Pocket - Sized Perfection

Lyn and Peter Buller have packed their tiny garden with special plants and home-made mirrors

Take a married couple who retire to the seaside – one a passionate plantswoman and the other a self-confessed doer – and the upshot is a most delightful garden, just three streets away from the beach. Inevitably, at a similar size to a badminton court, it is a garden that invites every cliché in the book – ‘small is beautiful’ or ‘beautiful things come in small packages’, to name a few – but this is one instance when the hype is right.

It was in 2012 that Lyn and Peter moved to Deal from London, bringing a vanload of plants from their previous home. ‘The garden had been created in a piecemeal fashion as our son grew up and the family’s needs changed, so I was very excited at the thought of starting from scratch, with a clear vision of what I wanted,’ recalls Lyn.

The first priority was to build a kitchen extension, but unfortunately it was delayed by the discovery of a 4m deep well beside the house. ‘The house is in a conservation area, so we had to obtain special permission to build beside the well.’ It all turned out for the best, because Peter could install a pump – concealed beneath a large plant pot raised on a brick base – which is invaluable for watering pots.