Want to make a, easily maintainable city garden? Just follow this plan, as illustrated above.

• Select your space. The heart of a medieval city is ideal (the more souls that can overlook the garden, the better), but almost any space will suffice.
• Create one or more organic shaped beds in the centre and another around the perimeter, leaving room for a sinuous, scrollable path (experts advise laying out the path first).
• Edge the beds in a stone coloured material, selecting a darker tile to define the perimeter border.
• Scatter shrubs, small, decorative conifers, grasses and herbaceous plants that can tolerate some neglect in the central beds. Keep it on the minimal side – you don’t want to crowd things.
• Artfully place decent-sized rocks in small groups or piles.
• Mulch with crushed slate.
• Add curved, benches that will invite passers-by to linger. Chocolate coloured metal ones will match those tiles around the outer borders.
• Fix trellises to the walls and encourage vines to soften them, creating the effect of a glade within a city (if you lack walls, add a fence or baffle first).
• If the same vines can be pruned low to provide ground cover for the perimeter beds, so much the better. If not, plant something green to do the job.
• Pave, staying true to the neutral, natural theme.
• In winter, tie the grasses up into neat bundles by wrapping a few of the long outer strands around the clump.
• Sit back and enjoy.

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