Frugal Landscaping Tips You Should Know
Before you start planting and building, sketch your landscape design on paper to avoid wasting money. Knowing and making a list of your needs and wants is a great organizing principle for designing landscape for beginners. Do you want to grow a vegetable garden? Do your kids need a place to play, a pool or plan to have an outdoor kitchen? Does your family want to gather on a patio? Work on these ideas for a start. Think long and hard and do not come to quick conclusions that don’t work in the long term.
Develop a plan slowly enjoying the process
Patience is the key; unless you are strongly devoted to something, about what you like, rely on temporary solutions like growing annuals, mulch, or fast-growing ground covers. If you plant large trees, they may be hard to move, annuals and small perennials can be transplanted if you realize they’re in the wrong spot.
Paying attention to the elements of nature like the sun, wind and rain are of crucial importance in planting and designing your landscape.
Colour combination steals the show
Another great landscaping idea takes into account several elements like color, light, pattern, form, balance, variety, contrast, rhythm and unity. To create contrast and color, plant bluish-gray plants with yellow blooms. Placing identical plants, a common color or shape in different beds creates rhythm across the landscape. Planting a hardwood tree, a flowering crape myrtle, grasses and shrubs create variety.
Focusing to create uniqueness
Work around a focal or a series of focal points. This is an easy principle in designing landscape for beginners. It may be a sculpture, a tree, an exotic plant or a series of shrubs that will stand out and that’s different from the landscape.
Striking the right balance with proportions
The trickiest part of landscape designing is focusing on scale and pacing. Keeping variations in size, shape and color in mind while landscaping with tall plants against a building or behind a flower bed and paths that lead people through space. An oversized deck will swallow a small yard and look absurd, similarly, a large tree or shrub can overpower a landscape and make it dark and gloomy.
Smart budgeting
Budgeting is an important factor while landscaping, so while it may not be possible to hire a landscape architect or designer to develop your project, an hour-long consultation may be worth if it can save you from making costly mistakes later.
Home improvement warehouses offer the lowest prices for common plants like perennials, pavers, containers and hardscaping materials such as lumber. However, for superior selection and quality, you need to look at more specialized sources. For example, when installing a pond, it may be worth to pay more to a source that specializes in water gardens, if the staff can help you choose and install equipment. Specialty nurseries may offer plants at higher prices but also offer a money back guarantee on shrubs, trees, and bedding plants.
To save valuable money, time your purchases. By buying plants late in the season and lumber during winter months may be cheaper. Buying a newly released variety when demand is high and supply low may be expensive, as production catches up, prices will fall.
Neighbors can be really helpful in cutting costs as you can share the rental fee for tillers, chippers or other heavy equipment by taking turns and save.
