If you’re thinking about making some landscaping changes this coming year, you should keep in mind the importance of a good design plan. Landscape elements need to work in conjunction with your home to show it off in its best light. Landscaping is usually the first thing that is seen when driving up on a home.
Badly designed or maintained landscaping around the outside your home is able to wreck the way that it looks and feels to those that might come to visit or pass by. With a good design and the right plan, you can avoid installing landscaping that does more to detract from your home’s appearance than enhance it. Great curb appeal is helpful when selling a home, but in the long run it can really contribute to your own enjoyment of it.
Here are the major landscaping mistakes homeowners make:
- Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail: Putting in landscaping without having a well thought-out plan is asking for trouble. You might turn your yard into a hodge of items that have just been stuck together without a rhyme or reason to them. Always have a design and plan in place before you move forward with anything. Each element should be carefully calculated and placed with purpose.
- Planting Too Close Together, Planting Too Much: With landscaping, more is usually not a good thing. Some homeowners try to cram as much as they can into their garden beds and areas around their property, thinking that an abundance of color and natural beauty will really help. But when you plant items together too close, the result looks overdone and actually detracts because the beauty of the individual plant gets lost in the mass. By having well-spaced plants, you’re able to have an open flow throughout the entire yard. This all works together, seems up the sides and looks flawless against your home. And what’s more, you can play up the features of a particular plant. Love roses? Just one or two bushes, surrounded with crushed rock and lit with low-voltage landscaping lighting could produce a work of natural art.
- Zoning Out When Selecting Landscaping Plants, Trees, and Shrubs: No matter how much you like them and how beautiful they are, avoid choosing any plantings that aren’t rated for your particular zone. You will be giving yourself much more work than what you bargained for. Always read the labels or speak with the nursery assistant on which plants will work best for your zone. Don’t assume because your garden center sells something that it will work in your yard. And you should be aware that the Twin Cities metro area has more than one zone, so just because it works in Apple Valley doesn’t mean it will thrive in Forest Lake.
- Transplanting someone else’s design. Good landscape design is not a cookie-cutter approach. Each property is different, and therefore the landscaping that works well with one home won’t create the same effect with another. Do not get caught up in the prettiness of magazines and catalogs and what they say might look good in any landscaped yard. There may be elements that you can use, but chances are the whole thing won’t produce the look you’re after.
When you’d like some pointers and help with getting a well thought-out design plan for your landscape, speak with us here at Architectural Landscape Design. We specialize in unique, custom landscape design and installation. We can plan ahead with you this winter and then get your design in motion for the spring months ahead. We are now offering free initial design consultations – just call us to schedule. We are a licensed MN landscape design and installation contractor serving the greater Minneapolis and St. Paul metro area, including Western Wisconsin communities such as Hudson.