Designing a Small Courtyard Garden for Privacy

Start by understanding how you are overlooked

Before you spend a penny on plants, stand in each corner of your courtyard and look up and out. Note which neighbouring windows face you, at what height, and at what time of day the sightlines feel worst. A first-floor bedroom window is a very different problem from a ground-floor kitchen window, and the solution differs too — one needs height, the other needs density at around 1.5 to 2 metres.

Next, check your aspect. A courtyard enclosed on three sides is often a suntrap, but north-facing walls will stay gloomy and damp, and anything planted against them needs to tolerate shade. Measure the usable space honestly. Most small courtyards are between 3 and 5 metres square, and cramming in screening that leaves you nowhere to sit defeats the purpose. Work out where you want to sit, then screen everything behind and beside that spot.

Choose tall evergreens for year-round cover

Deciduous planting is a waste of time for privacy — it leaves you exposed from November to April, precisely when the low winter sun and bare branches make you feel most visible. Go evergreen instead, and choose plants that tolerate the restricted root space a courtyard imposes.

• Fargesia rufa or Fargesia 'Campbell' — clumping bamboos, not the running sort, reaching 2 to 2.5 metres without invading next door. Plant with a root barrier if you are nervous.
• Viburnum tinus — dense, glossy, happy in shade, and flowers through the winter. A dependable workhorse for a north-facing wall.
• Elaeagnus x ebbingei — fast-growing, tough and tolerant of wind and salt, useful where you need cover quickly.
• Photinia x fraseri 'Red Robin' — best where it gets sun, with brilliant red new growth, but it wants clipping twice a year to stay dense.
• Trachelospermum jasminoides — an evergreen climber for a sunny wall, scented in summer and reliably dense once established.

Plant container-grown shrubs between October and March so roots settle before summer, keeping them roughly 45cm out from any fence to allow air to move behind them. Water well for the first two summers and mulch with 5cm of bark chippings to hold moisture.

Add a slatted screen for instant structure

Slatted screens are the best-value privacy solution in a small space because they block the view without blocking the light. Horizontal slats with 10 to 15mm gaps give you privacy at eye level while wind passes through, which matters enormously in a courtyard where still air encourages damp and disease.

Use cedar or a treated softwood, and batten the screen 25mm off the wall so air can circulate behind and the timber does not rot against a damp surface. In England and Wales, a fence or screen over 2 metres high generally needs planning permission, so check with your local authority before going taller. Never fix anything to a neighbour's structure without asking first, and be aware that a wall between properties may be party wall.

Treat timber with a plant-safe preservative, or paint it, and clothe at least part of the screen with a climber. A bare screen looks municipal; a screen with a jasmine or a climbing hydrangea running through it looks intentional.

Use raised beds to lift plants and hide the base

The bottom 60cm of every fence is a dead zone, and in a courtyard that dead zone is a large proportion of your vertical space. Raised beds solve two problems at once: they raise your planting into the useful band of the sightline, and they add a second, denser layer of screening below the shrubs.

Build beds 40 to 45cm deep in timber, brick or reclaimed sleepers, line them with a permeable membrane, and fill with a loam-based compost mixed with grit rather than pure multipurpose, which collapses and dries out. Keep beds no wider than 60cm if you cannot reach them from both sides. Positioned along the boundary, a raised bed means your evergreens start their life already a metre up, which buys you privacy years sooner. If you use a wide-topped design, the capping makes a useful perch for a mug of tea.

Make the space feel bigger with pale colours and mirrors

Small and dark is the enemy. Pale, chalky tones bounce what light there is around the space — limewashed brick, sage or soft white painted fences, pale grey porcelain paving, buff gravel. Charcoal and black absorb light and make a courtyard feel like a bin store, however fashionable they look in photographs.

Mirrors genuinely work, provided you fit them properly. Use outdoor-safe acrylic or sealed glass, fix them to a solid wall with proper brackets, and angle them very slightly downwards. Position them where they will reflect sky, foliage or a lit wall — never a neighbour's window, which causes glare and bad feeling. A mirror above a raised bed doubles your greenery instantly. Finish with a couple of warm-white uplighters tucked into the base of a shrub to extend the space after dark.

Keep it looking good with modest effort

Courtyards are sheltered, warm microclimates, so plants dry out faster than you expect and vine weevil thrives in containers. Soak thoroughly once a week in dry spells rather than little and often, feed in spring, and top up mulch annually. Trim Photinia in late spring and again in midsummer, thin old bamboo canes each year so light reaches the base, and scrub your slats with a stiff brush and soapy water before winter. Half an hour a month is usually all a well-planned courtyard asks of you.