6 Garden Ideas for Small Spaces and Maximum Yields

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Have a tiny space but longing to plant a bountiful garden? It’s totally possible to have an amazing garden even if you have a home with little to no yard! These garden ideas for small spaces can help you build the garden of your dreams, no matter what the square footage.

If your home has a tiny yard or a small outdoor living space, you can still flex your green thumb and have an amazing garden. You can do it all without a ton of work or financial investment, which is always nice!

Whether you are an urban dweller wanting to try out rooftop gardening or you have a condo with a small patio, these garden ideas for small spaces will help you get the best ‘bang for your buck’.

A small backyard garden using raised beds, containers, and vertical gardening as garden ideas for small spaces.

Best Garden Ideas for Small Spaces

A small space doesn’t need to prevent you from having the outdoor space of your dreams. It means that you need to get a little more creative about planning and structuring your gardening space.

These tips are not only clever and effective, but they also create beautiful gardenscapes in any size space.

1: Grow Up, Not Out

One of the best, most effective gardening ideas for small spaces is to grow up rather than out. There are so many different methods you can use to garden vertically.

Interestingly, vertical vegetable gardening provides a few benefits over traditional gardening. In addition to saving space, growing vegetables vertically gives your plants more sunlight, improves air circulation, helps reduce pests, and makes your plants easier to water and harvest.

Try using these vertical vegetable gardening techniques:

  • Utilize hanging baskets – many foods can grow in hanging baskets, including cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and herbs. You can swap a regular hanging basket for a tiered version to get more vegetables growing in a small space.
  • Garden in a shoe organizer. A shoe organizer can be a surprising tool when looking for small vegetable garden ideas. Simply make sure each compartment has drainage holes, then fill each shoe space with compost or potting soil. Add your plants to a sunny spot and water as directed.
  • Plant a garden in a pallet. Create a beautiful, rustic-looking garden by attaching terra cotta pots to a standing pallet leaning against a wall. Use zip ties, metal rings, or something equally as strong to attach your pots to different slats on your wood pallet.

Learn More: See our full guide on vertical gardening.

Assorted herbs and flowers growing in canvas sacks on a wall mounted rack as a vertical garden.

Use Trellises

One of my favorite gardening ideas for small spaces is using a trellis to grow plants upwards. Trellised plants will also require less water, have better structure, and increase airflow. Additionally, these plants are easier to harvest and will have the added benefit of providing shade for other shade-loving plants.

You can purchase a trellis in different styles, but they are also relatively easy to DIY if you want to save some cash. Vegetables that grow well on a trellis include:

A melon growing on a vine on a trellis, supported by a piece of cloth. This shows how a trellis is a great garden idea for small spaces.

2: Container Gardening

Container gardening is a great method for growing pretty flowers, fruits, vegetables, and herbs, even if you have no yard! I love that you can grow different pot items and then rotate them or group them differently for a new look.

Plus, container gardening has one very real advantage over typical in-ground gardening—you can take your containers with you if you have to move!

As if those reasons weren’t enough, growing vegetables in pots save tons of gardening space while reducing threats from pests and weather. 

One beautiful way to do container gardening is to stack terracotta pots inside of each other to build a tiered garden. Not only will this save space over having multiple pots on the ground, but they can be quite pretty as well!

Note:

When growing vegetables in containers, I recommend using a potting mix and watering more often, as pots tend to dry out faster than the ground.

Vegetables that grow well in containers include:

Related post: Check out this guide for a full breakdown of vegetables that grow exceptionally well in containers, and start a few containers of your own!

Potted Fruit Trees

Surprisingly, even fruit trees will do well in a container garden. Most fruit trees will grow well in containers for a short time (and then need to be transplanted to the ground); however, if you want to grow fruit potted trees long-term, try growing calamondin orange, plum, apple, fig, or a dwarf variety of your favorite fruit trees.

With fruit trees, know that they rarely bear as much fruit as if the same tree planted in the ground would. Potted fruit trees also tend to produce fruit a season or two before planted trees do.

Note: planters will freeze faster than the ground will so choose a fruit tree variety that can survive at least two zones colder than where you live.

Two small orange trees growing in pots.

3: Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening is a very efficient idea for small spaces that divides raised beds into a grid. Because the raised bed is filled with a nutritious dirt mix, you can use this method on top of any surface, like grass or concrete.

The square-foot gardening idea is a great method for small vegetable gardens because it produces high yields in a small area (typically 4’x4’ raised beds) through companion planting (see below) and efficient plant placement.

Learn More: Want to learn more about square foot gardening? Check out our article on the pros and cons of square foot gardens.

A 4 by 4 foot raised garden bed, with the plants growing close together to maximize space in the small garden.

4: Try Companion Planting

Companion planting involves growing certain plants near each other to attain mutually beneficial qualities (repelling pests, nutrient requirements, etc.) to help both plants grow efficiently and produce better yields. It’s a space-saving technique that keeps plants happy while attracting more pollinators.

A small raised garden bed with a variety of different vegetables and flowers being used as companion plants.

5: Choose Plants That are Perfectly Sized for a Small Garden

Along with growing vegetables vertically, plant vegetables are meant to be grown in small garden spaces. You can do this in several ways, from planting dwarf varieties of your favorite vegetables to planting single-leader tomatoes.

Dwarf Varieties

While several design tips provide garden ideas for small spaces, another factor to consider is your plant size. Instead of planting full-size vegetables, which take up a lot of space, consider growing dwarf-sized vegetables. You’ll be able to grow more in less space. Here are a few dwarf varieties perfect for small vegetable gardens:

  • Cauliflower
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Baby eggplants
  • Dwarf lettuce
  • Baby artichokes
  • Dwarf carrots
  • Dwarf avocados
Small cherry tomato plants growing in pots in the garden. The plants are laden with ripe tomatoes.

Single Leader Tomatoes

Bushy and multi-leader tomato plants take up more space than single-leader (stem) tomato plants. If you need to be mindful of your space allowance, grow single-leader tomatoes and enjoy large yields while using less space.

To do this, you must grow indeterminate tomato plants, which grow more vine-like than bush-like.

Improve the health and structure of your plants by training them into single-leader tomatoes with these steps:

  • When you plant your indeterminate tomato plants, also place a 6 ft tall stake with your plant and tie the main stem of your plant to the stake once it reaches about 10-12 inches in length.
  • As your plant grows, continue to tie the main stem to your stake at 8-10 inch intervals.
  • Regularly inspect your tomato plant for suckers (side stems) and pinch them off at the spot where they come out of the main stem. Remove suckers when they are no more than 2-4 inches long.
Tomato plants trimmed and trained to grow as single-leaders, with the main stalk twisting up a single string, and all other branches trimmed away. The plants have large clusters of ripe tomatoes, and very few leaves.

Plant Varieties That Have Higher Yields

Certain vegetables will naturally produce more than other varieties of plants will. If you want to focus your small garden space on the vegetables that provide the highest yield, try planting:

  • Peas
  • Zucchini
  • Salad greens
  • Pole beans
  • Cucumbers
  • Tomatoes

Cucumbers can produce such a big crop that you don’t even know what to do with them all; ask me how I know! I had to create this list of ideas to use up extra cucumbers.

A basket overfilled with cucumbers, sitting on the ground in the garden next to the vines.

6: Plant Back-to-Back Crops

If you live in an area that has a longer growing season, make the best use of your small space by growing back-to-back crops. There are several different ways to do this, but the basic idea is to plant one round of a certain vegetable (like lettuce), and then plant another batch of seeds a few weeks later.

That way, once you harvest your first batch, you’ll soon have another batch to harvest. You can keep repeating this method the entire season or until the seeds stop sprouting.

Garden Ideas for Small Spaces – Final Thought

If you want to garden in a small space, grow upward! Don’t hesitate to get creative. This tip and other garden ideas for small spaces on this list will help you make the most of your small space and still enjoy a bountiful harvest this year.

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