Get Into the New Year with Landscape Garden Designs

With more and more UK residents staying put in the same property for longer – on average, a family lives in one house for over 20 years now – the emphasis on maintaining and doing up a property has changed from saleability to liveability. And top of the list are landscape garden designs.

That is not to say, of course, that a landscape design solution will not add value to your home. On the contrary, it is likely to add quite a lot of value to the home. People are finding that their new liveability upgrades are actually putting a few thousand on the resale value of a house anyway – because any upgrade means that all the stuff laid in (paving slabs, sheds, fences and so on) are much newer and therefore more likely to last for a long time.  Landscaping also adds a uniqueness and beauty to the outside parts of a home that may otherwise not have been apparent. And uniqueness, it is becoming clear, does make people interested in a house.

The primary function of landscape garden designs, though, is to make your own outside area or space look and feel personal to you. That is why there has been an upsurge in it since the UK housing market stopped moving. People had been so trained in to the idea that making a home original and unique to themselves was property ladder death wish, that they stopped doing it. It is only now, in the last three years, that the idea of doing a place up to live in, rather than to sell, has re emerged. And it takes its best expression in the garden.

Landscape garden designs can be absolutely any expression of personality as it is applied to the outdoor parts and areas of a home. A landscape garden design will be composed of two things – soft landscaping and hard landscaping. Soft landscaping is plants, grass and so on – basically anything living, that grows but is placed in a deliberately intended location. Hard landscaping is everything non living, everything that has either been made, placed or manipulated by human hands to achieve a certain setting and a particular feel. The combination of hard and soft landscaping, as planned by the garden designer and the person or persons whose home the garden is attached to, makes the finished landscaped garden.

Landscape garden designs, then, can be as simple or as complex as you want them to be. They can also make best use of available materials and spaces. So a small town garden may actually feel best if most of it is concreted or bricked – with little islands of easy to manage potted trees and plants making a wonderfully urban natural statement. A country garden on the other hand will look better with rolling lawns and bright flower beds.

The New Year is traditionally a time for taking stock and then going off in a new direction. Why not treat your garden to a bit of an annual makeover this time around as well?