Impress With These Backyard Garden Designs
Your backyard can be whatever you want it to be. It could be your hangout place for family and friends or your fortress of solitude. It can be a canvas to help color your green thumb, or it could be a love letter to rustic outdoor art and artifacts. Above all else, it is yours to play with; if you haven’t quite figured out how to engage in this part of your domain, perhaps the following design tips will help kick-start your inspiration.
1. A Simple Raised Garden Bed
If you have a backyard, you may be inspired at one point to grow some fruit or veggies. This could be a slight problem if you aren’t inclined to dig up a hunk of your garden to try your hand at something that you may ultimately decide isn’t your bag.
A raised garden bed will provide you an ideal work-around. These units won’t require you to rip up your garden, nor will they take up a whole lot of space. In fact, they’ll enhance the overall look and feel of your garden, even before the first sign of vegetation start to sprout.
If you give this form of gardening a go and decide it isn’t for you, then you can remove the bed and go about your business. However, this is unlikely to happen, since gardening is such a fun, relaxing hobby.
2. Make the Most Out of Repurposed Materials
One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. This old proverb can be summarily applied to any garden in a massive way. If you have even the smallest of creative streaks within you, any object that may otherwise be destined for discarding can have a second life as an artistic statement in your garden.
Even something as mundane as a tire or a plastic soda bottle can be reshaped into something beautiful and artistic that can fit right in with whatever garden aesthetic you’re trying to create. The only thing stopping you from diving into this unique form of design is your own imaginative limitations.
3. Wall-Climbing
If you have a small garden or a backyard patio, space may be a bit of a concern. However, a lack of space doesn’t preclude you from creating something beautiful in your backyard. As long as you have a fence or a wall and a climbing plant, you’re golden.
The world of climbing plants are a bit more diverse than your garden variety ivy. They come in a host of colors and leaf shapes, but regardless of their hue or how they form, their presence as they make their way up the wall adds an intriguing measure of depth and character to you backyard – much more depth and character than a plain old wall.
There are two things that you need to do regarding climbing plant to make sure their beauty is fully realized. Firstly, you’ll need to work with the plant to “climb” up your wall or fence properly, or it may not take this trajectory. You can do this by building a trellising system against the wall and weaving the plant through its gaps.
The second thing you need to be mindful of is to limit the color of the climbing plants to one or two shades at the most. Anything more than this will end up looking too busy and will create an inability for the eye to naturally focus on the shape and size of the climbing plant, making it look less impressive than it should.
4. Let There Be Light
It’s easy to enjoy your backyard or patio during the day when the sun is shining. It’s not so easy at night when the sun is down. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, as a good string of patio lights can make it possible to enjoy the outside of your home no matter the time of day.
There are a few ways you can add artificial light to your patio, ranging from the simple and relatively cheap to the more elaborate and expensive. The most cost-effective way to go would be to string some lights across the patio area, along the fence, or even along your patio umbrella. Doing this tends to help your patio emit a casual, if not rustic, vibe.
The more complex, pricier option would be to install light fixtures throughout your patio. This method will incur a great deal of costs that you should prepare for, including wiring your backyard for electricity. The upside to this is, you’ll bring an instant air of refined elegance that allow you to not just keep up with the Joneses, but to blow by them with ease.
5. Add a Splash of Water
Having architectural features in the garden is a tradition in some styles. Take a look at your traditional English garden, and you’ll see faux Gothic ruins, Chinese bridges, purposely distressed statues, and so on. While these elements look great, you find them either space-prohibitive or counterintuitive to your overall design scheme.
A properly sized water feature won’t give you this issue. This charming object is generally designed to seamlessly blend in with any garden, as they are typically designed to at the very least resembled items that you may find either in nature or part of your garden’s overall design scheme, from sleek stones to geometrically-cut granite.
The caveat to these items is to make sure that you have it nearby a power source, as you’ll need some juice to get the device to run properly. It’s also prudent to periodically change the water as to avoid getting the feature bogged down in sludge and muck that may accumulate over time.
This feature, along with the other design elements, are designed to bring character to a lawn, regardless of size or shape. This character may prove to be the prime mover to get you and your family and friends out of the house and out onto the patio or backyard. This can’t be viewed as anything less than cool.
Photo Credit
Photo by Shawn Campbell Licensed Under CC BY 2.0
Photo by JacekAbramowicz Licensed Under CC0
Photo by Wonderlane Licensed Under CC BY 2.0
