Some people are afraid of great garden design. They fear maintenance will be too much. They might say that they have a “black thumb” – their plants always die. The truth is you don’t have to be a garden design expert. You just have to know one to give your garden a cool design.
A good landscape designer will start the conversation with, “What do you have in mind?” This is a dreaded question for most homeowners. Now what? Hopefully, by then you will have had the chance to watch the many truly inspiring landscape design videos on SHG Living. The designers on several of the ChibiMoku series present many super cool designs with interesting garden layouts and, more importantly, many viewpoints on how to go about the right design for you.
Take in the many entertaining, fun, and inspiring landscape design videos on Smart Healthy Green Living and you will have already learned about the many ways of thinking about your next garden design. You will be ready to answer the dreaded question of what is your vision for your garden, your back, and/or front yards. You will have seen the many approaches and design solutions – everything from vertical wall gardens to cool designs that incorporate play zones, fire pit areas to chill out around at night, chip ranges, poolscapes, backyard decks, terraces, and more.
Garden Design Creates Home Value
The right design envelopes and frames your house and also expands your life into your outdoor spaces. The land is already there – use it. You and your garden designer just have to make it come to life with some pretty cool designs. Good design will typically frame the house, settling your house more naturally into the landscape. Garden designers like to use the term “outside rooms” a lot these days. It’s so true. Why not extend your house by adding outside spaces or “rooms.” It’s like adding an addition to your home. After you watch SHG Living’s inspirations garden shows, check out the Plan-A-Garden tool from Better Homes & Gardens and get going on designing your great garden.
In the words of one garden designer in Chibi Moku’s interviews:
“…everyone needs to go outside to breathe outside air… this is how we rejuvenate and feel good about our world and ourselves..”
In other words, a garden design that gives you the right type of space can give you that magic exhale at the end of a long day. You suddenly feel settled and way more relaxed. The industry term for this is “biophilic design” or the practice of connecting people to natural environments through the use of direct nature, a.k.a plants. Connecting to Mother Earth grounds us, humans. All of that without even having to go on a camping trip? It can happen all right there, every day on your very own property via the right design. This is why good design enhances the value of life and the value of your property.
Photo by Josh Wilburne on Unsplash
Does it require a large property?
Large or small – size doesn’t matter. In fact, the smaller the property the better the garden design has to be. Deep properties can also be challenging. Small or long properties are actually bigger design challenges. There are so many creative design solutions. Many involve the various go-vertical type of approaches. Find the right garden designer to turn your small or long garden into your private sanctuary.
Selecting the right garden designer
Good garden designers are an interesting cross of architects and horticulturists. Find one who really knows about the growing, watering, light needs of shrubs, trees, and plants. Most garden designers today have websites with extensive portfolio galleries. This will already show you their styles and approaches. When you watch the garden designers on the ChibiMoku documentary series you will quickly discover what facet of garden design they are most excited about. The ones that resonate with you should be on your shortlist.
Don’t be afraid to ask them what their own properties and their own gardens look like. Designers who love what they do will tell you more than you ever want to know. While one garden designer on SHGLiving’s Chibi Moku series relishes the transformation of a “sterile urban concrete jungle into vertical green walls”, another talks about how plants can stimulate our five senses with their different foliage, smells, and even sounds through the seasons. She thinks about the sounds from rushing grasses or perhaps tenders fire bush branches dancing in the wind, for example. In other words, these are very different approaches to garden design.
Mosquito Control from Garden Design?
From another garden designer comes a different dimension that will likely not have occurred to you. Using plants, carnivorous plants to be exact, to control bugs on and around your back terrace or porch. Many carnivorous plants have spectacular-looking flowers. So perhaps you may even get away from smelling citronella bug sprays around the seating areas in your backyard – all from no other than great garden design.
