If you think a yard is too small, it might be due to a lack of organization more than tininess. Linking spaces, opening up views and being generous with patios give more useable space, all fit inside the formerly too-small garden.
Some of these things might be a bit controversial: the front path isn’t the fastest path to the door, and the structure is for evening and late afternoon use: it does not provide a lot of midday shade in its current form.
Why a slow path? So people will turn, enjoying multiple views of the garden as they head for the front door. It’s the journey, not the destination. Anyone in a hurry can zoom up the driveway to the path – and that will likely be the most common path. Maybe putting a three foot tall wall in the path is a bit crazy, but it should cause people to look up and admire the flowers or foliage of a new saucer magnolia, then look down a bed of flowering carpet roses, then a red-leaf Japanese maple, then back to the magnolia, but this time looking down below the canopy. Arriving at the house, they’re enclosed by trellises draped with flowering abutilon vines. It really is a journey!
Instead of heavy screening above the patio, it has an open structure that does not block light to the house. It glows at night, thanks to linear LEDs built into the structure backed by up-lights on the columns. Shadow studies in CAD showed that hot afternoon sun will come from the side, not above – so a lattice screen on one side will cast more shade than overhead screens.
Another controversy: the structure is not totally symmetrical. The lattice shade screen is only on the west side, since it’s not needed to the east. This allows an open view of an ‘Icee Blue’ yellow wood to the east of the patio.
