The driveway has always been a functional feature in your home. But should it stay drab just because it’s only for stowing away your car? It should not stay unimpressive. It should reflect your sense of style and be an extension of your home and your beautifully manicured lawns.

The key to creating a driveway that impresses people is to concentrate on design elements on both sides of the driveway. You can use all types of materials from softscape options to hardscape. With enough creativity and a touch of daring, you will be able to make your driveway attractive.

Make A Good Entrance

Because it serves as the entry way to your home, the driveway should not look neglected. With good landscaping the driveway can add depth to the entire look of your home. There’s no need to spend a fortune either. Just choose which attractive features you can afford and install them with a good design concept in mind.

If your imagination won’t let you see beyond the fact that a driveway is only a spot to park your car, look at your driveway from another perspective. It’s the entrance to a well-designed home, and it should be something you would be proud off. Your guests must come in and marvel at how well-designed your driveway is, like they’re parking the car in a five star hotel’s entrance.

Choosing Your Elements

When looking for minimal work, do not set up plants that could get wilted or damaged with frequent foot traffic. Instead, use attractive fences or rocks. The floor of your driveway can be spruced up using brick tiles in a color that complements your home.  Do not use elements that may be in the way of foot and automobile traffic.

Another important aspect of the driveway is the footpath. Should it be covered? You can decide to cover it if your location is prone to rains. The flooring must be level and devoid of anything that could trip you or your guests.

Hardscape Choices

You can choose a good design for your walls. The walls can be colored to match the landscape. They can also be installed with colored bricks to act as a contrast to the flooring. Try using hanging baskets or lanterns for added charm. A large rock or a stone statue can be interesting, especially if a spotlight is set on it. You can choose hedges instead of fence, especially living hedges made of climbing vines. plant grasses and small flowers in the cracks of stones to create even more decorative looks.

Softscape Choices

Softscapes can be used if you only have budget to design the sides of your driveway. A raised flowerbed looks great especially if the box containing the plants is a nice piece. You can also add groundcover along the driveway. This will be a natural border between your driveway and other parts of your lawn. You can also trim the shrubs lining your driveway to become topiaries. Small ornamental trees that are neatly trimmed will also work.

Have you ever looked around a middle-class neighborhood and noticed that most of the lawn designs around the area look the same. Now, if you’re wondering if all these families hired the same landscaper, think again. It has become an accepted fact that beautifully manicured lawns should always comprise of well-manicured green grass, trees and flowers. If you’re individualistic and you want your garden to look unique, you should try rock gardening.

Installing landscaping rocks will give your yard the pizzazz it needs. A homeowner’s style is only visible through his garden if he can add personality to his landscape. Remove some of the grass, break up the endless sea of green and install decorative rocks!

One more reason why you should consider rock gardening is the ease of maintenance. Grass needs fertilizers and sunlight, and tend to die when the weather is too extreme. Rocks of various shapes and sizes don’t need these things. They are simply there, giving your garden the unique beauty you want without costing you.

Scout for the best rocks for landscaping in your local lawn shop. Some of the best rocks are found in nature, but if you don’t have the time to go out there in the wilderness to look for your garden rocks, you can simply buy some.

Use a shovel or a tiller to create breaks in the landscape. You need to mark the spots where you will install your rocks. Take this opportunity to assess your garden’s drainage system. The positioning of your rocks might disturb the already established water system in your yard. This is particularly true if you’re using automatic sprinklers. If, while planning your rock garden, you discover that your irrigation system is faulty, now’s the perfect time to correct that.

A walkway flanked by decorative rocks or stone statues is attractive. You can even use rocks and cement fixtures to house your lighting implements. Add a walkway so that your guests can walk around your garden comfortably without having to step on the grass. If your guests will be coming in and out of the house, the walkway will ensure that they don’t drag dirt and garden litter into the house.

Some more concepts you can use is the rock ladder, which isn’t actually a ladder but a positioning strategy for rocks of different sizes. You can position rocks according to size all along the walkway to your door. It is recommended that you refrain from fixing a rock on a permanent location. You never know when the trends will change again and you feel like revamping your yard another time.

There are trends in gardening that are so new and innovative, everyone who has a garden is eager to install them. One such trend is called water gardening. As the term implies, you’re going to build a garden with a lot of water features, such as ponds, waterfalls, streams and fountains. Water gardening has a lot of potential as far as aesthetic gardening goes. You can include stone statues, build rock gardens along the banks of your ponds. You can even add lights to fountains to make them stand out all the more. A tasteful combination of water features, lighting, plants, and fish will make your lawn the most talked about one in your area.

Water gardening does not require a natural water source. In fact, if you cannot afford any of the structures I mentioned, you can simply install a tarp inside a dug hole and call it a pond after you’ve added all the trimmings. Water gardening can be very inexpensive, if you can use your imagination more.

Location is important when trying to install a pond or a fountain. Choosing a location means you have to plan your garden well, from the positioning of tree seedlings to the installation of lighting. Plants and fish both need plenty of sunlight, so shaded places are out. One more reason why you shouldn’t build fountains or ponds under trees is long term maintenance. Your trees will grow more roots and some of these roots move in a horizontal manner rather than vertical. You don’t need the root of your trees to puncture a hole in your pond lining.

A water garden will require space, lots of it. If you don’t have much space to spare, I suggest choosing one water feature and being happy with it. Everyone wants a pond and a water fountain but you may be forced to choose between them if your garden is too small to accommodate both.

How much money and time you are willing to spend on your water garden? A professional landscaper can help you with pond decorations and installation, but a professional service does not come cheap. Besides the decorating service, you may need to shoulder the expense of the materials. Also, if you’re importing fishes, they will cost a lot, especially if you have to purchase fish food.

Aquatic pond plants are either free floating or submerged. They can also be terrestrial plants that you plant only on the margins around your pond. Choose plants according to their contribution to the pond ecosystem. Some plants are great as decorative items on ponds and waterfalls, while some actually function in symbiosis with other water organisms like fishes. Speaking of fish, you absolutely must keep fish around. Fish are not only great aesthetically, they can also help you prevent mosquito larvae accumulation in your pond.

One of the most difficult things about maintaining a water garden is taking care of algae. Algal blooms usually happen in open water, but with enough algae in your pond, you may have to deal with water poisoning. Algae also deplete the nutrients in water. Putting in a pond filtering system and replacing the water once in a while can control the growth of algae.

There’s more to building a garden pond than digging a hole, lining it with plastic and filling it with water.  You must also consider some important things like whether the pond should contain a school of fish or just plants. You should also determine how big or small the pond should be, and how much space you want the pond to occupy in your garden. Be prepared to dig a deep hole and spend many hours preparing the soil for pond installation. The trouble is worth it. I can guarantee that by the time you finish, you will be patting yourself on the back, beer in hand, and dreaming of more landscaping projects now that you have a pond.

Here are Some Steps to Building a Garden Pond

Step 1 – The area of installation

Choose a relatively level spot in your garden to build your pond. This is less expensive than leveling the ground yourself. Choose an area that is a bit far from overhanging branches so that you won’t have to deal with a pile of leaves floating on your pond when autumn comes. Also, the roots of the adjacent tree may just grow into your pond, which forces you into a sudden decision. Should the tree go, or shoud you dismantle your pond setup? The shade is also counterproductive because sunlight is essential for your pond ecosystem to thrive.

Step 2 – Liner Options

You have to choose between prefabricated or do-it-yourself when it comes to the liner you will use for your pond. Prefabricated liners are more expensive, but they are durable and require very little maintenance. You can also use any impermeable material as liner. If you have an old tarp that you’re not using, you can use that to line your pond. However, you must make sure that the material doesn’t have any major slits or damages where soil and water can seep through.

Step 3 – Installation

A pre-fabricated pond can be turned upside down on the area. This is to determine the size of the hole you’re digging. Mark it out with 6 to 8 inches extra around the outside of the liner. Always bear in mind the size of the liner you are using when digging your pond.

In order to build a garden pond that will last for many years, remove all the debris that may puncture the bottom of your pond. Once the preparations are done, you can line the inside of your pond, or install the prefabricated liner. Fill the pond with water up to about one quarter capacity. This will keep the pond in place as you refill the gaps with soil.

Step 4 – Decorate Your Pond

After you install the pond liner and add water, you can now transfer any fish you want to raise, add plants and stones around the pond. Add aquatic plants where your fishes can hide when the sun is high. Plenty of plant life should also be installed to help with algae problems. Don’t forget to install a pump and a filter for your pond before you consider the job done.

It is not impossible to have a unique and gorgeous garden without shelling out thousands on landscaping work. The secret of establishing and maintaining a beautiful lawn is to learn how to do the things that landscapers do yourself. There are some basic conservation and maintenance principles you can follow if you’d rather spend your money on your basic necessities but still want a well-maintained yard.

One great technique you can try is xeriscaping. This is a term reserved for gardening practices that focus on conserving resources such as water. As water becomes even more expensive, a lot of homeowners are turning to conservation practices that will help them maintain their gardens without the hidden costs such as water bills. You can start by choosing plants that do not need much water to thrive. You can also choose the season-hardy varieties of your favorite plant species.

It is recommended to choose plants that are available in many different varieties. Talk to a horticulturist or a plant breeder to find out which plants are attractive enough to deserve a spot in your garden, but economical enough to use only the minimal amount of water to live. Some plants that use a lot of water include cedar hedges. Maintaining this type of plant will mean you have to spend a fortune on water costs. Find out what you like most about these plants and let that criteria be the basis for searching more economical varieties.

Good water retention qualities are a must if you’re choosing the fertilizers to use for your garden. For instance, peat moss is very cheap and can be mixed with dirt and bone meal. When you plant your new flowers or hedges with peat moss as a fertilizer, the water that you use on the plants will be retained longer. Your soil will not always soak up all the water on its own so it’s better to use some materials that have better water retention than soil.

Landscaping means being committed to doing everything from picking your plants to weeding and pruning. Speaking of weeding, weeds may be your nastiest enemy. There are some weeds that are so resilient, they won’t go away even after a session of tilling and hand weeding. You might be tempted to leave these weeds alone, but you will soon realize that you’re wasting money on fertilizers for your plants when all these weeds steal the nutrients you’re paying for to grow even faster than your regular plants.

However, there are some unexpected weeds that can turn out to be beneficial for your garden. One example of this is clover. When clovers crop up alongside your grass, you can mow them together with the grass and let the clippings stay as mulches. Some “weeds” are also able to synthesize nitrogen from the soil with the help of nitrogen fixing bacteria.

Finally, keep your garden small if you want to save money. Flowers and other plants need a lot of fertilizers and watering. Just pick out a few species and be contented with having these in your garden.

There’s more to landscaping and landscape design than meets the eye. It’s about creating beautiful designs, and also an enduring vision of every possibility of growth in your garden. This means allowing for improvements and not incorporating fixtures that you intend to take out in the future.

Planting seedlings without considering the space that mature full grown trees will occupy can become expensive. For example, you build a cemented walkway too close to the place where you planted a tree seedling. In a few years, you will start to see cracks in the cement where the roots of the tree are struggling to expand. You won’t have any choice but to get rid of the walkway. I’m pretty sure you won’t choose the walkway over the tree; I sure wouldn’t.

While most elements you will establish now will probably remain what they are for years to come, the one thing that you could be missing is the space allowance for small trees that may grow in your garden at any time. When bushes grow, their root systems enlarge. You can decide to transfer them somewhere else if they interfere with the growth of your other trees. All your plants will soon become mature plants and trees, but do you have the space for all these mature plants?

Trees are essential garden elements that won’t be there when you start your garden. If you start from scratch, it may take a few years before you can enjoy the shaded garden of your dreams. Trees create shade, block wind and even reduce noise. They are also natural boundaries, and focal points that you and your family can build your dreams around.

Some trees in my land have been there since my grandfather bought the land decades ago. Preparing for the growth of the trees now that you’re just starting with your garden is a way of showing that you are optimistic about the future, and that you know your trees will always have a place where they can grow stronger. Once you establish where your trees will grow, you can go ahead and make modifications in the design.

You can plant a tree around a play area. The implements found in a play area like sand boxes and playpens can be removed and moved when the tree grows. By then you can decide to trade out the playpens for picnic groves because the kids have all grown up. One good way to get the shaded garden you have always dreamed of is to plant large shade trees a distance from the area in line with the travel of the sun.

You may want to avoid planting large trees around pools or ponds. Keeping a pool clean is difficult and leaves from shade trees may make it even harder to clean up the pond. So, plant a tree seedling a distance that is not too far from the pool area, but far enough for the leaves not to fall directly on the water.