How To Have An Aesthetically Pleasing Yard

Our landscaping and outdoor space is the first thing our guests or anyone in our neighbourhood see when they drive up to, or past, our home. Many homeowners spend time perfecting a theme for the inside of their home, but are lacking a real aesthetic for their outdoors and curb appeal. This can be due to being on a limited budget, not having the time to maintain their landscape, feeling overwhelmed with design options for their outdoor living space, or not being able to come up with any landscaping ideas.

What Does Having An Aesthetic Landscape Mean?

An aesthetic landscape is an outdoor space, whether it be your front, side or back yard, that is pleasing to the eye, and evokes a feeling of joy when looking at your landscape. Most yards that are aesthetically pleasing have had some type of landscape design done to them. This could be through water features, hardscape elements, added walkways or installing a fire pit. 

How To Get an Aesthetically Pleasing Yard

The first step of having a beautiful yard is to have a landscape design and theme. This is easily done through landscape design . Make sure that your theme matches the architecture of your home and the region where you live.  If you live in a place that sees a lot of rain for example, your landscape design theme should be more woodsy, then doing a dessert theme with succulents, or palm trees.

Some Landscape Design Themes To Consider

Garden

Think lots of flowers and water fountains, and different colors to surrounding areas.

Formal

Boxwoods, neatly trimmed hedges, and a simple garden with a patio for entertaining.

Zen

Stone elements, bamboo plants, and winding paths.

Woodsy

Native planting, water fall, shade-loving flowers, and lots of greenery.  

When choosing your theme, think about how practical it is going to be for you and your family, and how much maintenance and time is going to be involved in taking care of your space.

If young children or pets are going to use the yard, make sure to select flowers and plants that are non-toxic. If your family likes to run around and play games in your yard, you may need more space, than having tons of gardens, shrubs and trees in the area.

Picking Out Plants

Plants and flowers are an easy way to up the aesthetics of your yard, and is a fun aspect of designing your outdoor living space. Things to consider when finding plants and flowers are

• You can do soil testing to see which plants will survive and thrive in your outdoor space.
• Be sure to know what locations of your yard have direct sunlight, shade or partial shade.
• Do you need drought- intolerant plants? (Probably not if you are from the Fraser Valley.)

Create A Flowing Landscape

When choosing softscape for your outdoor living space, creating a cohesive garden and a focal point for your landscape will make it that much more appealing.

 Consider the size, height and texture of plant groupings, and repeat larger groupings of plants for a lush look. Choose different sizes, colors and textures of plants, and different plants that can thrive in different weather conditions. This way your landscape will always have flowers and plants to look at, no matter what time of the year it is.

Focal points are a great way to spruce up your yards aesthetic and can be anything from a pond, retaining wall, or roof structure, to a brightly colored door, or colored flowers.

To get an aesthetically pleasing outdoor living space start with what you are looking to achieve from your space, come up with a theme, and get to planning!