Mediterranean garden design and ideas

What makes a Mediterranean garden

Mediterranean garden style comes down to a few ideas: gravel or stone underfoot in place of a lawn, silver and grey leaves that thrive in the sun, aromatic shrubs like lavender, rosemary and cistus, and terracotta pots holding an olive or an agave. Plants grow in loose drifts with gravel showing between them, and a seat in the sun finishes the picture.

Making a Mediterranean garden work in the UK

What undoes these plants in a British garden is rarely the cold. It is sitting in wet soil through the winter. Give them the sunniest spot you have, work grit into heavy ground, plant on a slight mound or a raised bed, and finish with a deep gravel mulch so each plant sits dry. Keep anything tender, an olive or a citrus, in a pot you can move to shelter.

Full sun border plants →

How to lay out a Mediterranean garden

A Mediterranean garden layout starts with what stays: the patio, the fences and any trees. Then let gravel take the place of the lawn, with stepping stones through it to a seat. Plant low silver mounds at the front and taller grasses and salvias behind, in drifts of the same plant repeated through the gravel. Small Mediterranean patio ideas follow the same rules: gravel in the corners, lavender along the walls and an olive in a pot by the seat, which is all a Mediterranean courtyard garden needs. See one done in full in our replace lawn with gravel makeover: a thinning lawn turned into pale gravel and flagstones, with drifts of lavender and an olive in a terracotta pot.

Mediterranean planting ideas

Most of the planting is silver leaves with either the blues and purples of lavender and salvias, or the hot reds and oranges of a sun-baked courtyard. Pick one and repeat it: good Mediterranean planting design uses the same few plants again and again, through the gravel and along every border.

Blue and purple border ideas →Hot colour border ideas →

See it on your own garden first

Garden Design App builds a design around your actual garden. It reads a photo of your space, keeps your trees and fences where they are, and redesigns the planting into gravel, silver leaves and sun-loving plants you could genuinely grow.

From an idea to a plan you can plant

When one of the designs clicks, the Pro and Max plans turn it into a Mediterranean garden plan: every plant named, how big each grows and where each goes, with a month by month flowering calendar so a dry, sunny garden still has something in flower from spring to autumn.