A little of this... A little of that.

If you are anything like the average homeowner, you don’t have the time or financial resources to work with a landscape designer coming up with landscape design ideas.  Chances are, you have other more pressing obligations in your life than to spend all of your time coming up with the perfect yard design.  Still, you have a yard that you know has the potential to be something amazing, but you just don’t know where to begin.

Landscape Design Ideas Are All Around You

I’m sure you’ve already seen landscape designs that have made you say, “Wow!  I wish my yard looked like that!”  We see landscape designs everyday in our neighborhoods, on our way to work, at our offices, at the park, or just about anywhere else we go when we’re outside.  There is a limitless supply of landscape design ideas all around us.  Keep your eyes open!

You may have driven past a neighbor’s yard 200 times in the last year, but start looking closer.  Really look at the landscaping.  You will probably find that you form an opinion about a landscape design almost instantaneously.  We make immediate judgement calls all the time in our lives.  Landscapes are no different.  When we see a landscape that is pleasing to us, we know it immediately; when  we see a yard that is trashed, we wonder what the homeowner was thinking.  The key here is to identify those moment, the good and bad ones, and go a step deeper to draw out some landscape design ideas that you can apply to our own yard.

Ask yourself some questions when you see a yard that looks great.  What do you like about the design the most?  Is it the color scheme or the plantings in the gardens?  Is it the layout of the garden beds?  Are there any particular elements of the landscape’s design that you really like such as the garden path, trellis, or edging?  Would it be at all practical to apply any of these elements to your yard?

Be sure to keep a camera with you.  Take pictures of the yards or elements that you really like and would like to use as an inspiration in your own yard’s landscape.  Design ideas area only useful if you can remember them or accurately visualize (and recall) the design.  Setup a folder on your computer and save the photos there.  Give your landscape photos file names that will help you recall what inspired you to take the photo in the first place.  Try to keep your landscape design ideas organized so you can reference them easily once you begin work on your yard’s design.

Other Sources for Landscape Design Ideas

There are thousands of great landscape design books and magazines out there.  Whenever I am looking to improve on my yard’s landscape design, I’ll start flipping through landscaping and gardening books and magazines looking for design elements that I like.  I rarely purchase any of these resources; your local library is by far the best and most economical option when looking to these resources for landscape design ideas.  Why buy these resources when you will probably only use them a few times.  I would only purchase a landscape design book that you find really useful and know that you will reference often.

The internet is another great resource to use when looking for landscape design ideas.  There are so many online landscaping resources that are of value, that I plan to have dedicate an entire post to them in the future (there really are too many to list here).  I love using the internet to get my design ideas because I can do it from the comfort of my own home.  It’s usually about mid-winter when I really start to get the itch to make plans for my yard that I’ll work on in the coming spring; the last thing I want to do on a cold, snowy day is go outside (or to the library) to find landscaping ideas.

Modern technology has given us some great tools to use to generate landscape design ideas.  There are many low-cost landscape design programs and software on the market today.  Many of these programs require only a basic knowledge of computers to use.  Using landscape design software is a great way to generate a visual representation of the ideas you have in your head.  Many programs will allow you to import a photo of your yard, on which you can place various photo-quality landscape elements such as plants, trees, fences, arbors, and more.  Having the ability to see your design ideas prior to doing any work will save you time and money.

Inspire Your Own Landscape Design

Landscape design ideas can come from you.  Thing about what really inspires you.  What hobbies or interests do you have?  Can you incorporate any aspects of these hobbies or interests into your landscape?  There are no limitations, other than your imagination (and perhaps your pocketbook) when it comes to landscape design.  Don’t think that just because your idea is impractical that it cannot work.  Be creative about it.  Your yard should make you happy first and foremost.

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