Where to Landscape

Choosing an area or areas around your home that you feel need a landscape make-over requires a good deal of thought. While the geography of your property limits your decision, your imagination knows no boundary.

Before deciding on a spot to landscape, spend some time peering at neighbors' home and properties to get a few ideas. Note tree, shrub and plant arrangement as well as how particularly colors and organic material are grouped together. Your own property may draw from some neighborhood landscaping layouts.

While most people decide to landscape with formal bordered garden areas on the outskirts of their property, there are quite a few variations of this design--some folks choose straight edges where others pick scalloped borders to smooth the landscape and introduce interesting curvature. Both personal taste and maintenance dedication dictate this variation decision. If matters such as mowing around a curve don't bother you, consider scalloped edges.

There are dozens of other landscaping zones around your home besides the perimeter of your property. Many designers will place flower beds around isolated mailboxes and outdoor lampposts. Others concentrate their landscaping attention around freestanding trees. Cultivated beds placed around freestanding objects such as trees, mailboxes and posts remedy the problem of neatly mowing as well as provide points of interest for your yard.

Other sites of fixed objects in your yard are great areas to add landscaping detail, such as garage sides, patios, decks and swimming pools. A house with an expansive yard abutting a busy street may call for added privacy--landscaped patches dividing the house and road are a great option. The aesthetic of your house will not only be improved with landscaping detail; privacy can be achieved!

Whether you have an irregular border or an awkwardly shaped object, landscaping can be applied to all parts of your property. Flowers, plants and garden accents can spruce up your yard and your existing home components so that you, your family and your visitors are transported into an elegantly adorned garden world!