Miserable concrete garden!

Hi,
I was hoping to get some advice! My inner city garden is quite small- about 5x5m and the previous owners basically covered the floor in concrete. we've been living here as while but only now getting round to sorting the garden out and we want to spend more time out there having BBQs etc but it's a bit grim and have been thinking about what we can do to make it a bit nicer. We've got a few containers with plants in but it's still a bit like a builders yard with all the concrete.

Does anyone have any great ideas or experience of this and if so what did you do?

Have thought about putting nice coloured stone gravel down but we've got a garden gate leading out onto the street and another into the separate garage and not sure how we'd stop the gravel from blocking the door and spilling out onto the street? I've uploaded a few pics to give you an idea of what its like.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner

We stay at a hotel where they've got the courtyard covered in Astroturf.



Better than gravel as you won't be worrying about treading it in.

 

I'd tear it up personally and replace it with some nicer paving and a few more beds if it was possible.

 

Believe it or not, I had a 'back yard' like tyhis when I lived in Morecambe some yeras ago, I built a 'lean-to-greenhouse' and grew tomatos and all sorts of flowering plants.
some of our neighbours kept the concrete and used timber raised-beds to plant all kinds of fruit, veg and flowering shrubs and bedding plants. the amount of sunlight you get will possibly be less than in a less-populated area but lots of plants will do well against that good old stone wall. at-least you shouldn't suffer the 'wind-scorch' that a more open space can suffer from. we had to contend with the salt-sea-spray.
buddlia will grow out of the wall, "there's a thought' why-not look-into 'vertical gardening' many innercity designers are doing it"

 

not sure if my other post has apeared yet/for you to read but here's an idea
I just went on 'Vertical gardening' on 'google immages' most impressive.

 

Hi there.

Personally, I wouldn't mess around with it, I'd tear it up. Although only a relatively small space, it could be made nice there. You say you want to have BBQ space, any thoughts as to what 'feel' you want? Climbers? Tropical? Hard landscape?

Cheers...Freddy

 

You could think about the Italian or Spanish court yard style of garden

 

Here's a pic of my patio this year. Everything is in pots, even the trees. The nice thing about this is I can move things around easily and change the look and feel of the space. I have to say this is my favorite part of my garden.

 

Raised beds.Save all that work breaking concrete.

 

True, but the said raised beds won't cover up the rest of the area, concrete.

 

Depends how big the beds were.
Just fill in the paths with gravel as above.

 

Some of the nicest gardens I've ever seen have actually been yards. With enough going on, the concrete floor becomes insignificant. Fill the walls with trellis and baskets and have all manner of fragrant plants and flowers in there. Pots of all shapes and sizes on the floor, and a little seating area, perhaps with white pebble floor, or just straight on the concrete. With enough going on, you wont be noticing the concrete floor. Besides, when its wet and horrid out, sometimes its more pleasant to walk on a boring old concrete floor where you don't have to worry about trailing mud about or compacting the ground.

 

For me, raised beds in this situation aren't the answer. Raised beds on top of concrete are just a temporary fix. Concrete creates a barrier for the natural process. Sooner or later it will cause problems, imo. It also limits what can be planted, in the long term. Watering and drainage are terms that you will hear time and again from the 'experienced' gardener. I planted a climbing Hydrangea in exactly the same situation, and it never flourished. Just my opinion...

 

Watering and feeding is a bit more of an issue, but there are loads of advantages too, especially for anyone that might just want it nice but without all the maintenance of a 'regular' garden.

For one thing, you can just swap containers about will nilly to achieve the best look. No worries about upsetting plants by moving them at the wrong time etc. There's also less weeding. Plants in open ground have to compete with the weeds (or the gardener has to tackle them). In containers there is still of course a chance that weeds will get a foot hold, but they can't spread as quickly and take over because they are always firewalled off by the container. Worst case scenario when a planter becomes a container of grass and dandelions, you can always just bin the whole contents of that one pot and start it again with fresh compost and another plant

 

Another option is to use decking. It would require some maintenance but would look really nice.