Courtyard Gardens and Basement Gardens - Ideas for Their Improvement

Here we go, if not from the sublime to the ridiculous, at least de haut en bas, as it were.

When you see an estate agent's particulars commending a charming garden flat with own patio, you can be sure it is a damp basement with a dreary, concrete-screeded well, containing some dead leaves and an old Coke tin.

If they offer you an exceptional garden flat, with its own delightfully landscaped garden, it will be much the same, but with a second damp bedroom and a larger yard which will have had eight concrete slabs laid over the existing screed, and there will be a dead bay tree in a wooden tub in the far corner.

But do not be dispirited. I cannot promise to cure the internal damp (and nor can anyone else, I fear, from long experience), but we can cheer up the 'patio' no end. It is true that you are likely to have almost permanent shade in all or the greater part of the area, but several of the most engaging plants prefer it this way, so why should you complain?

I would begin the transformation of your courtyard gardens and basement gardens with the walls - white will do very nicely indeed, and by the time you have painted every bit of wall and every beastly bit of pipe-work, dazzling white, you will begin to feel better. Of course, you could paint a delightful mural if you are in the slightest bit artistic, or you could try installing a bit of deceitful mirror-work, and some trompe l'oeil trellising, and then you will be in danger of fulfilling the agent's descriptions. The down pipes can be cheered up even further by planting climber plants to sprawl up and over them.

With the walls attended to, you could treat the floor as your next priority. Whenever possible, retain or obtain some areas of earth even if you have to break up a bit of concrete to get to it. Do not worry if this leaves some jagged edges as these can be disguised by a brick or timber edging of some kind.

Plants that you wish to grow vigorously enough to cover a large area of wall or trellis, are far more likely to reach for the sky if their roots can go deep into the earth, even starved city dirt. You can excavate some of this sad stuff and replace it or enrich it with something a little more gastronomic to nurture the climbers. If the floor of your courtyard garden or basement garden has been tiled or slabbed too well for you to risk disturbing it, or if the prospect fills you with alarm, you will have to find a largish container if your plants are to get away satisfactorily. This is where the raised beds and the old water cisterns come into their own.

I had a really dark basement flat in South Kensington; no one could have called it a garden flat, bit it had three gloomy wells which comprised the basement garden. With a lot of white paint, green plants, and those obliging annuals that flowered in the shade, plus all the lights I could find, they became pleasant places in which to sit and eat. At night, they were extra-special with the lights playing on the large leaves of the Fatsias and the leaves of the little Maples.

If the night is a fine one, you can bring out lamps from the house on extension leads, for a special occasion, so long as there is no wetness about.

Another simple idea to create atmosphere and interest in courtyard gardens or basement gardens, is to add a statue or two - otherwise known as garden ornaments.

Years ago, I found a Victorian marble statue of a nymph, in the shabby (in those days) jumble of shops in Westbourne Grove. It cost thirty pounds, which was a fortune to me then, but we have been together now for over thirty years, except for a brief period when she was stolen and recovered 6 months later from a shop in the Kings Road. I gave her pride of place in one of those South Kensington basements, with just a pair of pots, planted with a pyramid of Ivy, on each side of her. She looked wonderful and needed nothing else to set off her charms

Failing a nymph, make yourself an obelisk of painted timber or trellis, find a particularly impressive chimney pot, or paint one of these straight on to the wall. Put a standard tree on each side, or a cone of clipped ivy, and you will have much the same effect. You can dream up your own variations on these themes.

If you 'rescue' all of your materials and propagate all of your plants, you can, within a season, transform these unprepossessing dungeons, that are known as courtyard gardens and basement gardens, into the most engaging bowers, using annual climbers and bedding plants grown from seed, to make a quick showing whilst the permanent plants get their act together over the months.

Now that I am living in a house with neither a basement nor a basement garden, nor indeed do I have any courtyard gardens either, I rather envy you the fun you can have and the dramatic effects you can contrive so economically and so easily. You will still have to feed, water and dead-head, of course, but the watering in shaded basements is a far less onerous task than it is anywhere else, as the containers will dry out more slowly and they are all so close to hand that it is a positive pleasure to potter about with a watering can and a multi-purpose spray. In a few minutes the chores will be ended.