If you’ve never tried your hand at landscape design before, you might feel overwhelmed by all the options available to you. Is there any particular flora that you wish to add, and if so, where? Is it better to have curved bed lines and paths? What about seats, pots, and birdbaths, for example? Many of the same concepts that drive your interior room arrangement can also influence your designs outdoors, so thinking of space in your yard as if it were a room inside your house might be helpful. Think about flowers, trees, stones, and inground pools that make yards appealing and ideal for parties.
To guide you, here are some things to keep in mind before starting a new landscaping project.
1. Identify Your Landscape’s Needs
Make a list of your basic requirements, as well as your aspirations. Do your children need a place to play? Are you interested in growing your food? A patio can be an excellent place for a family get-together. Layout your yard in rough drafts with ideas for placement; this is a fantastic organizational concept for those new to landscape design. A garden design doesn’t have to be a master plan, according to book author Marianne Lipanovich. She drew a few lines and a few circles for her new front yard landscaping design. You don’t have to devote a lot of time and resources to experiment with new ideas.
2. Consider the Situation
Pay attention to how the weather affects the sun’s and wind’s path. In August, it can be uncomfortably hot to build a patio on the west side of your home because of the afternoon sun. A fire pit will be swiftly put out by the wind whistling around a corner. Beginning landscape designers often make the same errors while creating a backyard oasis. Consider how the sun and wind will affect your design throughout the day and year.
3. Take a Seat and Visualize
Spend some time with it. If you make rash decisions regarding your yard, they might end up costing you money in the long run. Lipanovich believes that when you spend more time outside, you’ll discover new places where you want to sit and relax.
Start with a small project in your yard or garden; even though television programs are experts at showing off complete outdoor renovations in only three days, most novice gardeners can only dream of such a large team. Creating a landscape entails planning ahead of time and having fun along the way. Begin with a tiny flower garden from your grand design. When you have the time, go out and work on it for an hour or two. Don’t stress about filling everything up immediately. Lipanovich recommends taking your time to avoid poor DIY landscape design or shortcuts.
4. Decide Where You Want to Focus Your Attention
Creating a focal point or sequence of focal points is a simple concept applied to any landscape design. Sculpture, trees, or bushes are examples of what you might have in mind. Lipanovich suggests letting the design guide your gaze around the area.
5. Concentrate on Size and Pace
Even for professionals, size and pace are the most complicated principles of landscape design to grasp. A variety of shapes, sizes, and colors will be used, with towering plants against buildings or at the rear of flowerbeds, as well as walkways that guide visitors through the area. It’s crucial, according to Lipanovich, to strike a balance between repetition and new aspects in your work. Using repetition creates cohesiveness, but it should also be varied to avoid monotony. It’s preferable to have a few new components here and there rather than a wide variety.
6. Be Flexible
Affirm what works and what doesn’t in your design until you have a deep commitment to it. Even Lipanovich has discovered aspects of her style that she previously favored but no longer did. Experiment and make changes as you go is perfectly acceptable.
7. Pay Close Attention to Details
There are many aesthetic elements in plants, hardscapes, and garden decorations. These include everything from the different shapes and sizes of the objects themselves to the varied colors and textures. You can build a coherent and entrancing landscape by thinking about how these visual elements might be utilized to complement and contrast each other.
For those just starting in landscape design, remember that patience is a virtue. Use interim solutions, such as planting annuals, mulching, and using fast-growing ground covers, to temporarily cover an area while figuring out what you want to do with it. This will keep the kids and dogs from tracking in muck. Lipanovich also suggests surrounding bigger plants with annuals and tiny perennials so that they have time to fill out and develop. Then, you can permanently relocate them if you change your mind about where they should be later on.
