If you’ve got two or three walls that form an L-shape or U-shape, you’ve got yourself a gardening goldmine. They’re everywhere: tiny city backyards flanked on all sides by tall buildings, suburban condo developments with far-flung wings, or any home remodel with an addition angled away from the main house. These are courtyard gardens just waiting for an inspired design.
Picture an elegant Italian piazza, its sun-baked walls radiating heat to inner fountains and cypress-lined pools. Perhaps a Colonial Williamsburg garden where low brick walls or picket fences reach out to embrace a charming kitchen garden. Or, nearby, have a look at the courtyard gardens at St. Ignatius College Prep high school on Roosevelt and Racine in Chicago.
This venerable school has educated young adults since its opening in 1869. Throughout the decades, its campus has grown from the original five-story Second Empire-style building to include many additions within a tight urban footprint. The twists and turns of the buildings left many nooks and crannies available for planting.
Even though the gardens look as pedigreed as the buildings, until 2001, most of the school was surrounded by acres of parking. Then Father Donald Rowe, S. J., the school’s president emeritus, took on the challenge of landscaping the campus. He likens the process to being “a little bit like making soup, where you add a bit here and there.”
Reflecting the diversity of the student population—the teens hail from all socioeconomic, ethnic and geographic groups—plants were chosen for variety. There are 86 kinds of evergreens alone, for example. Fr. Rowe says his goal “was to juxtapose colors, textures and kinds of plants” to expose youth to the different types of plants that grow in our zone. However, when working in tight spaces such as courtyards, plant variety must harmonize with the overall composition. Otherwise it will feel like a closet stuffed with toys.
Think Big in Large Courtyards
The Fr. Grant Quadrangle, the school’s largest courtyard with about 41,000 square feet (similar in size to those of multistory condo developments), could have been blandly landscaped as an office park with a straight, efficient sidewalk bisecting a lawn, and ubiquitous foundation plantings of ‘Stella D’oro’ daylilies and Russian sage. Instead, the quad features curved pathways accented with little pocket seating areas.
A large peninsula garden of multitextured trees, shrubs and flowers reaches into the lawn, affording different views from multiple perspectives. Well-sited clusters of shrubs and perennials provide color, but don’t interfere with traffic flow or lines of sight. There is plenty of unencumbered lawn for unstructured play and to give breathing room to the site.
Tall, sheer walls can feel claustrophobic in any courtyard garden if not softened with landscaping. Trees help transition wall height down to human scale. Growing ivy or other vines on stark walls can also integrate buildings with the garden.
A period-appropriate cast-iron porch, salvaged from a Chicago area building dating to 1869, was added to one wall. Like trees, a porch helps break up the flat plane of the wall, and creates a transition from indoors to garden. In this big courtyard, thoughtfully placed, heroic-sized statues and planters are scaled appropriately.
Four Walls and The Sky’s The Limit
The school’s Rice Garden, at 9,700 square feet, is completely contained on all four sides. This is a typical scenario in a city backyard enclosed by an alley fence, or coach house, and neighboring apartments. Here, shade plants rule, and design cohesiveness is key.
As in the quad garden, a porch was added to one of the buildings. When entering the garden from the porch, or while sitting on the porch, you experience the garden more as a room, rather than a tiny space overwhelmed by four walls. Bringing harmony to the design, a quatrefoil motif from the adjacent Holy Family Church is echoed in the porch trim and the raised stonework of a nearby planter.
The Rice Garden has a much smaller footprint than the quad, and smaller trees are chosen accordingly. Fewer—in number and variety—is better in this small space. Although a few evergreens thrive in shade, deciduous trees and hardy shrubs are better bets. The more limited plant palette and restraint in flower color and design help make this a contemplative garden where cloud watching is a favorite pasttime.
A Courtyard Entryway
Courtyard gardens are very effective as transitional spaces to the front door. Whether your home is one story or five, as at St. Ignatius, a courtyard entry figuratively welcomes with open arms and invites visitors to leave their cares beyond the gate. The Walsh Garden, St. Ignatius’s smallest courtyard garden at 6,700 square feet, protects students and visitors from the clamor of Roosevelt St. and marks the beginning of more cerebral pursuits at the school’s most frequented ingress.
Flanked on two sides by tall walls, the Walsh Garden courtyard was deliberately enclosed on the remaining two sides by fencing and a gate. Because of its diminutive size, right-sizing the tree choice for the space is critical. A beautifully sculptural white flowering crabapple provides year-round interest in its circular stone-lined planter. Garden ornament, such as a birdhouse, benches and statuary, are smaller than the large statues in the quad. Walkways encircle the raised center planter and help direct traffic flow in and out of the building. This courtyard jewel maximizes every square inch of real estate with intriguing plant combinations, and promotes a sense of belonging with its intimate scale.
St. Ignatius has been teaching students for more than 140 years, and we gardeners can look to its grounds for new lessons. Here, learning is not constrained to four walls, but within the outdoor courtyards, too.
