Just as the right frame showcases your favorite work of art, a well-designed landscape shows off your house to its best effect. Your landscape-the green, growing garden surrounding your home-sets the tone, creates an ambiance, invokes certain emotions. Its purpose is to provide continual pleasure for you, your family and your guests. To get to this point, the best garden landscapes begin with an overall plan that addresses your wants and desires, your financial outlay and the required ongoing maintenance.
In the Beginning
Like the architect for your house, a landscape designer or architect develops an encompassing plan. They will design for and around natural features such as surface terrain and drainage, types of soil, and the amount of sunlight and shade your yard receives. They'll take advantage of your view-and if you don't have one, they can help create points of interest. All of which means you maximize your enjoyment, avoid long-term problems and minimize any naturally-occurring disadvantages.
The importance of landscape design is that it supports and enhances the architecture of the home. It creates an experience and evokes emotion as you come up to the house. You want it to address how you get in and out of the space. What do you walk through as you approach the front door, the pool, the garage? What emotion is elicited?
Your Dream Garden
During the planning and prep work, you get to dream. What aesthetics do you want to bring to your garden landscape? Do you prefer lots of color or the more subtle effect of different textures of green? If you like color, which ones-sunny yellows and happy pinks, rust and golds, white flowers and silver leaves? Perhaps you own an outdoor sculpture you want to feature or have a theme in mind, such as a baroque garden, specimen garden, or an English garden.
While you dream, you want to factor in how you and your family live in the space. Will your garden landscape fit your needs, whether that means lots of kids running around or sophisticated entertainment? Another consideration is making your garden landscape fit the style of your home; for instance, an Asian style garden beautifully complements a contemporary house. Finally, you want to be realistic about the ongoing maintenance. Some elements of a garden require continual care. Other landscape choices are low maintenance. Only you can decide what works for you.
Money Matters
A landscape consultation also addresses your budget. During this phase, the scope of the work is defined, including phasing in the different garden elements. Cost factors include items like patios or decks; surfaces (cement, stone, brick) and walkways; fences, gates and arbors; outdoor kitchens; water features and fountains; lighting; sprinkler systems; types of grass, shrubs, trees, perennials and seasonal color.
Making it Happen
The installation of your garden landscape is critical and begins with the demolition of existing features you no longer want. Conversely, it takes into account tree protection-building barricades around trees you want to preserve so that roots don't get compacted or severed during construction. Trees are large organism and don't die immediately from the stress caused by construction. It may take them several years to die and many homeowners don't realize that the damage actually happened during the construction phase.
Other aspects of the landscape installation involve setting up temporary drainage, preparation of the soil and garden beds, and installing irrigation, drainage and lighting. Then comes planting the trees, shrubbery, groundcover and any seasonal color. The final step consists of mulching and cleanup.
The Living, Breathing Garden
Garden landscapes are living entities and thus require ongoing maintenance. From mowing to watering, regular maintenance protects your investment, preserves the quality of the space and enhances your enjoyment of a lush, healthy landscape. It includes regular lawn mowing and trimming, shrub and tree pruning, fertilization, putting down rye grass, and management of pests and diseases.
Author Resource:-
Jeff Halper has a passion for landscaping and landscape design, for more information about landscaping and gardening visit http://www.exteriorworlds.com
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