Courtyard Garden Design Ideas and Photos for Townhouses

Small enclosed gardens that feel like rooms — light, reflection, green walls, one strong tree and lighting that makes them work at night. A townhouse courtyard is usually surrounded on three sides, overlooked from above and starved of direct sun for part of the day. Those constraints define the design. Rather than fighting for a lawn or a border, the successful approach treats the courtyard as an interior: a floor, walls, a ceiling of sky or canopy, and furniture arranged as it would be indoors. Light is the resource to manage. Pale paving, light rendered or painted walls and a mirror or polished surface on the darkest elevation bounce daylight into the space and into the rooms behind it. A pond or water bowl adds reflected movement across a shaded wall. Avoid dark paving in a shaded courtyard, because it absorbs the little light there is and makes the space feel like a well. Green has to work vertically. Espaliered citrus or ornamental pear on wires, climbers such as star jasmine or Boston ivy on a stainless mesh, a green wall panel with proper irrigation on the least useful wall, and generous planters rather than small pots that dry out...

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Garden Designs

Productive Family Garden Design with Bluestone Stepping Pads and Sculpture Court, Reflection Pond

Productive Family Garden Design with Bluestone Stepping Pads, Corten Steel Edging and Fine Gravel Paths, Raised Vegetable Beds, Espaliered Fruit. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com — Productive Family Garden Design with Bluestone Stepping Pads, Corten Steel Edging and Fine Gravel Paths, Raised Vegetable Beds, Espaliered Fruit Trees and Herb Borders, featuring a Sculpture Court, Reflection Pond and Meandering Stone Path

Garden Design Concept 13 is part of our Garden Designs collection — one of 96 large-format widescreen concept visuals in this section. It is presented here at full size so you can study the layout, the planting, the surfaces and the way light falls across the design before you commit to building anything on your own block.

Planting layers, flower borders, formal parterres, productive beds and full garden schemes. Use this concept as a starting point: note the proportions between built form and greenery, where shade and shelter sit, how paths and paved areas move people through the space, and which materials repeat to hold the whole scheme together.

Every visual on this site is a design idea created for Home Design Photos. Browse the rest of the Garden Designs collection, or open the complete image catalogue to see every home, garden, pool, pergola, furniture, lighting and beach house concept in one place.

← Resort-Style Garden Design with Rustic Timber Sleepers and Quiet Seating Nook and Central Garden Formal Courtyard Garden Design with Honed Concrete Paving and Shaded Arbour Bench and Soft →

More Garden Designs concepts

Productive Family Garden Design with Bluestone Stepping Pads and Sculpture Court, Reflection Pond

Productive Family Garden Design with Bluestone Stepping Pads, Corten Steel Edging and Fine Gravel Paths, Raised Vegetable Beds, Espaliered Fruit Trees and Herb Borders, featuring a Sculpture Court, Reflection Pond and Meandering Stone Path

Designed Garden Landscape with Crushed Granite Paths and Garden Dining Terrace and Curved Lawn

Designed Garden Landscape with Crushed Granite Paths, Rendered Planters and Copper Water Spouts, Structural Succulents, Yuccas and Drought-Tolerant Groundcovers, featuring a Garden Dining Terrace and Curved Lawn Walkway, complemented by Durable Weatherproof Finishes and Low-Maintenance Detailing

Resort-Style Garden Design with Rustic Timber Sleepers and Quiet Seating Nook and Central Garden

Resort-Style Garden Design with Rustic Timber Sleepers, Sandstone Walling and Terracotta Pots, Ferns, Hydrangeas and Dappled Shade Under Established Canopy, featuring a Quiet Seating Nook and Central Garden Water Feature, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats and Relaxed Family

Designed Garden Landscape with Crushed Granite Paths and Garden Dining Terrace and Curved Lawn

Formal Courtyard Garden Design with Honed Concrete Paving, Black Steel Arches and Pale Pebble Mulch, Clipped Hedging, Standard Roses and. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Formal Courtyard Garden Design with Honed Concrete Paving and Shaded Arbour Bench and Soft

Formal Courtyard Garden Design with Honed Concrete Paving, Black Steel Arches and Pale Pebble Mulch, Clipped Hedging, Standard Roses and Silver Foliage Contrast, featuring a Shaded Arbour Bench and Soft Evening Garden Lighting, with Considered Outdoor Zoning and Soft

Resort-Style Garden Design with Rustic Timber Sleepers and Quiet Seating Nook and Central Garden

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Lawn Alternatives and Ground Cover Design Ideas and Photos

What to use instead of thirsty turf — groundcovers, native grasses, gravel, stepping stone paths and where a small lawn is still worth keeping.

Lawn is the most demanding surface in most gardens: it wants water, feeding, mowing, edging and full sun, and it repays that effort only where people actually walk on it. The intelligent approach is not to abolish lawn but to shrink it to the shape and size that gets used, then replace the leftovers — the shaded strip, the awkward corner, the nature strip, the slope — with something better suited.

Groundcovers do the job where light foot traffic is occasional. Native violet in shade, dichondra for a soft green carpet, myoporum and grevillea prostrate forms on banks, thyme and chamomile in sunny pockets where crushing releases scent, and pigface or succulent mats in coastal heat. Planted at proper density with mulch between while they establish, they knit into a continuous surface within a season or two and need only an occasional trim.

Grasses and gravel handle the rest. Lomandra, dianella, poa and carex in blocks give movement and structure and never need mowing. Decomposed granite or crushed stone with steel edging makes a beautiful, permeable surface for courtyards and paths and drains after a storm in minutes. Stepping stones set into gravel or groundcover give a walkable route without paving the whole area, and they look considered in a way a concrete path rarely does.

Landscape Design design ideas photo from the Lawn Alternatives and Ground Cover Design Ideas and Photos feature. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Keep lawn where it earns its keep — a clean shape for children and dogs, in full sun, with a defined edge and a route around it. Choose a warm season variety suited to the climate, water deeply and rarely, and mow high so roots go deep. A small, healthy, well shaped lawn surrounded by tough planting looks far better in February than a large struggling one, and it costs a fraction of the water and time.

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Courtyard Garden Design Ideas and Photos for Townhouses

Productive Family Garden Design with Bluestone Stepping Pads and Sculpture Court, Reflection Pond

More Garden Designs concepts

Lawn Alternatives and Ground Cover Design Ideas and Photos