WHEN you've only got a tiny garden, a courtyard or a small space to plant up, choosing plants can be a frustrating business.

Unless you specialise in bonsai or alpine plants, your space can be quickly filled with just a few specimens, and there's no room for trees, climbers, fruit or vegetables. Or is there?

A friend and I were looking for small climbers this week; she wants to plant one in a pot, to climb up a small obelisk, which will add much-needed height to the paved area outside the front door of her bungalow.

We were about to despair of finding a perennial climber, and plump for sweet peas, when we came across Raymond Evison's dwarf clematis hybrids.

Recently introduced from his nursery on Guernsey, these clematis grow to between four and eight feet tall, and are perfect for the smaller garden.

My friend chose Clematis Fleuri, which produces deep purple flowers from spring to late summer, and which will have a height and spread of just four feet by two feet.

There are other tempting varieties, including Rebecca (6-8ft), which is red; Cezanne (4-5ft), which is violet; and Parisienne (3-4ft), which has violet flowers with a dark red centre.

After this episode, I began wondering how many other dwarf or patio' plants there were, that could be grown in small spaces or tiny gardens.

A few minutes surfing the internet revealed a whole sub-culture in miniature plants, including dwarf bulbs, dwarf lupins, dwarf lavender, dwarf rhododendrons, dwarf fan palms and dwarf photinia (Photinia x fraseri Nana).

The Latin name can often give a clue to the eventual size of a plant; anything with nanus, pumilus or pygmaeus in its title is likely to be a dwarf, compared with other similar species.

Topiary is particularly suitable for small gardens, given that it involves the restriction of growth through regular clipping. It can be used to provide valuable structure to a garden; pyramids, balls and hedges of dwarf box, Buxus sempervirens Suffruticosa are particularly effective.

And if it's fruit trees you're after, then the nursery trade has long been able to help. They are adept at grafting normal-sized fruit on to dwarfing root stocks, so that you can grow apples, pears, plums and now even lemons and olives in a confined space, against a wall or in a pot and still expect a decent crop.

My dad grows a Bramley apple tree in a pot in his back garden; each year he picks enough apples to keep him in stewed fruit for several weeks.

Then there are tiny vegetables, specially bred for growing in tiny vegetable gardens or in containers; runner beans, peas (one variety with the delightful name of pea Half Pint) baby carrots, beetroot and courgettes.

The moral of the story is that if your garden is small or your planting area restricted, you needn't miss out; there's a whole tiny world out there waiting to be discovered JOBS FOR THE GARDENER NEXT WEEK...

Clear spring bedding as it goes over. Fork over the soil and work in some organic matter before replanting with summer bedding.

Lift tulips after they have finished flowering. Put them in trays or boxes in an airy place to dry out, then clean them and store them in a dry place until autumn.

Now that overnight frost is unlikely, it should be safe to plant out half-hardy annuals and perennials, and to put up hanging baskets.