10 important things to think about when planning your landscape design

Whether you’re interested in completely redesigning your landscape or just making a few changes, there are a few important factors to consider before you start planting.

While many people head straight to their local garden supply store to peruse the selections, creating a plan beforehand will help you choose the plants that best suit your needs and thrive in your garden.

It’s easy to go out and be tempted to buy plants that look beautiful at the garden store, only to take them home and find they are not suitable for your garden. These tips will help you develop a plan and guide you toward creating a beautiful, cohesive, and thriving landscape.

1. Know your garden

Think about your regional climate, the topography of your site, and your soil type when planning your landscape. Using the USDA plant hardiness zone map may be an excellent spot to start out.

Keep in mind that the precise conditions of your garden are likely to make a microclimate supported the quantity and duration of sun exposure and therefore the shade the world receives.

Microclimates generally fall into one of four categories: full sun, partial shade, shade, or deep shade; Take note of the microclimate of your landscape when selecting plants for your landscape.

It is important to consider the topography of your site, as well as planning; take note of how the water drains in your garden. The best landscape design will promote the movement of water from your home to other areas of your garden.

2. Who will use your garden?

Think about who will use your garden and how you will use it. Will the children use your garden? Have pets? Are you hoping to use your garden for outdoor entertaining? Remember that you simply can create different spaces for various uses in your landscape using strategic plantings and hard landscapes. Walkways are often wont to move people from one area to a different one.

Since you will be using and maintaining your garden (or hiring someone to maintain it), consider your maintenance style and budget. Be as realistic as possible. How much time will you really have to spend on your landscape? Or if you don’t have time, will you have money to pay someone else to spend time? How much does one need to invest in your landscape? Determining the solution to those questions will help make sure the success of your landscape for years to return.

3. Think about issues

A theme can unify your landscape and help guide your plant and material selections. Themes are often as simple as using consistent shapes or forms throughout your garden or as complex as creating a relaxation garden or an oriental garden.

When deciding on a theme for your garden, a good place to start is by looking at the architecture of your home. Try to complement the lines and style of your home architecture in your garden; after all, your garden is an extension of your home.

Themes can help guide the way you place and select plants, decorations, hard landscapes, and structures. Are you somebody who wants many neat geometric shapes and structures in your landscape?

 Do you want smoother lines and a more natural feel in your space? Do you need a landscape to incorporate only specific colors? Questions like these will assist you to choose a unified theme for your garden.

4. Create and link spaces

To get the most out of your garden, think of it as another room or room in your home. Just as a house has well-defined and carefully planned rooms, so should its landscape; Using your materials wisely allows you to create different “rooms” in your landscape.

Don’t forget to think about how you will link your spaces. How will people move from one area of your yard to another? Create openings to encourage exploration in your garden and get people moving through the landscape.

5. make your plants work for you

Early in your planning, you need to determine how your plants will perform in your garden. Plants can be used in various ways, they can provide you with fresh and delicious fruits and vegetables, beautiful scenery, lovely scents, and much more.

Plants can be used as barriers to define areas within your landscape, as well as to identify where your landscape ends. you’ll use plants to make physical barriers in your landscape blocking both views and access to a neighborhood.

 If you want to keep your views open but maintain some barriers, low-growing plants can be used to create implicit barriers, blocking access but not view.

Properly placed plants can also be used to alter the conditions of your landscaping near my site. Temperature, light levels, and wind are greatly affected by trees and plants in a landscape. Noises in your landscape are often suffering from what you set into the planning, like water features or birdhouses, also as any physical barriers that keep your yard isolated from noise beyond your landscape.

6. Structure your plantations

Consider your various visual planes when selecting plants. Starting from the area above you, think higher plane, this could include arches and trees.

Moving to the vertical plane, consider how close or far apart the plants will be, how the plants will be layered or staggered (usually larger plants are used behind smaller plants), as well as individual and mass heights and widths of your plants.

7. Highlight the important points

Using unique plants, distinct structures, or garden ornaments allows you to spotlight a specific area of your landscape. Contrasting shapes, textures, sizes, and colors will help grab attention and direct it to a specific area.

8. Pay attention to details

Plants, harsh landscapes, and garden ornaments have their own visual details, from various shapes and forms to a variety of colors and textures. By thinking about how these visual details can be used to complement and contrast with each other, you can create a cohesive and captivating landscape.

Don’t just think in pictures; By considering the scents of the plants you select for your garden, you can enhance the experience you create for the people in your garden. Think about when the flowers will bloom and be fragrant, as well as what scents will complement each other in the landscape.

9. Think ahead

More specifically, consider how the passage of time will affect the plants in your garden. When selecting plants, be sure to consider the plant’s growth rate, maintenance needs, and eventual maturity size. Make sure you provide your plants with enough space to reach their mature size. However, keep in mind that mature size is generally based on optimal growing conditions, specific conditions in your landscape can cause a plant to grow or shrink.

10. Protect your resources

By choosing resource-efficient plants, consciously managing water, and choosing eco-friendly harsh landscapes, you can help protect and preserve your environment.

Before removing plants from your garden, determine if these plants really need to be removed or if they could be relocated to another area of your garden. When selecting new plants, look for plants that use fewer resources, those that require less water, fertilizers, and pesticides.

When planning changes to your landscape, consider installing a rainwater harvesting system that will provide you with an environmentally sustainable source of irrigation water. With careful planning, such a system can even be incorporated as an aesthetic design element.

Using hard surfaces, preservatives, stains, paints, and non-toxic cleaners that do not harm the environment is another way to protect your natural resources. Also, consider reusing construction materials; Before the demolition begins, consider what materials you could reuse, repurpose, or incorporate into your new landscape design.