L-shaped gardens – ‘L’ shape, that is, a plot with two short ‘arms’, is in many ways not awkward at all but provides two gardens for the price of one. The position of the house is crucial to the L-shaped garden. It may form the inside corner with the garden on two sides.
Or it may sit at one end of one of the arms. Almost certainly, one arm will be generally shady and the other mainly sunny. Careful choice of plants to suit these two aspects will be important and will create its own design to some extent.
You can carry the same theme on from one to the other or create two completely different gardens. Whichever you decide to do, the important (and the trickiest) thing to do is to design the meeting point of the two sections so that the transition is comfortable. this meeting point could be literally that, a place with seats or a summer house where you can pause before moving on to the next area. It could be a third garden, entered from either of the others through arches or along a path bordered by shrubs.
One traditionally successful device is to create a deliberately formal garden near the house, which becomes less formal further away from the house and eventually leads into a shrubbery, woodland area or wildlife garden around the corner.
This L-shaped garden has been designed with a formal area next to the house leading through a clipped hedge into something completely different – a much more informal lawn with a flower border and a path leading from the house through a small gate to the road.