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Category: Hardscapes

Landscape Design Ideas From Around The World

It is the landscape architect or designer’s responsibility to integrate all outdoor living spaces and have them complement their adjoining indoor rooms. One reliable way of doing this is finding a theme that acts as connective tissue for all of the living spaces. Choose A Representative Theme And Celebrate It Every design theme has characteristics for which it is known, and many themes are representative of regions or cultures. These qualities serve as guardrails for landscape design ideas, such as avoiding costly rookie mistakes. For example, it’s not uncommon to have trouble selling a Florida home without a swimming pool.

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Choosing the Best Hardscaping Materials for Your Landscape

If you look into your yard and feel that it has a boring appearance, hardscaping could be the perfect thing to liven up your yard space. Creating an outdoor architectural space with the best hardscape materials has the power to offer a more inviting and visually pleasing area to you and your guests.  Choosing hardscape materials is difficult, so let’s look at some of the best hardscape materials to get you started in your yard transformation process. What Are Hardscapes? Hardscaping involves using non-living pieces to make durable man-made aesthetic structures, like pathways and patios, which come in various hard

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Winterization Tips for Outdoor Spaces, Features and Landscape Systems

After a long Minnesota winter, homeowners willingly take on the task of getting their outdoor living spaces ready to use. Clean up and light maintenance prepare hardscape features and their surrounding landscaping to enjoy. As the cool autumn weather sets in, people get busy with work and back to school routines and dismiss landscape maintenance and winterization. You might lack the time needed to perform all these tasks, or you may not want to take on extra work on top of your day job. This is understandable, but you may regret your decision when you discover it could cost thousands

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Best Pool Hardscape Ideas

Having a pool is one of the best parts of warm weather. But, without hardscaping around your pool, your backyard can look dull and messy. Luckily, there are plenty of pool hardscape ideas to choose from. So let’s look at a few of the options to create the best hardscape around your pool, whether an above-ground or in-ground pool. What Are Hardscapes? Before you get into your search for the perfect hardscape, you should know what it entails. Hardscapes are aesthetic landscapes created with solid objects such as stone, rocks, and composite wood. Don’t get this mixed up with softscapes,

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How To Restore and Maintain Stone, Brick and Block Hardscapes

Hardscape surfaces have been part of landscape projects for centuries. Traditional masons worked with clay brick and natural stone to construct durable columns, walls, and patio surfaces. The distinction is that only the most affluent homeowners had direct experience with these architectural landscape features. It wasn’t until the late 90s that these architectural hardscape features became accessible to a wider range of homeowners. In fact, it was this trend that was responsible for the use of the term hardscaping. Before then landscaping was plantings and hardscaping was more accurately referred to as masonry. The methods for maintaining and restoring natural

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Know Where Value Lives In Hardscaping and Landscaping  

  Did you know that the landscape industry term hardscaping did not even exist until the early 90s, at least here in the United States? Back then, landscaping was mostly ornamental plantings. The most common hardscaping enhancements for homeowners were wooden decks because brick and stone supplies were limited, as well as the technical expertise for working with them. Since that time, our industry has seen an explosion of hardscape products that are easier to install. Now that material supplies are abundant, well-intentioned contractors and handy homeowners are taking on hardscaping work that was previously the domain of experienced tradespeople,

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