Jeffrey Smith grew up on a 100-acre farm in Ohio, surrounded by peonies, ferns, wheat, corn, potatoes and many other flowers and food crops. So how did he end up with the tiniest of urban gardens in Highland Park?

"I was living in a loft in Lawrenceville. It was beautiful. People said, 'Why would you want to give this up?'

"I missed having outside space, a garden, but I didn't want a lot of outside space."

	Bill Wade, Post-Gazette photos When Jeffrey Smith moved in less than two years ago, his back yard had only grass. Click photo for larger image.

He got exactly that -- a back yard only 32 by 12 feet with nothing green but grass, "just a postage stamp," he says.

Then he filled half of it with a flagstone patio and the other half with a 16-by-10-foot deck that's about 1 foot off the ground. So what's left to garden?

As it turns out, quite a bit. Narrow beds extend around all four sides of the deck, along a white vinyl fence, up the back steps and into nooks and crannies by the house and the garage. Shrubs, flowers, vegetables and groundcovers jam every bed and overflow from two large black urns.

"I like to over-plant," says Mr. Smith, 52. "You can always thin it out."

A hair stylist who owns his own salon in Lawrenceville, Mr. Smith moved into this 88-year-old brick house in September 2005. It had three bedrooms, 1,900 square feet of living space, and a little bit of grass in the front and back.

In two seasons, Mr. Smith has created an eclectic young garden where wisteria and clematis climb from beds filled with coleus, impatiens, hydrangeas and various groundcovers. Click photo for larger image.

One of the first things he had contractor Billy Noble of Harmarville do was replace a small back window with french doors and put in new back steps made of Trex composite decking. Mr. Noble, who works for A-1 Realty, installed the steps while Mr. Smith was at work.

"I hated them. They were fake, pink. They looked like they belonged on a trailer," Mr. Smith said.

"I decided to try to make it look better. I wasn't taking a big chance because I was going to rip it out if it didn't work."

Because Trex is a composite of wood and plastic, he reasoned that it might absorb deck stain. Over the objections of Home Depot workers (who noted that the whole idea of composite decking is that you don't have to stain or maintain it), he tried a mahogany stain -- and loved the results. To preserve the look, he added a glossy polyurethane sealer. His friends were amazed.

"One of them said it looked like some kind of Brazilian hardwood," Mr. Smith said, chuckling.

	Jeffrey Smith's front yard is even smaller than the back but has many of the same plants, including hosta, coleus and myrtle. Bamboo grows in a container. Click photo for larger image.

When the steps still looked good after the first winter, he had Mr. Noble do the deck the same way. It was the contractor's idea to reverse every other board to vary the grain, giving the small deck the look -- really! -- of polished ipe.

Mr. Smith brings the same unconventional approach to garden design. He pays no attention to sun or shade requirements, choosing plants whose shape and color he likes. In a bed no more than 2 feet square, he has crammed no fewer than four groundcovers -- ajuga, myrtle, pachysandra and strawberry, punctuated by ornamental purple cabbage.

"I like to mix different groundcovers," he said. "The different greens, different textures make it really three-dimensional."

The dominant plant in two large black containers and in the narrow beds is coleus -- with leaves that are burgundy, dark red and lime green, accenting the house's purplish-black brick. 'Blackie' sweet potato vine, sandcherry, kale, pink impatiens, lavender and other odds and ends pack the rest of the beds.

For instant height, he planted climbing wisteria (with lavender blooms the first year!) and three clematis vines on white trellises attached to the stucco garage wall.

Jeffrey Smith, a hair stylist, missed gardening when he lived in a loft in Lawrenceville. Click photo for larger image.

To camouflage a striped awning behind him and the houses that crowd his on all sides, he planted three red-leaf Japanese maples and a variegated Japanese willow, all of which should top out at 15 to 20 feet tall. A stone-look resin wall fountain that replaced a window on the garage adds the sound of water to the tiny garden.

"You can take any size space and make it into an oasis," Mr. Smith said. "But it's more fun to take a small space and transform it."

His is a very personal space, designed for only one person.

"There's rarely anyone else here. It's just for me. I work with the public all day. At night, I really need my quiet time."

Evening is Mr. Smith's favorite time in the garden. He waters everything, then sits down to relax as the sun goes down and a few small, solar-powered landscape lights begin to glow.

"If you give a garden a little bit of love and attention," he says "it gives it back to you immediately."