SMALL COURTYARD GARDEN: BEFORE AND AFTER
It’s been a long time coming, but my small courtyard garden makeover is finally complete! Ready to take a look at the finished scheme?
(This post contains some products that are part of PR partnerships and PR discounts, all labelled)
The garden was well and truly the worst part of this house when we bought it - a concrete courtyard with broken down, mismatched fences and overgrown with weeds. You can take a look at the before pictures in my garden plans blog post - warning, it’s pretty grim.
It ended up taking a lot longer than planned, we replaced the fences ourselves and did a lot of the demolition of the existing patio, and that’s before the pandemic hit and we couldn’t get someone to come and do the hard landscaping for a few months.
However, it’s finally, pretty much finished, so I’m super excited to share it with you.
We ended up opting for a Mediterranean vibe for the space, both in the finishes and planting, to bring a little bit of sunshine to our tiny little Essex courtyard.
Right, ready to take a look at our new garden?
There were three major changes to this space.
The fences, which we swapped from your basic everyday fence panels to these slatted Forest Garden fence panels (aff link). They felt a little bit flimsy before we actually put them in, but I’m pretty happy with them now, and they’re better than I thought they’d be privacy wise. We ended up painting them in COAT Paints exterior paint in my collaboration colour Well Grounded (PR product)
The flooring, which we chose these reclaimed brick floor tiles from Lubelska for. They’re a pale reclaimed brick and we used a cream flexible Mudd grout, which we also got from Lubelska. These floor tiles were not cheap, even with a little PR discount from Lubelska, but I’m so so glad we put the budget into them, as they really make the space feel so much lighter and brighter.
The raised beds, which are landscaper built for us, though in hindsight I think e could have do these ourselves. I ended up rendering them because I couldn’t find someone to do them in time. I did a slightly rougher render for a Mediterranean look, and we painted in COAT’s exterior paint again, this time in their Pampas colour.
We built a little seat into the rendered beds. We just used some basic external timber to make the slatted bench, and treated it with exterior stain. A few cushions from H&M Home and it’s the perfect little outdoor seat.
We went for a Mediterranean planting scheme, but half the garden is shady, so we had to pick a set-up that would work across the raised beds. We used some Cotswold stone around the patio and planted into some of these gaps too. I’ll do a full blog post about the planting scheme in Spring, once it’s had a chance to grow in a bit more.
Over the other side of the garden, we’ve got a little log burning stove. I’ve not lit it yet, so I can’t say how good it is, but I’m excited to give it a go in garden season next year. We also got these Ferm Living Desert Chairs from Amara. They need to be covered/put away in bad weather, but the seats are made from an exterior-friendly recycled plastic material.
Last, but not least - our mini outdoor kitchen. We had outdoor taps put in during our kitchen renovation works, and then built a frame to hold a Belfast sink. We used slats from a spare fence panel to finish it, painted it in COAT’s nomad colour and then used a similar wood for the worktop as we did for the slatted bench seat.
Our electrician popped back and installed our lighting too. We had two new wall lights and a set of three spiked spotlights to highlight some of the key features. It’s actually pretty well illuminated out there come nighttime, so the view out of our kitchen window at night doesn’t just have to be darkness now, so the whole house feels bigger.
So what do you think of the new courtyard garden? I’m going to be putting up extra blogs about some of the DIYs we did for this space, so keep your eyes peeled.