Landscaping not only boosts your home’s external aesthetic appeal but can also help you create a functional space perfect for your family and add value to your property. A study by AXA found that effective and well-designed landscaping can add up to 20% of the value of your property.
However, the true value of landscaping goes beyond financial gain. It’s about enriching your life and creating a space for your family to enjoy. It’s about making the most of your investment in a way that resonates with you personally.
But what should you consider when designing your new outdoor space to maximise its space and potential?
Flow
The flow of the space in relation to your property is vital. You need to look at how you access the garden, entry and exit points, and how you use them and move around. This means addressing what is best placed closer to the house, what would benefit from being in far parts of the garden away from the building, and what space you need to navigate around certain features you might want, i.e., dedicated play or dining areas.
Connecting Spaces
Professional landscapers like CK Landscapes MK can guide you in connecting different areas of your garden. Their expertise can ensure that your garden feels like a cohesive whole, not just a collection of disjointed areas.
Connecting spaces could be as simple as adding pathways that join each section. It can be adding plats or borders to create a visual line that pulls everything together, or it can be using ornaments dotted around that allow you to follow a pathway of sorts from one space to another. You should also use materials and design elements that complement each other so that despite each section being separate, they’re also joined aesthetically.
Users
Who will use the garden should influence the design and features you choose to include. While it might seem natural to incorporate aspects of the garden for the entire family, don’t forget that your needs change over time as children grow and you evolve as a family. So, while you need to accommodate who you are now, you need to include who you might be in the future, i.e., the transition of children from babies to toddlers to teens, etc. This builds flexibility and longevity to your design to encapsulate users of all ages who will be in the space on a regular basis.
Add Structure
Your garden design needs to have structure, too, and this can be done by adding actual structures in the space. From gazebos over dining or hardscaped spaces to canopies over kids’ play areas or arches over pathways using structures to create structure and definition in the space.
The key is to define spaces and create visual appeal that gently draws attention and identifies what is going on; this structure can help you to keep the design neat and tidy and contained to where it needs to be.
