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Posts Tagged ‘Minneapolis Garden Design’

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Swimming Pools and Spas Require A High Degree of Privacy And Safety

Wednesday, October 10th, 2012

Pools and spas are a good way to add more enjoyment to your property, but these areas demand privacy as well as safety features.  Fences are a good bet for providing both, and are a requirement in many local ordinances.  Container plants and vines are often used to brighten corners of the angular fence enclosures and softening the lines. Screens and fences allow air circulation. They can be built so they are baffled or louvered to allow or stop air currents from going through. This feature can lengthen the amount of time a pool can be used.

Whether it’s a hot tub, spa, or swimming pool, a water feature has a high demand for privacy. It’s nice to be able to relax and enjoy yourself without feeling that you’re on public display.  However, along with a pool or any kind of water spot comes some special problems or constraints when it comes to landscaping them.

If you are going to have a pool, spa, or hot tub, it is a necessity to plant some “neat” trees and shrubs that won’t contribute debris to the water, because it’s not always practical to cover them when they aren’t in use. You also want to stay away from fruit or berry-producing trees around your tub or pools because they can make pool decks slippery as well as produce stains.   Our landscape designers and architects can help you decide what are the right plantings that will enhance safety and privacy without creating clean-up problems. We can also review the local ordinances and keep you safe. Plus, we are able to design the pool, hot tub, or spa and surrounding areas. Particular care must be taken when choosing plantings next to a water source as the constant evaporation of water raises the moisture content of the surrounding air, and not all species thrive in a moist environment.

Let us help you keep your swimming, hot tub, or spa areas clean, neat, and safe by letting us design the pools, and creating the safety fences and plantings with you. Call us on 952-292-7717 today!

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Posted in All, Landscape Design Minnesota, Minneapolis Landscaping, Outdoor Living Spaces, Pools and Spas | No Comments »

Turn A Drab Winter Landscape Into Something To Look At When You’re Shoveling

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

Now is a great time to consider making some changes to your landscaping which will provide beauty and interest this winter.  What makes a popular plant for the winter landscape that is sometimes nothing more than a blanket of white? You can generate some winning combinations if you combine plantings and hardscapes. An alternative to concrete such as pavers and natural stone walkways can add interest against the winter white and remind you of the promise of spring. They should be considered for their year-round beauty.

Evergreen shrubs and conifer trees always add visual interest with the difference in their leaf structure. Rhododendrons (aside from their leaves turning green to red in the fall) remain on, giving a delicate leaf to view in the winter. Red color can be added with the  bark of the red twig dogwoods, and the shaggy bark of birches adds to the view out a window.  A winning plant or tree for a charming winter landscape must be a plant that has one or more of the following characteristics:

- Contains colorful berries that birds like so you get berries and birds in the mix

- Catches snow on its branches and even ice when it freezes

- Has bark that has interesting structure or bark color to look at when there aren’t any leaves

- Bears evergreen foliage

- Has an interesting branch pattern

- Has a delicate structure

- Has enough height so it doesn’t get dwarfed or buried by the snow

There is also something incredibly beautiful about the moon shining on snow in the winter. You can create this winter interest in your garden by introducing low-voltage lighting that showcases your plantings in different ways using focal lights, up lights, path lights, etc.

As outdoor lighting contractors, landscape designers, and landscape architects we can enhance what you see when you look out your windows this winter. Our MN landscape design company would be happy to sit and talk about your ideas for creating beauty that can turn winter in your yard like a painting you view. Call us at 952-292-7717.

 

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Take An Inventory of Your Outside Options

Thursday, September 6th, 2012

Evaluating your potential outdoor areas will help to giving you a clearer idea of how you want to use your personal spaces. Some of the questions you may ask yourself are: What is your lifestyle? What activities do you like to enjoy now? What would you like to do more of or less of you had more private space? Would it be a vegetable garden, sunbathing, outdoor cooking? They all present different requirements for your space needs and privacy.

Go through a checklist of various ways you might enjoy new spaces:

Entertaining: Do you like to entertain frequently? Do you want to entertain groups of people or just two or three couples?

Recreation: Do you want a basketball court, swimming pool,  or maybe an outdoor living room?  All of these have different needs in terms of the privacy and space.

Relaxation: Do you want sunbathing that needs a sunny spot, or do you want a hot tub or spa? Determining the amount of privacy you need will help determine the placement of these things.

Gardening: Do you want to create garden displays for yourself in your back yard and in your front yard? How much time do you want to spend in your garden?

When you have figured out what you want to do it is a good thing go take a walk around the perimeter of your lot. A complete property review  can help clarify your ideas of what you can and can’t do.

Next you have to take an inventory of what you already have.  Think twice before you decide to eliminate any large plants or groupings of plants. If you want to plan plant trees or shrubs along a boundary you’d better make sure the boundary between you and a neighbor is where it’s supposed to be.

Contact Architectural Landscape Design, serving Minneapolis and St. Paul and surrounding communities at 952-292-7712 today to start on your landscape assessment.

 

 

 

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Garden Illusions: Up, Down and Around

Thursday, September 6th, 2012

When landscaping your Minnesota yard, consider creative layouts to create interest.  Curving lines in a garden and changes in levels can make a garden seem bigger and more graceful. Moving soil from one place to another in your garden can create an illusion of greater space. You can form mounds and swales (dips). It doesn’t have to be drastic if you emphasize it be adding planting beds or a set of steps. Even the change of a couple inches can make a difference.

There are a couple of cautions to consider.  You want to have gentle swells and hollows; if you get into abrupt peaks and valleys, they won’t look natural and you may have erosion problems. They also need to be in scale with the garden.

At Architectural Landscape Design, our landscape designers create illusion in a variety of ways. Building raised beds with stone retaining walls, constructing terraces, patios, or decks that are either higher or lower than the surrounding terrain also adds the different dimensions.

The garden skyline is another opportunity to change levels through creating structures such as pergolas, arbors, fences, walls, and trellises. Trellises –  even on a garage wall – draped with grape vines, can add dimension, growing space, and the illusion of visiting another country. Some other ideas a little further from the mainstream are to carefully place mirrors in protected from the climate areas that will reflect plantings and structures.

Or a painted mural on a wall or fence can make the space seem much larger, and invite the viewer to think outside the box. The boundaries of the garden will seem to be even further away if the background is painted so it appears to dwindle in the distance. In plantings if you use dwarf varieties of plants that are usually seen in larger scale the eye is tricked into thinking the scale is bigger and the garden likewise.

If you’re looking to put a little more creativity into your lyard, let us help you effect illusion in your garden.  Call one of our landscape design professionals at 952-292-7712.

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Solve the Landscaping Puzzles: Rise Above the Ordinary with Raised Planting Beds

Monday, August 27th, 2012

Landscape design often involves finding just the right solution for troubling areas.  A creative architectural landscape designer can help you address problems such as:

     Design puzzle: Your front yard is on an incline.

     Neighbor puzzle: You share a driveway, but you want to delineate the space.

     Traffic puzzle: You want garden planting but also want patio seating in a too-small space.

     Growing puzzle: You want to plant vegetables, but you also want flowers in the same space.

The solution to all these design puzzles?  Building raised beds.  Raised beds are not just dirt-filled wooden squares or rectangles that look like you’ve just put down old railroad ties. Today, raised beds are a landscape design element that offers  solutions to many of the puzzles homeowners deal with in planning their landscape and garden designs.  Our landscape designers can plan and build custom raised beds out of wood, stone, brick, and other natural stones, making them a beautiful design element in your landscape.

A raised bed can solve the problem of the slight incline in the front yard by providing a transition that is graceful from one level to another. Putting a series of raised planting beds down the middle of a shared driveway space can create an exciting and beautiful visual display of vegetables and flowers. It can also meet building code requirements while at the same time positioning your plantings to get the right amount of air and sun.  Vegetable gardeners know that raised beds often produce early bumper crops as they allow for a longer growing season due to the soil staying warmer longer.

You can also expand your raised bed configuration to have a patio, a deck, and garden space – no need to choose just one element. You can build your raised bed with a space for flowers and vegetables and create seating at the transition between one raised bed to another. This is great for entertaining and provides a comfortable place for the gardener in the house to rest from weeding.

Do you have a puzzling landscape problem?  We can plan and build custom raised beds that just might solve it.  Call Architectural Landscape Design – serving Mpls and St. Paul.  952-292-7717.

 

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Claiming Unuseable Space: Hillside & Slope Landscaping Solutions

Monday, August 27th, 2012

If your home is on a slope or hillside, or if it has several slopes in the landscape, retaining walls can be the solution. In some cases, they are the only solution.  If you have a hill rising up behind your house, you can hold it back with a brick or natural stone retaining wall. That wall might make otherwise useless land into a space that is wide enough for a deck or a patio. If you put in a dry-laid boulder stone retaining wall that has a slight backward tilt as it goes up the hill, it can offer a great place for plantings in among the stones. Also, it will add a focal point for an accompanying patio.

Basic engineering requirements must be followed when building retaining walls. They have to be able to withstand enormous pressure from the soil they are retaining whether it is wet or dry. Most communities require a building permit for installation of retaining walls. Our experienced and licensed landscape design architects can do the job of applying for permits,  as well as planning and creating retaining walls appropriate for your property.

Retaining walls come in all shapes and sizes depending on the job they have to perform. If your front yard is rolling hillside, you might want to terrace it will a series of low walls for plantings. In your garden, you may only need a low retaining wall, you could top it with stone and make it double as a place for additional seating. It might just become another planting area that you can use. Common materials used for retaining walls include wood, stone, brick, or poured concrete. Brick is the most formal and stone is often used for an old-fashioned been there a long time feel.

Homes built on properties with slopes or hillsides come with some special problems like soil erosion and access.  Our landscape designers can help you with turning those spaces into opportunities for use.  Contact us on 952-292-7717.

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Ponds Can Soften Hard Edges of Decks, Add A Bridge Over the Pond for Drama

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Adding a small pond at the edge of a deck can soften the hard edges of the deck and help the deck blend to the garden beyond it. Another option is to make the pond longer and narrower to provide an opportunity to add a bridge over the pond for drama.

One of the major elements in garden design is water. You can add real drama and ambiance to a landscape by adding a water feature such as a pond. If you go the extra step to make it big enough you can add an arcing footbridge to offer a walkway over the pond and give a little lift to your landscape.

It’s important to size the pool in proportion to the rest of your garden. We have a lot of experience in putting ponds in MN landscapes. Our landscape designers would enjoy helping you design the pool that connects your yard with a deck or your house, or simply installing a stand-alone pool in your yard. The sizing of the pool is important as if it’s too large, it will feel like it’s intruding on living and play spaces. A soothing pool is one that fits right in as it creates a transition point.

There are many options for the outlines of the pool. You can use water washed stones and natural plantings to soften the area surrounding the outline of the pool. If you add a bridge adding some feathery grasses, rushes and flowers can outline the approach to the bridge. Some of those plants will also add sounds as the wind blows through their leaves, like the grasses.

If you want to have fish and a clean pond you can. Just don’t feed them more food than they can eat in a few minutes. Only fertilize plants in your pond once a month. Keep plants to maximum of two-thirds of the water surface. These points are not guarantees but they’ll get you started to keeping it clean. Call us today on 952-292-7712 to plan a pool!

 

 

 

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Creating Mystery, Anticipation and Depth in Just Twenty Feet

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

How can you create a sense of mystery and anticipation and make your garden have depth? The Japanese have done this for centuries. They developed a technique to conceal parts on a garden from the initial view; than gradually to reveal them.

In just a twenty-foot space lush foliage and planted containers in a layered planting fronted by airy foliage can make a mystery retreat in an area. Couple that with swirls of bricks in a patio, stone paths, or retaining walls around a concrete swimming pool and you can heighten the mystery and anticipation.

Another simple way is to screen just part of a view from the house or patio with an arbor to frame a panorama in the distance. Only when you go beyond the shrub screen is the view entirely revealed. This technique is very effective at making it impossible to determine or judge a space at the first glance.

Creating depth by arranging plants in certain ways can add to the allure. Our landscape designers and landscape architects often add depth creating irregular borders as they produce a greater sensation of depth than a linear unadorned fence or uniform hedge. They use the outer edges of the garden and mass together vines, small trees, and shrubs of different shapes.

Double-planting is another landscape tool used by our design team. Planting one row of plants in front of another one makes it appear as the greenery goes back further than it really does. There’s room for double planting in all sizes of gardens.

“Layering” structures for greater depth like attaching a wooden trellis to a tall brick wall, or a concrete wall with planters in front of it, or even a fountain in front of a large retaining wall provides depth.

Whether you’re interested in simply creating a difference between close up or far off objects, or you want a swimming pool surrounded by an area of mystery, we can help you with our Mpls and St. Paul designers. Call us on 952-292-7717.

 

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Water Pools and Fountains In Styles That Work For Everyone

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Water pools and fountains come in many different styles. Designing the one that will work for you is very much defined by personal style, along with matching it to your landscape. Whether you plan to install a water pond, or a fountain, our garden designers and architects can help you pick the right option for you.

Formal water pool-A formal water pool is often designated by the use of pavers or hardscapes that lead up to the pool. There is typically a flat-stone border that encircles the water line of the pond, and there is a sitting area around it. They can be geometric or classical shapes but typically are round. Other shapes include square, rectangular or polygon shapes. It can be set above the ground or halfway between. Adding a water spray is an option, but it must be centered to maintain the formality. Different spray patterns are available that include: bubblers, bell or tulip shaped sprays, or spitter sprays.

Informal water pool or garden ponds-An informal water pool will usually be much more natural in form, with relaxed curves with a focus on blending into the landscape. Rocks and informal retaining walls can be used with garden plantings to maintain the informal feel. Sprays are also an option, but no rules of placement are required.

Classic Tiered Fountains-These classic multi-tiered fountains add an air of formality and classic design and are a great addition to a formal garden.

Wall fountains-Most wall fountains are just “spitters” that require a pool or basin below them since they are part of or are hung on a wall. They add a formal and classy look to any garden. A wall-of-water fountain is another option where one sheet of water flows down the front of the fountain.

Formal ponds and fountains are a great addition to any garden and as an add on to decks and patios can give a dead space some life. Call us today to explore how a fountain or pond for you, 952-292-7717.

 

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A Quiet Corner: Outdoor Living Spaces

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

There was a time in many parts of America, where using the outdoors for the dual purposes of dining and entertaining just wasn’t done. In rural America many people working on farms often stopped for a mid day “dinner” under the shade of the trees. But it was more for gaining the sustenance needed for the rest of the day’s work, not entertainment. You worked outdoors and you rested and lived indoors.

Now the garden can mean more than a vegetable or flower garden. It is a place or space to spend time on patios, pools, and decks, too. Now the term “Outdoor Rooms” has come to mean spaces that people use as outdoor living rooms.

If you have a good sized yard or a small suburban backyard it can be absolutely delightful to find a little nook and make it in to an outdoor living space. Our MN landscape designers and architects can help with a little landscaping to make a place for you to wander, reflect and gather for quiet chats or full scale entertaining.

Is there a space in your yard that you find yourself drawn to? We can create an outdoor “room” by enclosing a lawn with plantings, and adding some hardscapes; like pavers and patios, or stone retaining wall built into a bank, to gain more level space. If a European-style water garden or fountain is one of your ideas we can incorporate it and your other ideas into the plan.  Soon, it’s a table and chairs for dining or reclining, a built-in stone barbecue or fireplace and fire pit, for easy cooking, and a gazebo to sit and listen to the rain on the roof. You can add stone or brick walkways that lead to the different areas. Or add paths that direct you to more rooms with a pool, a birdbath, an arbor, or a rock or flower garden.

Call ALDMN today on 952-292-7712 to plan a pleasant backyard refuge.

 

 

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