Landscape design is an essential component of creating a practical, beautiful and harmonious outdoor space. And yet many homeowners are unaware of what landscape design really is. You wouldn’t build your home without a design, and you shouldn’t landscape without a design either. Creating an effective and functional landscape design depends on choosing the right landscape designer to match your needs and tastes. Here we look at what landscape design is, and how it can benefit and transform your outdoor space.
The Basics of Landscape Design
The goal of landscape design is to blend practical, functional and aesthetic aspects into the ideal design for outdoor spaces. Landscape design can both be large scale regarding master planning of a landscape, or a smaller scale specific design of a landscape, such as garden design, plant choice and hardscapes. Landscape design encompasses a range of different fields and specialties, including structural design, garden bed design, horticulture, aesthetic details and environmental sustainability.
What Does Landscape Design Do?
Landscape design balances the practical aspects of a design along with the aesthetic. Effective landscape design can help you get more efficient use out of your outdoor space, and engineer your environment to create the space you want. The work of landscape design can be roughly divided between hardscape and softscape design. Hardscape design includes creating driveways, pathways, and outdoor entertaining areas to suit your needs. Hardscape design can also provide essential structural and safety inclusions such as retaining walls and garden paths.
Softscape design deals with garden beds and lawns that can be cultivated to create the look and lifestyle you want. Because landscape design uses a living canvas, there are specific considerations and skills that need to be employed in creating the ideal space. Effective landscape design can help you create a more environmentally conscious space with a drought friendly garden, or a space that matches the goals you have for specific garden design or plant choice. Landscape design can even help you create a low maintenance garden to suit your lifestyle, or a lush oasis you’ll enjoy nurturing and cultivating.
The role of landscape design is to blend the science of plant cultivation and landscape safety with the art of garden and outdoor entertaining space design.
When Do You Need Landscape Design?
Landscape design can be useful for both large or small projects, whether you’re planning to completely overhaul your outdoor space or just want to redesign a garden bed. Landscape design should be considered as an essential component of larger projects where multiple aspects of a landscape need to be carefully planned and coordinated. Landscape design can also be useful for specific small projects such as designing a drought resistant lawn, planning a retaining wall, or adding paved areas to the front or back yard.
Landscape design helps you to create a more balanced, functional and beautiful outdoor environment in both residential and commercial settings. Contact your local landscape designer today to see how your outdoor environment could benefit from outstanding landscape design.