Where to Find Landscaping Ideas
Where to find landscaping theme ideas
Finding the best landscaping theme ideas to suit your garden and your requirements can be a very enjoyable task although it can feel like a daunting prospect once you actually start doing this in earnest.
After all, it sounds as if it should be simple enough to redesign and landscape your garden, but as this often requires a range of components to fit in to the one space, and all without looking jumbled or cluttered, it can become surprisingly complex.
You might want an area where the children can play and where you can enjoy some outside entertaining.
You might fancy a pond or a summer house. You might fancy introducing plants that are perfect for attracting bees or wildlife, or alternatively a garden that is fairly maintenance free yet is still attractive and stylish.
You might want a blend of all these elements, plus some decking and the construction of walkways or raised beds or terracing. You might not know what you want but you need it to look gorgeous!
One thing’s for sure; there is no right solution for everyone.
Hardly surprising, there are many hours of TV coverage, devoted to this one topic as well as pages of websites, magazines and other resources.
The problem is that we are actually spoilt for choice when it comes to ideas so the easiest way to get some clarity and to make a decision is to think about what you already have and what you need.
One good source of inspiration is to look on Pinterest and see how other people have created their outside space. You can refine your search to suit your own requirements and garden size and some of the results are spectacular.
Small garden spaces and patios, exciting garden ornaments, furniture and lighting, gorgeous plants and quirky structures can help give you some ideas about what you want to create for your own landscaping.
In most cases Pinterest doesn’t provide you with any details about how to create your landscaped garden but it can help you see what can be done with some imagination and effort. You may wish to develop your own theme based on personal experiences such as visiting a stately home, a country or the seaside so Pinterest can certainly help with this too.
Further browsing should definitely include the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) website. There you can find a range of garden themes such as themes for a small garden, cottage garden, urban garden, wildlife friendly or more. Because this is the RHS, plants are a central feature of the advice, rather than structures or decking but these are mentioned too.
Other magazines and websites include Ideal Home and Homes and Gardens and you can also get inspiration from visiting other gardens or your local garden centre.
By now, you should have some ideas (and be thoroughly confused) so you need to get down to basics and make a plan of your garden, taking into consideration, the size, the walls and boundaries, existing trees and where you would like to add the various zones. These may include the area for dining or entertaining, the play area, the pond or the summer house. Creating a mood board of features you would like to add will help you make sense of your browsing and research.
You also need to make some basic style decisions. Would you like the garden to be formal and geometric? Or would you prefer something more organic and natural looking? Either option will take planning so there are no easy answers.
One of the major considerations when you are considering landscaping your garden is whether you actually enjoy gardening and spend time on it already.
If you don’t, then your best option is to choose a style that includes low maintenance plants that require minimal care. You might find that hard landscaping the area with a building, paving the area or incorporating stones or a large decking will be easier to manage than a garden with lots of different plants and a lawn.
According to garden designers the most successful landscaping styles are those which feature a simple theme and an elegant design. This does not mean that you can’t incorporate your various elements but it does require that you keep the style consistent throughout the garden. So once you have decided on the theme you should stick to it. Too many ideas in a small space will make it look cluttered and fussy.
If you are considering installing hard landscaping – buildings and structures in your garden including decking, you may to obtain planning permission depending upon the area where you live. Check with your local planning department before you start to find out whether you need to submit a planning application
Once you have decided upon what you need from your garden, you might want to call in the services of a professional landscape designer and gardener. This option guarantees you the best results and a good designer will be able to transform your inspired ideas into a practical coherent theme, much faster than would be otherwise possible.
Calling in a professional landscape gardener is not cheap but it will save you time and effort. If you don’t already have the skills or the tools to carry out your landscaping, you will need to factor in the costs of hiring or buying in equipment and machinery, especially if you are planning a dramatic transformation that requires hard landscaping.
Price wise, a professional tradesman will probably cost around £1000 to build a patio. For a garden designer and a team of tradesmen you can expect to pay nearer the £10,000 mark, rising to around £30,000 depending upon the size of your garden and what the job entails. A top garden designer will generally charge around 15% of the budget.
Although this may seem expensive, it can be well worth the investment. A professional landscape designer and gardener will carry out the work to a very high standard and will only add value to your home. In addition a well-designed landscape theme will last for years and add greatly to the enjoyment of your garden.
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