This was my own garden when we lived in Battersea. Measuring just 5m x 5m, one of the worst things you can do with a small garden is to have minimal planting in narrow beds. It just makes everything look so mean, in my opinion. I also needed to try plants out and, at the time, this was my laboratory.

We kept nothing, dug out the beds and imported some decent topsoil. Then laid as little paving as I could get away with, just enough space for a table and chairs. There were three trees in the end, a cornus ‘Eddies White Wonder’ which flowers in May, a malus ‘Toringo’ for April, and a stewartia pseudocamellia for June. An arch on the back wall framed an autumn flowering camellia, walls were covered in a rosa ‘Madame Alfred Carriere’ and parthenocissus tricuspidata, and I made sure there was enough evergreen structure to get us through the winter months.