How Small Actually is a Small Garden?

I had a 75 square meter open space in front of my house which we turned into a nice little garden and some parking space. Around 25 square meters is what it took for the parking which is just behind from where the photo is taken, and the rest of the space, around 50 square meters what’s in the photo is for the garden.

In landscaping terms, a 50 square meter garden would definitely be called a small garden. One book that I’ve come across defines small gardens as anything less than a tennis court (260 square meters).

Obviously, if you want to have everything from the lawn, paving, decking, to plant trees, dining area, bbq, water features, etc. then a 260 square meter space would seem a little smaller for a garden.

But do I consider my garden as a small garden? Definitely not, it’s not too big though, but at the same time, it’s also not too small. We have four members in our family and we are really enjoying our garden. It’s enough space for a family of this size to sit, relax, and enjoy the outdoors even if you use half of the space for plants or some other decorations.

In fact, I’m want to have plants on the sides of the pathway to make to fill that space, and also make walking on the pathway more exciting.

This was my personal opinion on small gardens according to how we need and use our garden. I was also curious to hear from other people who think that they have a small garden and what are their thoughts about it, so I reached out to some small garden owners to find it out.

By the way, this was the most reacted comment that someone wrote on my post when I asked that question in a group.

I remember seeing the following, quoted from an old gardening book: “Every garden, no matter how small, should have at least half an acre of woodland”!

I was surprised that there were a lot of people with way smaller spaces than me like there was a 15 m2 (3×5 m) garden, and for him, my 50 m2 garden may seem much bigger. There were also others who were calling their 100 m2 a “small garden” which is exactly double the size of mine.

Having a small garden is not a problem but making it look small with what you do in it makes it really small. So keep your wishlist according to how much space you actually have for the garden. There are things such as how to make a small garden look bigger, however, the actual size of the garden isn’t going to increase. Basically, there are some tricks that make your eyes feel the garden is bigger than it actually is.

Average Size of Small Garden

So, the definition of “small garden” varies widely. If we are talking about mansions there is a completely different definition for gardens, whereas 50 to 100 m2 is an average garden size you would see in most homes.

After looking at the information online, but haven’t found any general definition of “small garden” or what’s the exact size of it.

Generally, anything that’s less than 100 square meters can be said as a “small garden”, and most of us have gardens under this size. 50 to 100 square meters can be considered a good size for household gardens.