Beautifying Your Home with Landscape Design

The landscape design surrounding your home is one of the first things people notice and is an important component of creating curb appeal.

Your home landscape plan creates a sense of style for your home and sets the overall tone you present to visitors. It can help people feel a warm welcome when visiting your home.

Because curb appeal creates a visual impact that is so important to the perception of your home, your landscaping and garden design will also have a significant influence on the overall value of your property.

There are many wonderful landscaping ideas to help you improve the look of your home.

Some people think they need to hire landscape architects or contractors to create and implement a home landscape design for them. That is certainly a possibility if you can afford it, but many people very successfully undertake the planning on their own.

If you are thinking of creating a do it yourself landscaping plan, the first thing to do is learn some of the basic landscaping design principles.

There are four main aspects to all good landscape plans. If you combine them with your own sense of style and attention to detail, you will be well on your way to having a yard and garden design that adds to the beauty of your home and reflects your family's personality.

Balance

The first of the four elements to consider is the concept of balance. Concentrating most of your planting in one area of your yard causes the rest of the garden to look bare and neglected. Distribute the plants around the yard. Plan the placement of trees, shrubs and flower beds to create a sense of flow in the yard. This will help draw the eye though the entire landscape design.

Proportion

The second aspect of great landscape gardening is proportion. The idea here is to make sure that any landscape design feature you choose is sized appropriately to fit in with the surrounding areas, and other fixtures and structures.

For example, as much as you may love gazebos, trying to wedge a large one into a tiny back yard will end up looking like it overwhelms the yard. Try a small gazebo placed in the corner of your back yard or opt for a small seating area shaded by a tree.

If you have an extremely large front lawn, the opposite idea comes into play. You will need to add larger elements in plantings or features that will be noticed and not overwhelmed. Larger trees or shrubs and large flower beds may be appropriate here.

Transition

Transition is the third principle you need to know for your landscaping project. It is closely related to the proportion principle. Your landscape design can and should include a variety of flowers, plants, large shrubs, bushes and even trees. The way to make them really work together is with the use of transition.

Transition is the smooth flow from one type and size of plant to another. The idea is that you want to lead the eye from delicate plants to larger ones with some in-between sizes rather than having them sit side by side. The gradual flow of sizes from small to larger is more pleasing to the eye.

Color transitions can also be a very effective aspect of your overall landscaping design plan. Plan your color flow so the garden looks either calm and serene, or joyful and colorful, without looking like a jumble of unorganized color.

Unity

The last of the four concepts of landscaping is unity. Unity means the ultimate feeling that you are trying to express with your landscaping and garden design. The garden should have a unifying theme.

All of the choices you make in how you balance, proportion, and transition the various colors, sizes and textures of your landscape elements should be governed by this unifying theme. This is what brings the landscape design together to work in harmony and create a spectacular home garden and landscape plan.

How do you accomplish that?

Choose an overall theme for your landscape design first and use it to create your plans. For example, if you love English country gardens, choose elements that will fit with that theme. If you prefer the calming and more sparsely planted Japanese style garden then choose plants and other elements that reflect that look. If you started out to create the feel of an English cottage garden, adding accent pieces that have an oriental flair will usually look confusing.

Keeping the theme in mind when thinking of landscaping ideas can help you make decisions about plants, outdoor furnishings and accent pieces that will add to the beauty of your yard.

Okay, does all of this have you pulling out your hair at the thought of all the things to keep in mind when planning your garden design? Don't worry. Do it yourself landscaping is a breeze with the new and amazing landscape design software available.