutting it up into even tinier spaces. Use walls or hedges along the perimeter of the space to create privacy, but keep central areas open to maximize use.
- Take advantage of the view – If your small landscape looks out over a field or, like this landscape, the lake, use that visual space to make your landscape feel bigger. Highlight the view, rather than hiding it, and make sure there are plenty of places to sit back and enjoy it.
- Reach out to a landscaping professional – To maximize the design and function of your small space, don’t hesitate to contact a seasoned landscape professional. Their knowledge and experience will help you confidently tackle the challenges associated with small landscapes, giving you peace of mind that your space will last for years to come.
Transform your small landscape with confidence
We hope these tips and examples of all you can do with a small space give you new inspiration to create the landscape you’ve been dreaming of. If you’re in Northern Michigan, our team would be happy to help you design and build your own dream landscape. Contact us today to get started!
