January 25th, 2022 by Sarah Miles

Use vertical space to inject colour and interest

When we think about brightening up our outdoor space, we tend to think about things like painting garden furniture and planting colourful flowers and shrubs in borders. These are great ideas, but have you considered using your vertical space to better effect? Going ‘up’ rather than ‘across’ creates a very different visual effect and saves huge amounts of space, which is especially good for small gardens or even yards or patios.

Here are a few ways you can maximise your vertical space to brighten up your garden:

Trees

The ultimate vertical plant is a tree! Planting them has a number of benefits; high planting to add interest, good for privacy, good for wildlife, and many that bear fruit. When planting young trees, always make sure you know how big they will grow as they could eventually overwhelm the garden if you don’t do your research. There are lots of trees that are suitable for smaller gardens such as maples, fruit trees such as cherry, fig, and apple, and trees that are great for nature such as hawthorn, rowans, and crab apples. Small evergreen trees, such as bay, yew, and loquat will provide colour all year round. Some trees can be planted in pots which would allow you to move them around the garden to ring the changes or even take them with you if you move.

Climbing plants

Climbing plants are fascinating to observe as they grow upwards, wrapping their tendrils around any surface they can grab as they seek to be closer to the sunlight. Use frames such as trellis or canes. Some such as wisteria and jasmine will take a few years to become established but others such as clematis you can practically see growing daily over the course of a summer.

Using fencing or walls

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It’s always good to have a project to occupy you in the dark first few months of the year so this is perfect for those who like to make things. Any upright spaces you have in the garden offer perfect opportunities for vertical planting. Obviously, you can lean some trellis in front of a wall or fence, but you can be more creative than that. Why not make a frame and attach vessels for planting such as boxes, tins, or crates? Or perhaps attach some brackets for hanging planting? All of this is easy enough to do with a basic cordless drill.

A clever way to add colour, even when your planting is not in bloom, is to paint the wall or fence underneath a contrasting colour. You can afford to be bold here as you’ll only see glimpses of colour in the summer through your foliage and it will add vibrancy in the winter when everything has died back. Make this job easier with a paint sprayer which can be used on walls or fences as well as other items in the garden such as furniture, outbuildings, or planters.

Plant stands

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If you don’t fancy something as permanent as mounting planters onto a wall or fence, how about buying or making a plant stand? This is effectively an outdoor shelving unit, but it can be as creative as you like, especially if you’re making it yourself. Play with different depths of shelving, such as a ladder-style unit, or offset shelves vertically and play with spacing for something a little quirky. Stack plants on them in pots that could all be uniform for a minimal aesthetic or an assortment of collected pots and vessels (charity shops and second hand selling sites can be great sources for these) for a more bohemian, eclectic look. Spray the units in bright colours or allow the pots to make a statement.

Another advantage of a stand is that you can move them around the garden. Place them in front of walls or fences or use them to separate areas of the garden as living dividers.