Forget Living Large

GARDENS ARE shrinking. Because of an exodus back into the city, as well as the graying of gardeners, we're shedding expansive lawns and borders and making do with a few containers, a modest urban plot or a courtyard patio. While we may be losing outdoor space, we are gaining a garden that doesn't demand every single waking minute.

And yet . . . there's still our desire to grow plants. No tips and tricks for making a garden live large will satisfy if you're always pushing the fence line, longing for more soil in which to grow just one — or two or three — more plants.

Successful downsizing is more about what goes on in your head than out in the garden. Try meditating on the questions: "What is the crux of a garden for me? Which elements do I most crave? Which do I find most rewarding?" Maybe you need flowers to pick for the house, raspberries in summer, tomatoes right off the vine, winter fragrance, an outdoor dining room, grasses blowing in the wind, or a patch of lawn for the dog. What is it you just can't do without? Once you're able to distill your own personal garden desires down to their essence, it's possible to make satisfying outdoor spaces of any size.

I remember when I first started writing this column. Every single week I agitated for more space. I was sure that every topic I tackled deserved a few more lines. My editor grew tired of my wheedling, looked me in the eye, and said simply, "I suggest you get comfortable with the length of your column." It was a hard lesson that helped me focus on the essentials, to edit not just my words but my dissatisfactions. Boundaries can be comfortable, and comforting, once you make up your mind to work within them, for gardens as well as columns.

Visitors to your garden don't count the number or variety of plants. If they do, don't invite them back. Most of us pay far more attention to colors, smells, an inviting place to sit and plants that look healthy and happy — all things that are eminently achievable at any scale.

So much of what we love most in gardens is hard to put into words, and has nothing to do with how many plants we have room to grow. The welcome sense of shelter, a feeling of intimacy and enclosure, are easier to achieve in smaller spaces. Pretty soon you'll be pitying those poor folk with large gardens. Think how hard it is to carve up those cavernous spaces so you really feel at home when you step out the door.

Now In Bloom

New this spring is a showy yellow corydalis to plant with hostas or as groundcover beneath hydrangeas. Corydalis 'Canary Feathers' has ferny blue-green foliage topped with large funnels of long-blooming, bright yellow flowers. Perfect for the woodland, to mix with blue-blooming corydalis, in moisture-retentive soil.

ILLUSTRATED BY JULIE NOTARIANNI

Restricting your garden's color palette is a positive way of editing plant choices. How can you feel deprived when surrounded by your favorite shades? Using only a select few colors of foliage and flower creates a garden large in atmospherics if not reality.

Gardens that appeal to more than just the visual are the most satisfying. No matter how diminutive your garden, try to shoehorn in both still and running water. The smooth surface of a birdbath or pond draws the sky down into the garden, reflects the clouds and sun, ripples in the breeze. A trickling, dripping or gushing fountain animates the garden while amplifying its sensory impact. Sound, movement and fragrance give us a big jolt of garden experience per square inch.

Perhaps the best way to play around with scale is to pretend you slip on a pair of 3-D glasses every time you step outside. This will help you see your garden as a full volume of usable space. Capping garden rooms with arbors or pergolas, bringing walls or fences to life by training espaliers along them, or sculpting trees to meet overhead, all make use of more than just the vertical and horizontal. Finally, don't be afraid of either intricacy or simplicity. Both work, as long as you identify what you love most, and go for it.

For inspiration, grab a copy of "The Tiny Garden," a new book by Jane McMorland Hunter (Frances Lincoln Ltd., $30). This is the most visually exciting book on designing small spaces I've ever seen, with ideas for truly tiny patio, balcony, courtyard, container and roof gardens.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer and author of "A Pattern Garden." Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net.