Adrian delivers actionable tips and landscaping ideas for getting the greatest use out of your small backyard.
Video Transcription
Hi, I’m Adrian Simunovic from Paradise Decks and Landscape Design. One of the most common challenges facing homeowners is finding creative small backyard ideas. Today I’m going to show you how. The total width of this lot is only 16 feet — small by any measure. What we needed to do was take the deck space out all the way to the lot line. We could have chosen to run the deck the entire length of the property, but this would’ve looked more like a dock than a deck. What we chose to do is break that long length up with deck space and square cut flagstone. By doing that we’ve broken up the length, and we’ve also added some additional seating.
Because small backyard spaces often necessitate that we bring the living space so close to the property lines, as a courtesy to your neighbour it’s often necessary to create some kind of a screen or vegetation buffer for noise. When it comes to planting in small backyard landscaping projects there are two vitally important things to consider: one, keep the number of varieties small, and keep the palette simple. In this space you’ll notice the homeowner has used predominately green and white.
Introducing too many colours into a small space tends to make it look very busy. One of the focal points of this whole project is this large poured concrete fire pit. Once of the difficulties we had is finding a fire pit that had the heft and the anchoring characteristics that we were after. Ultimately we decided to pour this one ourselves. Although it may seem counter-intuitive, a large feature like this actually makes the space feel larger. Although there are other things to consider when designing in a small backyard, if you follow the tips that I’ve presented today, you’re well on your way to having a beautiful, functional outdoor living space.
