Designing Your Landscape: Getting Started

Your landscape is an essential feature of your property because it shows how much care and effort you put into making the grounds of your home attractive. Creating a beautiful landscape, however, requires considerable knowledge and attention to detail. This article examines some of the basic information anyone wanting to design an outstanding landscape should know.

Principles

Professional landscape designers have developed a set of principles that allow practitioners to create first-class landscapes. One crucial principle of good landscape design is balance. The human eye finds balance appealing, which is why the concept should be incorporated into your design. Also critical to an appealing landscape is creating a focal point. The eyes of any visitors should be immediately drawn to an exciting plant, piece of art or sculpture, etc. The best place for a focal point is often near the front entrance.

Two other key principles are simplicity and proportion. The concept of simplicity means the design should not be too cluttered or contain too many different shapes and colors. The proportion principle requires you to ensure that all elements of the design fit well in the landscape and are in harmony with each other in regard to size.

The rhythm and line concept involves giving the grounds a sense of movement as you walk through the area. Finally, the unity principle is a way of ensuring that all of the various elements combine to make a complete whole.

Creating a Design

Once you have a working knowledge of the principles that landscape designers use, you can move on to creating a design plan for your property. First, look at your landscape with a discerning eye and determine what elements, such as some stone steps, an arbor, a raised garden bed, and a pergola, you would like to add. Then, using a pen and paper or an online program, make a map of your property which includes the dimensions of your house.

Draw all of the landscape features you do not want to change on your map. Next draw the additions you want to see in the landscape on the map, putting these new features inside bubbles. Finally, draw or create a new map that shows both what you want to keep and highlights the new features you wish to add. You will need to refer to this map as you move toward making your landscape dreams a reality.

The creation of a beautiful landscape is not an easy job and many homeowners prefer to leave it up to the experts. To learn more about this topic, consult with one of the professional landscape designers in your city.

For more info, contact local landscape designers.