Do you want to improve the landscape design of your yard and property? Here are some tips for coming up with a design plan and getting started.
I’ll be honest—I’m not much of a planner, and this lack of forethought is reflected in my gardening style. My flower beds are in a constant state of change depending on what new plants I acquire each season. Many are planted and moved several times before they land in a suitable spot or die. To avoid making the same mistakes that I do, here’s some landscaping advice that I’ve learned from experts over the years.
Start With a Plan
If you were to hire a professional landscape designer, one of the first things he/she would do is draw up a plot survey of your property, including your backyard and front yard. This is something you can easily do yourself.
- Draw a bird’s-eye view of your property, noting the placement of all the man-made features (called hardscape) such as buildings, fences, driveways, stonewalls, etc. Boulders, trees, and large shrubs combine with your hardscape to form the “bones” of your landscape.
- Using graph paper helps, but you don’t have to agonize over exact measurements, a sketch that is roughly in proportion will be fine.
- Make sure to include the location of your well, septic system, or any buried utility lines. Orient your lot on the compass and note where your sunny and shady spots are.
Make a Wish List
Once you know what you’ve already got, you can move on to making a list of what you’d like to have. How do you want your garden to look? Start with a few general goals. For example:
- Do you want privacy for a patio area?
- Do you want to screen an ugly view?
- Is your top priority curb appeal/resale-value or a more private (patio) display?
If you already have flower beds, note the successful plants and fill in the blank spots with the colors, heights, foliage, and bloom time you will need to get the desired look. This will help guide you when you are plant shopping. If you know that your garden lacks color after July 4th, you can limit your choices to later blossoming plants instead of buying more spring bloomers.
Be sure to make the most of what you’ve got already. Don’t try to change a dry, rocky spot into a vegetable garden. Instead, use it for a rock garden planted with sedums and hen and chicks, which can thrive in the tough conditions.
Use containers to accent difficult areas, too. They’re a great way to express your design skills on a small scale and can be changed seasonally, if so desired.
Look around your neighborhood. Plants come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. What gardens do you like? Which plant colors, shapes, textures, and sizes speak to you?
Choose Your Style
Your garden should complement your home’s architectural style. Gardening is just like decorating the inside of your house, but instead of fabrics, paint, and furniture, you will be using color, texture, shape, size, and placement of plants to create a mood.
- Formal: Straight lines; symmetry; and elegant focal points like statues and fountains, manicured lawns, and pruned hedges define this style. Color is secondary to structure and the mood is refined and serene.
- Informal: This style is a balance between the formal and natural styles. It involves lots of curves and colors, lush growth, asymmetry, and natural-shaped trees and shrubs. The mood is comfortable and relaxing.
- Natural: This style imitates nature, is low-maintenance, and should blend in with the surroundings, which could be anything from a wildflower meadow to a bog. The mood can reflect untamed chaos or just energetic, natural abundance.
Assessing Your Needs
If you have young children or grandchildren, you’ll need areas where they can play. Same for pets. Look to incorporate “bulletproof” plants that can take some abuse, like low-growing sedum or ground phlox, which can both take some trampling.
- Think about your entryway. Do you want a welcoming front garden that directs visitors to your door? Use straight lines and hardscaped paths to lead visitors where you want them to go.
- Don’t be discouraged by a small garden space. There are tricks you can use to make small plots seem larger, such as lining up paths, gates, and trees to create sight lines that allow the view to flow from one area into another. Also consider that having many small groupings of different colored flowers can make a space seem cluttered, whereas grouping similar colors and textures together can really open up a small space.
- Create your own getaway spot. Use larger shrubs and ornamental grasses to cordon off an area for rest and relaxation, like this secluded bench. Here, you can watch over the garden and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Hardscape, Then Plant
It’s tempting to start your design with the plants, but it’s best to tend to your hardscape first. Once that’s in place, you’re ready for the fun part: planting!
- Start by planting trees or shrubs. Begin from the house and work outward. Remember to plan for the mature size of the trees and shrubs to avoid having to move them later, when they outgrow their space! Deciduous shrubs planted in front of evergreens will change the look seasonally. And don’t forget to pick some shrubs for winter interest, too, such as witch hazel or forsythia.
- Lay out potential flowerbeds with a hose or rope. A few gentle sweeps look more natural than many sharp curves. Borders are usually planted against a wall, fence, or hedge and are viewed from one side only.
- Beds present more of a challenge, since they can be seen from all sides. Wide beds and borders need a hard path or stepping stones to allow you to tend the plants without compacting the soil or trampling anything.
- Define the edges where your flower garden meets the lawn. A physical barrier made from metal, vinyl, granite, or brick will help to keep grass from encroaching into the beds. Plants in the foreground can be left to spill over this edging, softening the look.
- Layer plants according to height. Repeat drifts of similar plants throughout the garden to give it rhythm. Large blocks of one plant will make the most impact when viewed from a distance rather than the polka dot look of many different plants in one area. To combine plants effectively, take into consideration their size, shape, leaf color and texture, flower color, and visual weight. Loose and open or heavy and dense?
- Bold-leafed plants like hostas combine well with finely textured ones like astilbe. Blue-green, chartreuse, bronze, burgundy, and silver-leafed plants liven up the garden even when they are not in bloom.
- Remember that hot colors appear to advance while cool colors recede into the background. White can separate clashing colors and will brighten up a shady spot.
In Conclusion
Armed with a realistic and well-thought-out landscaping plan, you can spread out the work and expense over several years. Take it one step at a time to keep your project from becoming overwhelming. Remember, this is supposed to be fun! You are creating a space for you to enjoy. Small steady improvements over the years can transform your yard into the paradise you envision.
Do you have any landscaping ideas or advice? Tell us in the comments below!
Reader Comments
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Landscape Design Process
"The article has genuinely piqued my interest. It has all the basics which make me easily under stable, most helpful who are looking for the landscape design."
Landscape Design
Very good information, I thought I was an expert on Landscape design, but I got some further tips in this article. Thanks.!!
Excavating
Wow this is great content i like your ideas. I will apply this on my landscaping business.
perfect landscape
Most landscaping articles I have come across give you ideas on what you can do but I like that you have given a step by step approach to visualizing, designing and creating a perfect landscape. Good job!!
Brilliant Post
Keep up the good work guys
Great Landscaping Advice.
These are nice tips, Robin about landscaping & gardening. I must say you have plenty of experience in this field, one should must read this blog post before designing landscapes. Thank you so much for sharing this post.
Think about the PATH to your entryway.
A wonderful article, but I had one reservation. In the picture under "Think about your entryway", the sidewalk is squeezed into a very narrow path by the garden elements on either side. It looks lovely when no one's there, but if you have actual human beings spilling out into the garden, it's going to be very hard for them not to end up stepping on the plants.
Deer
Well, you could do what they're doing here, out in McMansionville: Hire snipers to shoot the pesky deer. Those things have a heck of a nerve not just running away from where they've always lived for centuries.
deers eating in your garden
Mark your territory. My husband does this and we haven't had any problems in quite a few years :)
Many gardeners swear by this
Many gardeners swear by this easy approach to repelling deer. It is known around here as the Maine farmer’s fence!
DEER
This garden is lovely; however, it is totally OUT OF THE QUESTION WHEN YOU HAVE CONSTANT DEER. They either jump or tear down fences whether metal or the plastic chicken wire. How about a DEER-PROOF BLOOMING garden! FYI: They also EAT THE BLOOMS for supposedly deer-proof flowers, i.e. daffodils! The only things the don't eat are Dusty Miller and Rabbits' Ears and Vinca both the vine and the flower. What else will work in Western PA where winters are cold and summers are hot?
I share your frustration
I share your frustration Michele! We have a resident herd of deer living behind our house and it is not uncommon to have twenty deer in the yard eating everything I love! We have a 7 foot high plastic mesh deer fence around the vegetable garden that makes the yard look like Alcatraz (without the water view), but has kept them out so far. Over the years I have tried every deer repellent trick known to man with varying degrees of success. One thing is for sure, if the deer are hungry there is nothing they won’t eat. There are too many plants that show up on the deer-resistant plant lists to go into here but for some that are specific to PA check out this site from Penn State Extension http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/fact-sheets/general-gardening/…. I will devote a whole blog post to deer resistant plants in the future so stay tuned.
Deer Resistance
I live in Wyoming. We have an infestation of white tail deer. Deer are browsers, I have heard it explained that they are more like goats than what we think of as deer. They follow the path of least resistance so if there is something to "chew on" at the point where the stop they are likely to take a bite. They don't have teeth that can bite so often they pull up the whole plant...even ones that don't taste good.
We have cold winters, hot summers, lots of sun and well drained soil where I live. The plants that I have seen them avoid are Lamb's ears, Russian Sage, lavender and mint (maybe leaves of daffodils). BUT in the spring before other options are available they will browse on any of these that happen to have a sprout. Fawns are the worst in this respect. A Master Gardener suggested changing their pathways so they avoid areas close to gardens. This does work but you have to keep them moving ... like with a dog. Right now I have every little plant or planted area protected with chicken wire or some other rigid fencing. (Flexible fencing is useless unless supported by sturdy posts as they push, prod and browse). Another option I've considered is mass plantings so missing blooms aren't so noticeable but obviously this doesn't work with vegetable gardens. These are just my observations and I continue to search for options other than an Alcatraz fence but after 14 years I may have to resort to the "defensible territory" theory and go with the massive perimeter fence. The beasts are winning. I absolutely will appreciate any other suggestions.
RE: DEER
Just a thought, but as a hairdresser, I've had many people through the years stop in and ask if we would be willing to set aside a bag of trash for them at the end of the night, i.e a bag of hair clippings. The smells/oils in the hair make it a perfect sprinkle in a vegetable garden as it repels several different animals, not just deer. The countryside that we live on sees deer on occasion but never in our yards scavaging for food sources such as yours, so I'm not sure how effective this would be. However, I thought it may be worth at least mentioning, if not an option for you, maybe another who reads this.
Oh, and BTW, I did get fed up last spring with the birds and their consistent burrowing and nesting in our roof rafters coming in off our porch into the attic area (we were doing a roof repair, and porch remodel at the time). So I thought I'd test this same theory and sprinkled some hair onto and around the rafters (what I could safely reach) of the porch and on some other areas I just rubbed the hair onto the wood just to get the scent onto it. And to my surprise, we haven't had not even 1 bird even attempt to come near our porch! And this had been on going every spring and summer for the past 4 years that I've lived in this house!
Re: deer
My hubby goes and buys the golden bars of Dial bath bar soap. He walks all around the outside of garden, pocket knife in one hand, a bar of Dial soap in the other and he starts shaving thick chunks off. And it DOES WORK. I have been with him for 8 years now.... He also has chicken wire up about knee high, all the way around his garden. We also have bull dogs that keep them run off at night.
DEER
Watched a garden show set in a large public garden somewhere in New England and the gentleman mentioned that DEER walk in such a way that they do not lift their feet very high. If you have an opportunity to watch them you will notice this. This garden expert said they put stakes just outside their gardens and run wire at 12 inches off the ground which trips deer and makes them shy away from their planted areas. He stated they have had excellent success with this. Have not had the opportunity to try this but is stayed in my head. I would need to color the stakes to make sure I REMEMBERED the wire was there . . . but that is me. OR perhaps there is colored wire that could be used but then the question would be "do deer see colors and/or which do they NOT see". I do have major deer issues in that we live across the road from a park so I do spray using DEER & RABBIT REPELLENT by LIQUID FENCE which does work for me but needs to be done about every 3 weeks, if there is NO extended period of rain, sooner obviously if it rains for several days in a row. We have close to an acre of land and a large bottle lasts all summer but I only spray plants I know they bother.