Your yard needs a new look, but where do you even start? Determine what will enhance your yard to its greatest advantage while still fitting within your budget.
There are six steps that will help you in figuring out to landscape your yard. They include visualizing your garden, knowing the existing features, understanding your needs, making a rough plan, selecting your plants and features, and keeping a record or diary.
The first step to creating a new landscape in your yard is to visualize your dream yard. See in your mind what is there--is it a fountain, red roses, a furniture patio set, or just green grass stretching on?
Do you want to add a new flower patch of mixed flowers; a garden full of fresh corn and tomatoes; a water feature that will relax and soothe; make your yard more water conserving; or just making your lawn more consistent and level?
Along with this, you also need to determine how you want to use the space and what functions it needs to provide. Consider if you need areas for play, outdoor dining, or a vegetable garden.
Go through magazines, books, and search the internet for examples of the things you want. You can then organize them in a book to help keep you inspired and give you perspective of the final goal, as well as refer to them as you work through each step of the design process.
Step two to landscaping is to know the existing features in your yard. This is important because each yard is different.
Each yard has its own strengths and weaknesses. If you can identify these then it makes it a whole lot easier to know where to start and what needs the most improvement.
Take stock of existing features, such as mature trees, garden sheds and fences. A digital camera will come in handy for this.
Take photos of all the areas of the yard, including neighboring eyesores or pleasing views you want to enhance. Then, study these and determine what you can do to improve what you have to work with.
Then, make an inventory listing each feature including trees, neighbor's garage, and view of the church spire. Next to it write what can be done to fix the problem.
Step three for landscaping your yard is rating and understanding your needs. Step three is often one of the hardest decisions.
Take your inventory listing and rate each item's importance on a scale of one to three. Place the rating in the column next to your inventory items and solutions.
After you complete sorting the spreadsheet according to the rating determine which ones will become essential elements in your design and which will fit into your budget.
Step four in your landscaping journey is making a rough plan. This means simply starting to map out what exactly you want to accomplish and starting to pin down the details.
To select your plants and features start by developing a rough layout of your new garden. This would include pathways, entrance points, decks, borders, beds, pools, and hedges.
Landscape design programs can help you experiment and visualize your design. Depending on the program you can try different pathway materials, flowerbed shapes and sizes, or fencing styles.
Sometimes these programs can take time to learn and can be frustrating to use. If this is the case, pencil, paper, and tracing paper may be just as effective.
Whichever method you choose, taking accurate measurements and finding practical solutions to design problems is what will make your plan functional, not to mention attractive.
Step five in landscaping is to select your plants and features. This can be one of the most exciting steps.
Go to a nursery and talk to an advisor, research plants on the internet, talk to friends and neighbors who live in the same climate, or look at the natural plants that thrive in the climate.
Complete the layout by choosing plants appropriate for your garden. Selecting the characteristics in plants that best match the growing conditions in your yard, such as sun, hardiness zone and soil type, you can quickly develop a list of suitable plants that will easily thrive in your garden.
Also, determine what types of equipment you will need to accomplish various projects. For example if you are putting in a water fountain research and find which one will work best for you, what materials you will need, and the installation process.
The last step in transforming your garden is to keep a record or diary. Write down anything you may want to refer back to or anything else of interest to you.
Once your garden is planted, keep a diary of how well the plants perform, schedule maintenance reminders and take photos of how your garden grows season by season.
Also, make a plant plan which shows what annuals are located in your garden, so as you are planting for the next season you can keep what other flowers will be appearing.
If you use these six steps in landscaping your yard it will result in something that you and your family will enjoy.
Author Resource:-
Jack R. Landry is a former landscaping architect and has authored hundreds of articles relating to landscaping. He recommends (http://GreenGuruLandscaping.com) as a landscaper in Las Vegas.
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