Small Courtyard Design

What are the most important considerations in small courtyard design?

1. Purpose – You first must decide on the purpose of your small courtyard. Design follows function in our industry. We don’t want to build you something just to look at. We want something you and your guests can experience from a full sensory perspective. Will you use this area only for conversation? Do you intend to cook outdoors? Will you use it in the winter and possibly need an outdoor fireplace or fire pit? All of these questions should be answered first before the first plant goes into the ground and before the first brick or stone is laid.

2. Accessibility –If you want your courtyard to be something people move through as one of many stops along a lighted trail, we can design the courtyard around radial pathways that emanate out into the yard. Keep in mind that such a design does not prohibit you from having outdoor seating in your courtyard—it simply gives you more choices for gathering, conversation, observation, and landscape exploration.

If you want more of a seating area, then a low-level wall with only one or two access points can be built that will significantly increase the feeling of privacy and enclosure. Such walls do not block the view of the home or surrounding Houston landscape. They only function to create a sense of special separation from your general surroundings.

3. Shade Resistance – Because small courtyard design is often done beneath roof overhands, next to homes, and alongside of masonry walls, sunlight is often limited if not blocked outright. We compensate for this in two ways. For softscape elements, we choose shade resistant ground cover and flowering plants that do not need a lot of light to flourish. For hardscapes, we install path and garden lighting to illuminate surfaces in twilight and evening times. For contemporary landscapes, we may also use strategically positioned reflective elements like stainless steel posts or mirrors that will catch what light that does shine into the courtyard and disperse it in other directions.

4. Height – The types of plants you can grow in a small courtyard must be shorter plants themselves in order to maintain proportion to their surroundings. To overcome the impression that everything is two flat to the ground, elevated planters and containers can be used to house garden plants. These masonry structures can be built from brick, stone, concrete, or any number of special materials to add color and design to the occasion.

5. Maintenance – Landscape maintenance contracts are another key component of small courtyard design. Many of the smaller plants used in the gardens here are very vulnerable to diseases and parasites and will require special professional care to properly maintain.