Water features can be a great addition to any landscape design. Whether you’re looking for a peaceful pond or a lively fountain, they can help bring life to your yard. There is quite a large variety of water features, each with differing prices and levels of upkeep, so here are some overviews of popular water features to help you choose the one that is perfect for your yard. (more…)
Fitting all the elements you want to have in a small space without it looking cluttered and overwhelming is a challenge. Here are some tips to make a small yard seem bigger that you can incorporate into your landscape design. Get the landscape you want everything you want with plenty of room to spare this season.
Tips To Make A Small Yard Seem Bigger
1. Have a Plan
Creating a landscape in a small space without planning it out can lead to a cluttered, unattractive yard. Plan out what purpose you want your space to have. Whether it’s relaxing, a play area for your kids, or entertaining, having a plan will help you stay focused and achieve your goal. Then do some research on how you may be able to design your yard to fill that purpose. Make a list of exactly what plants, flowers, furniture or other features you will need and a layout of how it will all fit in your yard.
2. Keep it Organized
If you want to use your yard for multiple purposes, organize your spaces into “rooms”. Having smaller, separate areas with distinct purposes will make you yard look larger than having one giant clump. You can keep your spaces separate with elevation changes, plants, or walled enclosures. For example, elevate a louning/dining area on a deck and frame it with planters. Then have a kids play area down below.
3. Utilize Your Front Yard
You can use your front yard for many of the same purposes that you use a back yard for. If you simply want an area to sit and relax and enjoy the outdoors, a front porch can be perfect. You can design a front garden that contains large hedges that would provide you with the same amount of privacy you would have in the back. You can also add any small water features or flowers you’d have in the back so you don’t miss out on the relaxing experience of sitting out and enjoying your garden. By using the front for this purpose, you still have your entire backyard to use for entertaining, a place for the kids, or anything else you’d want.
4. Don’t Miniaturize
Don’t shrink walkways or stairs in effort of trying to enlarge your space. Doing so will make them look out of scale with your house, and if anything, make your yard look smaller. Keep all of your structures in scale, and try to utilize them in your plan instead of letting them get in your way.
5. Use Color
You can use color in flowers in plants to help make your yard appear larger. Place shorter, brighter plants in the front, they will act at the focal point. Then have taller less interesting plants behind, seeming as if they are receding into the distance and giving your yard a larger appearance. You can also use the neighbor’s plants. Plant shrubs on the border of your garden that are similar to those in your neighbor’s yard, it will seem as if your neighbor’s yard is simply and extension of your own.
If you follow these tips to make a small yard seem bigger, you will have no problem transforming your landscape this season. There are plenty of elements you can include in your design. Call Dean Bjorkstrand and have his team come out and assist you with your design this season. We will work with you from start to finish to ensure you have the landscape you always wanted. Call today at 612-861-3919.
It seems like it just stopped snowing, but somehow the scorching hot summer is already upon us. Finally getting your yard green and vibrant is exciting, but keeping it from turning to a brown crisp during the summer is another feat altogether. Help keep your yard green and beat the summer heat with these simple tips.
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Having a beautifully vibrant but low maintenance summer garden sounds too good to be true, right? Not if you know which plants to use. It’s possible to have it all- a garden with beautiful, durable flowers that last nearly all summer and add color from the entire spectrum. Here are 5 plants you want in your garden this summer to help it last all season long.
5 Plants You Want In Your Garden This Summer
Coneflowers
The coneflower is the ideal flower. They resemble daisies and come in a variety of colors, including yellow, white, pink and purple. Coneflowers are large (can grow up to 3 ft), sturdy, and relatively drought resistant, making them very easy to care for. As an added bonus, they have a lovely fragrance and are known for attracting birds and butterflies. They grow best in zones 3-9 and love lots of sun.
Dahlia
Dahlia come in many colors and sizes. Bush and bedding dahlias can range from 1-7 ft and come with many large, deep green leaves. Modern dahlias have strong stems and long lasting blooms that will stay sturdy throughout the summer. They can grow in zones 1-24, require full to partial sun, and only moderate watering.
Aster
Asters are sturdy, bright little flowers that can often be counted on when little else is blooming in your garden. They come in blue, white, or pink and have starry flower heads that resemble sunflowers. Because they are so colorful and fragrant they often attract birds, bees and butterflies. Asters are very easy to grow, and often bloom in late summer and fall, although there are some breeds that begin to flower in May and June.
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemums are the second most popular flowers in the word, behind only the rose. Flowers come in a very large variety and can range from small to large, or be button shaped or daisy like. They also come in multiple colors like yellow, white, purple or red. Although chrysanthemums aren’t season specific, vivid colors, long flowering period, and love of the sun make them perfect for summer.
Iris
The word “Iris” means rainbow, so naturally the Iris come in many different colors, like blue, purple, white, yellow, pink, orange and even black. Irises can grow in all sorts of habitats, and are very hardy, making them one of the most loved garden plants.
Creating a landscape for wildlife
The great outdoors can be enhanced by getting to interact with some of your local wildlife. Although you do not want wild animals living in your home, it is possible to get some local fauna to your living space with effective landscaping. There are four elements animals need to survive, and therefore four things you must provide in order to attract wildlife to your backyard or garden:
When preparing to sell your home, it’s wise to invest in proper landscaping to enable you to see the effects of landscaping on home value. It forms one of the strategies home sellers employ in efforts to make the sale more profitable in the long run. Investing in good landscaping could increase the value of a home by almost 14% due to a number of reasons outlined below:
Curb Appeal
A property that has been landscaped in a professional manner creates a huge appeal to it and also gives it a value and place sense. This creates a good first impression to potential customers and it could make them opt for the specific property. Compared to the first impressions created by a new bathroom fitting or kitchen, landscaping alone is able to increase the home value by approximately 20%. Landscaping lifts the home beyond the selling standards as the buyers would be attracted to such property due to the low maintenance costs they would incur once they acquire the property.
Additional Space
Over the years people have embraced outdoor living. Professional landscapers have taken this into consideration and included it in their landscaping process, thereby creating an additional space to the home. They are able to add a deck to the home which would mean some more additional outdoor space for the home owner. This extra space could be used for entertaining guests when the weather is favorable.
Highlighting Home Features
Different home features like carpeting attract customers on their own. If you can make these features stand out, the house will sell at a much faster rate.
When it comes to the outdoors, if the house has a patio or a walkway, you could carry out some strategic landscaping to ensure that they stand out. If it is possible to place flowers that are bright and colorful along the walkway, then it would make the yard look inviting and attractive to the eye. This would raise the curiosity level of customers thus making them pay extra attention to the property. If there is grass on the property then one would need to ensure that it’s quality and the general health is kept at an optimal condition.
Spill-Over Effect
A spill-over effect causes your property to be financially viable due to the increased value. It occurs when the people become the main concern for the budget cost. In order to achieve this feat, you must improve the status and figure of your home in its neighborhood. This would make the neighbors develop a good impression of the home and may also encourage them to develop their own landscapes. This would in turn raise the value of homes in that particular neighborhood, as well as make neighbors give a positive referral to potential customers who might seek the opinion of the neighbors concerning the house.
Landscaping design done in a particularly sophisticated way could make the buyers get attracted to the property instantly and thereby start a bidding battle that would consequently raise the value of your home. It is a guaranteed form of getting your investments back in huge profits when you make the home sale. All the factors above prove the positive effects of having landscaping done on your home prior to a sale.
The climate in the Twin Cities makes it a difficult place to have a garden, but it’s certainly not impossible. While we may not be able to have the same selection of flowers that warmer climates allow, there are plants that we can grow that look beautiful topped with snow and even better in the summer. (more…)