Have you created your own garden oasis?
Coming up with small backyard garden Ideas is a fun and creative endeavor. Small gardens are great places to bring out your inner artist and have fun designing for color, texture and imbuing it with your personal flare.
There are so many options for backyard garden Ideas with something for everyone. From creating thematic gardens, such as a fairy or gnome garden, herb gardens, zen gardens, specimen plants, flowers and rock gardens or a multifaceted blend of it all!
The kind of garden you choose depends on your interests and budget of course. However, the advantage in the smaller space is that you can spend a little more on feature plants and accessories because you don’t have as much space to fill.
Share yours with us… we’ll add them to this article. Contact info is at the end of this.
Meanwhile, we have some visual treats and small backyard garden ideas to follow, that might get you fired up and ready to transform your yard into a garden sanctuary.

Gorgeous Small Backyard Garden – from Bland to Magical
In this short video we see a transformation from a plain, nondescript yard into a backyard haven. Four years in the making, this is clearly a labor of love for nature and creating “landscape art” for garden Ideas for a small spaces
Japanese Zen Garden – Walking Meditation
These have a tranquil dignity and grace that invoke calm and peace through the space.
We prefer putting the time into tending and growing plants, but if you’re Interested in Japanese zen gardens, the video below from the Kikiyaya Zen Garden in The Netherlands is worth watching as Pantau Chan takes care of her Zen garden. Relax while watching her raking the garden with zen circles and enjoy the sounds.
The Japanese rock garden (枯山水 karesansui) or “dry landscape” garden, often called a zen garden, creates a miniature stylized landscape. Japanese gardens are considered amongst the most beautiful in the world, and zen gardens are one example of elegance and grace and how the arrangement of things can actually create quiet and calm for the observer.
Zen gardens are carefully composed arrangements of a variety of elements. It can be any combination of single selection of rocks, water features, moss, pruned trees and bushes, and uses gravel or sand that is raked to represent ripples in water.
In this video Pantau Chan performs a virtual “walking meditation” as we follow her through all the steps of creating garden art in her zen garden.
Even if you only have an apartment, you can still create a miniature zen garden.
Landscaping Ideas for Small Backyards

So you’re short on yard and garden space? We’ve been inspired by just how much some folks manage to grow in their small spaces, including some that have a virtual orchard in theirs by growing dwarf fruit trees and berry bushes.
But if you’re keen on creating more living yard art, you might want to include some ornamental trees or some fruit trees.
Dwarf Fruit Trees for Small Yards
No store bought food can ever compare to fresh picked. It’s just the way it is. So while you’re considering the landscape design for your yard, consider incorporating dwarf fruit trees toward a more edible landscape.
Some folks in the non-tropical regions even have good luck growing these in containers and bringing them in during winter.

Growing Dwarf Meyer Lemon Trees Indoor and Out
We’re having great luck with our Meyer’s lemon trees. They’re producing lovely aromatic flowers that are turning into loads of baby lemons, some of which have matured into delicious lemons, mildly tart but not sour or bitter. These have done so well we’ve envisioned a greenhouse full of them.[1]https://www.gardensall.com/dwarf-meyer-lemon-tree-really-fruit/
Dwarf Avocado Trees
We also have two avocado trees and though it blossomed this year, the blossoms fell off before becoming fruit. So this year we’re giving it more food and sun and will tend it carefully. If you’ve had success in growing dwarf avocados in containers, indoors in winter and outside in summer, please let us know.
We have one that we’ve grown from seed, which rarely grows true to the fruit, and one that we purchased from an online nursery. Neither have yet born fruit.
We hope they will come to fruit and will do all that we can to help that happen. However, in the meantime, we’re using the avocado leaves for other wonderful uses.


We’re out of space now for indoor growing, but as soon as we can we’ll add some more dwarf fruit trees. We would also love to add dwarf peach, nectarine and cherries to grow indoors in our cattle panel greenhouse in winter, for those not cold hardy in our growing zone 7a.
We’d love to hearwhat kind of dwarf fruit trees you’ve had success in growing, especially in zones with winter.
Want a little more “fruit juice” to get your creative juices flowing? Here’s a tantalizing video clip on growing dwarf fruits in small yards or balconies. It’s by Ari and Emma of Way to Grow with Shirley Bovshow in her fantastic backyard orchard.
Beautiful ladies… beautiful gardens… beautiful fruit!
If you’d like to share your backyard garden Ideas. We’d love to see them!
You may also enjoy these desert garden ideas.
Let’s get growing!

Cottage Garden Renovation
This last garden renovation is our favorite.
One of our favorite cottage garden transformations is this one by Hannah in Romania. She’s incredibly skilled at everything and takes on many handmade projects. Watching her creative renovation should help you glean additional backyard garden ideas you’re eager to create.
Wishing you a beautiful garden oasis!
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