Small miracles

Sunset, Oct, 1998 by Sharon Cohoon, Lauren Bonar Swezey

The modern tract home is a marvel. Dream kitchens with cabinet space to spare, a full arsenal of appliances, and countertops big enough for the most ambitious meal preparations. Master suites luxurious enough to hide out in all weekend. Bathrooms and closets the size bedrooms used to be. Home offices.

There's a flip side, of course. Such amenities require floor space. To get it, these generously scaled homes hog most of their lots. What's left for the gardener is often minuscule: a mouse pad-size entry, a backyard only marginally bigger, and spaces no wider than hallways on either side of the house.

Older houses often share the small-yard dilemma with tract houses. As their owners remodel them by raising the roof a story or two and pushing out walls as far as municipal codes allow, little space is left over for outdoor living, play, or planting.

Garden designers have become masterful at making the most of such downsized spaces. On these pages are some of their design ideas and advice for making small gardens live large.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA Backyard retreat

The sound of a waterfall gently echoes through the kitchen. Outside, a soft breeze rustles a forest of bright green leaves. No, this isn't a country garden in the Sierra foothills; it's Lisa and Tim Goodman's small garden retreat in Berkeley.

The Goodmans, who work together as landscape designers and contractors, created the Japanese-inspired garden with a peaceful-sounding rock waterfall and stream, a variety of subtle and interesting foliage plants, and two vine-covered arbors. (Before the remodel, their backyard consisted of a lawn and flowers - no seating, and poor access from the house. "We finally asked ourselves, 'Why have a garden if it doesn't invite you in to linger?'" says Lisa.)

To improve accessibility, the Goodmans installed French doors off the kitchen. They added plenty of seating in the garden, making it function well for entertaining. But the garden has also become an exciting draw for their school-age son, Cole, and his friends. "The rocks and water are an instant magical playground," says Tim.

TIPS AND TRICKS

* Use slim fences. Narrow slats make the wood fence visually recede.

* Create privacy with sound. The murmur of water masks noises.

* Grow a screen of green. Small, narrow landscape plants (azara, Japanese maple, weeping bamboo) and vine-covered arbors block out views of neighboring houses.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA Rooms with a view

Divide a backyard into different functional areas and provide lots of eye-arresting details - the way you would for an interior room - and the yard visually expands.

That's what happened when Phoenix landscape architect Greg Trutza reland-scaped Jackie Ellis and Kim Williamson's backyard. Before the remodel, their outdoor furnishings filled a narrow porch near the house, making the whole space appear cramped. Trutza added a new, larger patio and a curving path of aged brick, and moved the major seating area into the space that had formerly been the middle of the garden. The columns of a new ramada draw the eye upward, further opening up the space. Most of this garden is located on one side of the house. Still, it provides plenty of space for outdoor dining and entertaining.

TIPS AND TRICKS

* Grow plants vertically. Bougainvillea, trailing jasmine, and creeping fig don't use much floor space, but they nearly cover the walls in greenery.

* Invest in quality materials. The recycled brick in this patio dates from the turn of the century and is pricier than standard used brick. But it wears better and stands up to the close scrutiny a small garden receives.

NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA A "floating" patio

The modern backyard is too small for soccer or football, yet we persist in carpeting it in sport turf. It may make more sense to devote the space to family dining and adult socializing instead, suggests Paul Logue Haden, president of the design firm the Collaborative West. That's what his firm did at the property pictured above. "We tried to create a backyard that would say, 'Why don't we eat outside?'" says Haden. The patio was placed in the middle of the yard and surrounded by a water moat. Horsetail (Equisetum hyemale), a riverside plant, growing in tall urns reinforces the aquatic theme. An arbor frames the view (when vines grow up and cover it, the space will feel even more removed from the everyday world). Concrete pads lead to the raft-like patio, where dining out feels like a Huck Finn adventure for adults, says Haden. "But I bet kids would love this space, too."

TIPS AND TRICKS

* Play with geometry. To break up the gray concrete slab, white limestone tiles were inset diagonally in the patio above. These "diamonds" lead the eye to the corners of the patio and beyond, making the space seem larger.

* Heighten the drama. A freestanding wood arbor rises 8 1/2 feet on two sides of the patio, giving it vertical lift. It acts as a picture frame, defining the space and creating a sense of enclosure. Slender urns filled with tall plants complement the classic lines of the arbor.