Follow our beginner-friendly gardening landscape Design tips to transform your yard into a blooming paradise and get ideas for customizing your outdoor space.
If you’ve never designed a landscape before, the number of options available to you may be overwhelming. Which plants should you include, and where should they be placed? Should bed lines and paths be curved or straight? What about decorative elements like stylish benches,
Eye-catching planters and birdbaths to attract colorful wildlife? Many of the same principles that guide your room setup inside can also guide your designs outside. Here are seven things to think about to get your new landscaping project off to a great start.
1. Determine Landscape Needs and Wants
Make a list of your wants and needs. Do your children require a play area? Do you want to start growing vegetables? Would your family enjoy getting together on a patio? Make some rough sketches of your yard with ideas for where you want to put things; it’s a great organizing
principle for beginners in landscape design.
According to Marianne Lipanovich, author of the Big Book of Garden Designs, they don’t have to be master plans (just ideas). Her front yard landscape design overhaul sketch was only a few lines and a couple of circles. Without a lot of time or commitment, you can easily experiment with ideas.
2. Think About the Location
Examine the sun and wind patterns. You might want to put a patio on the west side of the house, but it will get a lot of afternoon sun, making dinnertime in August uncomfortable. A fire pit will be quickly extinguished if the wind whistles around a corner. These are common beginner mistakes in backyard landscape design. Your design should consider what the sun and wind do at various times of the day and year.
3. Spend Time in Your Landscape
Making snap decisions about your yard can lead to decisions that don’t work in the long run. Allow it to settle before making any changes. After spending more time outside, you’ll notice places you want to go and sit that you hadn’t considered before, according to Lipanovich.
4. Start Small
Sure, on your favorite home and garden show, complete outdoor makeovers can happen in just three days, but they have a large crew to handle the heavy lifting, which most beginner home gardeners do not have. Slowly developing a plan and enjoying the process are important parts of creating a landscape you’ll love. Begin with a small flower bed from your master plan.
When you have time, go out and work on it for an hour or two, and don’t worry about filling everything up right away. Lipanovich points out that if you take your time with your DIY landscape design, you’re less likely to get sloppy or take shortcuts that you’ll regret later.
5. Find a Focal Point
Any good garden design includes a focal point or series of focal points, and it’s a simple principle to implement. This could be a sculpture, a beautiful tree, or a series of shrubs. Lipanovich suggests allowing the design to guide your gaze around the landscape.
6. Focus on Scale and Pacing
Scale and pacing are the most difficult principles in landscape design for beginners, but they give your yard a polished appearance. There will be size, shape, and color variations, with tall plants against a building or in the back of a flowerbed, and paths that lead people through the space.
Lipanovich emphasizes the significance of striking a balance between repetition and new elements. Repetition creates a sense of cohesion, but it should not be monotonous. An occasional new element is preferable to having a variety of elements throughout.
7. Be Open to Change
Unless you’re completely committed to something, be honest about what works and what doesn’t in your design. Even Lipanovich has discovered that elements she once liked no longer reflect her style. It’s fine to experiment and make changes as you go. If you are looking for the best landscape rendering services, visit Jscottsmith.com.
Remember that patience is essential for beginners in landscape design. If all of that bare space is too much to bear, and the kids and dogs are tracking mud, use temporary solutions, such as laying down some annuals, mulch, and fast-growing groundcovers to cover an area while you figure out what you want. Lipanovich also suggests planting annuals and small perennials around larger plants that require time to grow and fill in. You can always dig them up and move them if you realize they’re in the wrong place later.
What are the essential elements of a landscape design?
Texture, color, scale, line, and form are the five main principles of landscape design. Professional designers use these pillars to create designs that are beautiful, timeless, balanced, and seasonally appropriate.
What are some popular styles for landscape design?
There are numerous landscape design styles to choose from, just as there are numerous home decor styles. Some of the most well-known (and easily identified) are the English garden, Japanese garden, French garden, and native garden.