Landscape & Garden

Your first consideration when starting a new landscaping project is style. The style of your landscape should match the style of your house, but it's also a reflection on your personality.
This page showcases a variety of developed and distinct landscape styles, so you can see the possibilities for your yard.

Style Options:

Formal Style:
This garden shows the formal style of straight lines and perfect geometrical shapes. Here the plantings seem orderly, not random, and they're closely managed and pruned to maintain the formal effect. View Detail

Informal Style:
The house here has kind of a cozy look to it, and it's enhanced that with an informal style of design. That's where the beds have curving edges rather than straight lines and where the plants seem to be placed almost at random. View Detail

English Garden Style:
Here is a garden planted in the English garden style. It was designed to harmonize with the architecture of the home, and it features mass plantings of shrubs and perennials. View Detail

Formal/Informal Garden Style:
In this garden, the more formal brick walkway leads to a circle of plants in the rear. But the flowers and shrubs are laid out in an English garden style with mass plantings of perennials and annuals and no formal borders. View Detail

Oriental Style:
This garden was just planted in the small backyard of a family's townhouse, and it shows an oriental style in its use of rocks, evergreens and water. A lot of different plants were used to create several perspectives. View Detail

Woodland Style:
This garden is done in a style to blend in with the wooded backyard and the sloping terrain. Even though the waterfall looks natural, it's actually man-made and it operates with re-circulated water. View Detail

Try to imagine how your ideas would blend in with the other yards your neighborhood. There's a certain value in keeping a visual continuity between the houses. In fact, you might want to incorporate some of your neighbors' ideas in your own yard to promote continuity.

Landscape Function

After deciding the style of your landscape, next consider what you want the new landscape to do for your house and yard.

The function of your landscape could be to create new areas for play and leisure, increase privacy, block the sun, wind or street noiseways, or to improve the view of your house.

If you have large windows or french doors, think about how you can improve the views from the inside.

You may also want to improve views from a porch, patio or a deck. Or you can create an outdoor seating area if you don't already have one.