Gardening & Landscaping around your Tiny Home

[eDJ_]

Generally speaking a Tiny Home implies a tiny piece of property it would occupy. Not always, but for those wanting to get around owning a lawn mower and other assorted power equipment to maintain a big lawn the idea of landscape gardening to eliminate the grass maintenance as much as possible may be intriguing.

A three foot wide flower, shrub, landscape around the base of a building is known as a peristyle garden. These were popular with the ancient Greeks & Romans. You can find images of Tiny Homes with such gardening around them in Google Images like this one:

Modern setting

Vintage Setting

If you don't want a lawn, the ground could be covered with landscaping
fabric and covered with various sizes of rocks and gardening sculpture. As a "rock garden". Here the idea is to expand living space outside the tiny home to have a "sitting space" in a natural setting. So if you have guest or a small party there's ample room for them.

On the question of grass, we all know most of it needs to be mowed. But there is an alternative solution known as "Zoysia Grass". It doesn't grow tall but it spreads. In the summer it is green and in the winter it turns a tan color much like straw.


Zoysia grass is known for not needing much mowing. I can be purchased as sod to roll out like a carpet once your build is finished. It is also sold in "plugs" to set one every 12 inches apart in the lawn. This will eventually cover the lawn. Seed is available also.

Here is a brick covered patio area for a hard surface surrounded by zoysia grass and some plants:

With some patio chairs & table or even a picnic table & market umbrella your sitting garden could be complete.

If one wanted to garden some vegetables, then they could till an area in the soil by the house or
use pots or buckets on the patio for container gardening.

Any ideas for what you would want to do with your project design?

 

[eDJ_]

Planner5D com is a free floor plan and landscaping software to use online. I haven't used it yet but intend to. So if anyone wants to look at it it's here:

Planner5D floor plan & landscaping software

For designing night time lighting to illuminate your landscaping there is a free software you can use.

ReluxDesktop

 

[George West]

I'm trying to figure out my outdoor setup too and leaning toward something low-maintenance. Around the base of the home, I've been looking at narrow garden beds with native shrubs and flowers, kind of like a peristyle layout. For ground cover, I'm skipping traditional grass and looking into things like creeping thyme or clover since they're cold-hardy and don't need much mowing.

Are you thinking about growing food or just creating a spot to relax outside? I'm still working out what'll hold up through the winter up here.

 

[eDJ_]

What I'm wanting is a space to relax or entertain in day or night along with the peristyle. As for vegetable gardening I may just container garden a few items. Tomatoes, scallions, & banana peppers in particular.
,
I'm in the Ohio Valley between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in the Wayne National Forest area. It is hot and humid here beautiful in the summer or when covered in show in the winter. Otherwise everything tends to be a mud brown. I can live with Zoysia turning light tan in the winter so long as I won't have to mow it in the summer. I would like to have some vegetation that is hardy in the cold months so that on those 60 f days outside I could still sit outdoors some in the sunlight while wearing a light jacket.

In the interior I could keep plants so that I'd have something green & flowering just to break the monotony of the winter. With these I'd be using "grow-lights" as part of my indoor lighting scheme.

Depending on how much land I would have and how many varmints in the general area I may consider a small vegetable garden plot close by the home. But food sources tends to attract varmints so having a dog and a few cats that can get along together may be worthwhile. But they may have to have their own Tiny Home of some kind.

Now imagine the first photo in the first post (brown & black) and the back side you can't see. Then look at the second "night lighting" photo in the second post. That could work for me for a start.

 

[George West]

I enjoy hearing about the plans others are making. It looks like we both want a low-maintenance relaxation space with a bit of container gardening. For winter interest, you could try some dwarf evergreen shrubs or ornamental grasses that keep their shape in the snow. The ground covers I'm looking into, like creeping thyme and clover, should also do well in the Ohio Valley. Since you're planning a patio and Zoysia grass, have you picked out your edging yet?

 

[eDJ_]

No, I'm not that far along. What I've done is to take some screen shots of "sitting gardens" I like and may combine elements of those into a final plan. But I'm still a long ways from finalizing the home and garden plan. Some gardens are collection gardens with a group of many single plants where others are more "orchestrated" with several of the same in clusters throughout.

I only know one person I used to work with who is a master gardener. Some of the Libraries here have software I could borough that regards gardens that are other than vegetable.

 

[eDJ_]

I saw this web page offering ideas today. The text that led into the photos was interesting to me.

When Cicero wrote that "if you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need," he didn't specify size. Perhaps cozy at-home book havens and small backyard ideas are what the philosopher had in mind here. (We sure like to think so.) After all, the best elements of garden life can be enjoyed in a space the size of a shoe box: a whiff of lilac, a trellis along the wall, sunbeams shining your comfy lounge chair as the birds chirp…. The list goes on.

Still, there are ways to make a postage-stamp-size backyard echo the atmosphere of a sprawling estate. The keys to emulating the grandeur of such spaces when you're short on square footage, designers and landscape architects say, are limiting your color palettes, fashioning a seating area, including a manicured herb garden—a vertical garden along a privacy fence, for example—and layering both plants and structures to create depth with raised beds. Read on to learn how to makeover any small backyard design with decorating ideas that wow, and don't forget the string lights.

I thought this suited to the Tiny Homes Patio Garden discussion.

You can view the images in this link:

16 Small Backyard Ideas to Live Large Outside

 

[Alan]

Depending where you are, I enjoy a screened in porch setup. Not sure that makes sense with a tiny home you've mentioned.

 

[eDJ_]

Screened in porches will always be popular if for no other reason the privacy & security they offer. They are quite popular where I live and I'm considering screening in the front deck of my place facing the road/highway. Then I will establish a doorbell at the approach to the porch as the screen door on the porch will be locked. Thus the screened in porch will be a pre entrance to the house front door.

There are various types of screen to use too. Some have stripes in them to give an added level of privacy. Often only one side of a screened porch has this treatment if it is close to another property. It can also cut down on bright sun light generating heat.

Screening systems today offer vinyl snap together strips that make setting up the screen much easier. The base strip nails or screws on and then the screen is hung in it. Finally the caps snap on which helps to pull the screen mesh tight. It can make a big job doing it the old way much easier.

Yes, depending on the porch of a Tiny Home it too can be screened in to make an outdoor living room.

Years ago I screened in my Grand Folks car port doing it the old way. Took a couple months painting the 2x4's and framing everything in. Then hanging the screen. Then painting the latus strips to nail those over the 2x4's where the screen was attached. Took me over a couple months but friends, family, neighbors, and other people they knew came to see what I had done for them. I had ran cable for the TV out there and a telephone connection. Even installed an overhead ceiling fan. Grandad and I installed indoor/outdoor carpet over the oil stained concrete floor where the car used to park in the winter.

Nearly everyone liked what was done and enjoyed it. Often we would hear guest saying that they wished
they had an area like it. Or that they were looking for a contractor to screen theirs in. (claiming that they were tired of buying and burning citronella candles at night to control mosquitoes and other bugs).