Simple Tips to Create a Professional Looking Landscape Design

 Guest Blogger #406, Entry #1013, March 13, 2012

Trees, patios, decks, fountains and paths emerge as features that offer the biggest payoff. One-of-a-kind landscape designs, those that raise home values or are simply prized and loved by their owners, begin with a landscape plan. And this plan should start with you and what you hope to achieve.

Your landscaping plan may be easier to achieve than you thought

Image via: HGTV

Which sort of homeowner are you?

1. A brand-new homeowner?
2. A novice?
3. An experienced homeowner?

Which kind of task is in front of you?

1. An untested piece of land where the project starts from scratch?
2. A landscape you’ve inherited along with a newly purchased house?
3. A yard or garden that needs to be renovated and smartened-up a bit?
4. A promising empty space in an established design that calls out for a creative composition?

What type of landscaping best suits your home?

Image via: Houzz

Regardless of how you’ve answered the questions above, a working plan to help you through the design process is just what you need. A plan, you reason. UGH!, how boring! In reality, a well-thought out plan for your property or a smaller project within it can be an exciting and stimulating road map. Landscape designs are valuable because they are a record of what your property has been and where it is headed.

Designs of any kind, but especially landscape designs are processes which begin as linear, or a series of steps, which follow along in strict order. Item one is completed before item 2 is attempted, and item 2 is finished before item 3, with each step successfully building upon the previous one until the imagined goal is arrived at straight away.

As soon as the sequence of steps is consistently checked and rechecked, and changes made to some selected steps, the process changes from a linear to a circular one. This is for the most part true of landscape designs where the essential pieces or building blocks of environmental features, living materials and needs of the end user change with time.

A landscape design should be more than just beautiful drawings and diagrams on paper. A design needs to be constructed so that it can change. A design that does not change but remains static gives rise to a museum piece, albeit a living one! These are the gardens we love to look at and perhaps dream in but not the intimate ones we want to surround our families and selves with or live within on a daily basis.

Once the linear process of constructing a landscape design is begun, there should be the slowly dawning realization that all the factors called for in a workable landscape design do definitely interact.

There are many ways in which to itemize or delineate these factors. However, after many years of talking with and helping homeowners to assess and evaluate their properties and projects, here is a checklist I’ve devised that has as its base Five Major Categories of Factors to Consider in Landscape Design.

Use these tips for a great landscaping plan

Image via: Landscaping Ideas.Yahoo

The five categories are:

• Site / Environmental Conditions
• Purpose or Function (s) of Individual Plants or Plant Groupings
• Maintenance
• Aesthetics / Visual Impact
• Deciding Factors
  • Cost in money and time
  • Availability of living and nonliving material

Each of these categories and the specific aspects grouped within each one has many individual articles and sometimes entire books written about it. However, the need right here, right now, is to have you begin to think of each of these aspects as one piece of a puzzle. If a piece is altered, it no longer precisely aligns, is harmonious or is in a balanced relationship with surrounding pieces. This then leads to a slight or, many times, a radical change in the area or sections surrounding the altered piece.

The most difficult of these five categories to come to grips with, at least for first-time property-owners is that of Site and Environmental Conditions.

Image via: Landscape Design Advisor

You want action, now!

The yard is a mess and there is no place for the kids to play. There are far too many trees and not much grass. There is not enough color and everything looks dark and drab. The soil is sandy and won’t hold water. It’s hard to go slow and take the time to define and record facts and figures for all the parts needed to create an advantageous and sound understanding of their little bit of heaven.

This is the moment in time to hold everything especially the chain saw, and the trips to local plant outlets. Take several deep breaths and spend several months waiting, including ones during your yard’s down time, such as cold weather or a rainy season. Watch, test items such as the soil if necessary, record and plan.

Beginning with a paper plan can protect against a chaotic result and this can more than outweigh the frustration and displeasure in having to delay action.

It is important and cost effective, at this point, to not invest in any quick schemes or indulge in Band-Aid approaches. However, by all means:

• Clean-up outstanding messes and danger spots. If necessary send for a qualified arborist to clear out the widow-makers… dangerous overhanging limbs… and prune overgrown shrubs next to windows and doorways. Hire a local clean-up crew with rakes and a pickup truck to clean and haul away accumulations of branches and leaves.
• Clean out poisonous plants such as poison ivy or poison oak. If in doubt about what you have, check with a local extension agent or garden center. This is one time when a meticulously and painstakingly-applied herbicide is important,
• Create a safe place for your children to play and pets to run. If necessary, think temporary, think happy children.

An excellent investment at this stage is a sturdy and large three-ring, loose-leaf binder filled with lined paper on which to record observations and measurements, graph paper for quick sketches and ultimately a paper plan, and plastic sleeves to hold photos of parts of your property during the various seasons and times of the day.

A first-rate use of time, especially while dog-walking or escorting children to school, is to objectively look at your neighbors’ landscapes. See if you can spot any regional styles or tendencies. Notice what grows well in the neighborhood and begin to clarify what you’re partial to and what you dislike. Jot down your observations and ideas in the notebook.

Also, for efficiency’s sake, include either my Five Major Categories of Factors to Consider in Landscape Design to use as a checklist, or use a similar one. With my Categories of Factors and their component pieces, there is really no set order in which to tackle the list. You can jump in anywhere and gather data whenever the urge strikes. You’ve begun the linear process.

Good Luck!

Samet Bilir writes about digital camera reviews, technology trends and photography, such as camera supports 2012 and Kingston SDHC cards. To read more articles from him visit his website at chi-photography.com.

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