design

Landscaping On A Slope
Circular Driveway

You don’t have to be landscaping on a slope to get some good ideas from this design. Besides addressing a sloped lot, this design is also created for a circular driveway with a xeriscaping planting theme. And even then, some of the ideas here could work in a lot of different design styles.

While this design doesn’t actually show the drop in grade, you will be able to see it in the pictures and video below. The home in this design is on a lot that is sloping from the house to the street as well as from right to left. However, since it’s not a very steep grade, it’s really quite simple how we addressed it.

On a side note here, the backyard to this home is on an extremely steep grade. You may want to take a look at that design as well - Landscaping On A Steep Slope. It’s designed along the same lines as the front but needed different engineering to fix the steep grade. I think it turned out just a touch classier as well.

Desert Landscape Design Idea

This is fairly large front yard. Even though it’s a large yard, we’ve made it seem even larger than it actually is by using a lot of curves. (More on this design below)

Curved elements such as walkways, boundaries, and beds can sometimes give the illusion of extended space in landscaping. The brain and eye can recognize the additional distance traveled from one point to the next. In this case, the curves add expanse as well as taking away from the sharp square corners of the home. Find out more about illusions and small spaces at small gardens.

Before we started, what you see was a large expanse of lawn with a single brick walkway leading from the front gate to front door. It was very dull and lifeless.

The clients main request for her landscaping ideas was less lawn. I knew that I wanted to border the entire yard in bedding but that still seemed a bit uninteresting. My eight year old daughter suggested making the entire border a flagstone walkway. And so we did.

What this did was make this landscape more of a garden while the flagstone added to the Southwest feel of an Arizona landscape. Now you could take a journey around the pathway and enjoy the entire yard.

The lawn was a messy mix of several different grasses. So we removed the entire mess and replaced the new lawn area with Fescue sod.

Front Yard Cul de sac
Landscaping Idea

This front yard is quite large and takes up the entire end of a culdesac. But as you can see, we’ve made great use of the space in an interesting and classy way. More on this design below…

Most cul de sac designs are a lot of fun to create because they’re usually odd shape. If you look closely at the line elements in this one, you should see how simple it is as well. Also, take a look at the shape of the home. It played a big part in why this design took the shape it did. The hard corners of the home are softened by the curves of the yard.

The entire border edging structure around the home is simply two continous lines or curves. That’s it. But what’s different and what gives this front yard landscaping its unique shape is where the two lines meet. Instead of a continual circle flow, we break the flow into two lines.

You can see where I started my first line to the left of the sidewalk near the front door. From there I took the line through the sidewalk and all the way around the front of the home. Instead of continuing around the entire yard, I ended the line in a direct path toward the corner.

From the end of that line I started my next line at a near 45 degree angle and finished the border of the yard. Now, how simple is that? And how cool and unique does that look? You could create this type of junction and shape in almost any area of almost any shape of yard.

Take notice of how the border goes “through” the sidewalk walkway. A lot of times it’s hard to come up with ideas for small isolated areas. This is just one way of making the small lawn area part of the rest of the yard. It joins the lawn and the bed areas together with a continuation as though the line goes through the sidewalk.

Do It Yourself Landscape Ideas:
Mediterranean Garden

This Mediterranean garden design gets its real feel from the plants used. Typically, you can change the feel of almost any garden by the plants you choose. See: Plants - Planting Ideas

The home here is of Spanish Mediterranean design. This landscaping needed something different so I got out my trusty plant encyclopedia and did a little studying. In doing so I discovered a whole new group of plants that I didn’t even know would do well in our climate.

The yard we started with here is lower than the home and the street. The street and home are level so we have a yard that slopes into a valley and collects water. We created a retaining wall on both ends of the yard to create two level areas and do away with the slope. Then we gave the landscape a slight grade from one end of the design to the other for the water to drain away.

The natural stone walkway in the center is a necessity. It makes the home more inviting and welcomes guests to the front door. It also gives more parking space by allowing walking access from the street.

The design of the lawn area flows in curves that meet as though there is no walkway dividing the two areas. This helps create unity and continuity in landscaping ideas where a sidewalk separates a yard.

Mediterranean Landscaping
A Sloped Yard

This Mediterranean design idea uses some real simple methods and principles to get its successful combination of different elements. While the design does address and provide solutions for some problem areas, a lot of it is created to add curb appeal and to simply look cool. More on this design below…

The retaining walls in this design are created to soften a mild slope in the yard. While the slope wasn’t necessarily bad enough to demand a retaining wall, the walls also add more design elements to work with.

Creating a second level most always helps add interest to any landscaping ideas or yard. In this case we were able to create terraces and level out the slight slope. This will actually help with run off and saturation problems in the lawn area when the automatic sprinkler system runs.

Another design element that the retaining wall added to the landscaping is that we used the same stucco surface as the rest of the home. This helped make the landscaping a perfect and natural looking extension of the home.

Besides the design style of the home itself, the other main design element responsible for the Mediterranean look is of course, the plant selection. This is true with a lot of gardens. Change the palm trees in this design to some varieties of Desert landscaping plants and Cactus, and you would have a beautiful Southwest Landscaping or Xeriscaping design.

The rest of the plants in this design are a simple selection of Lavenders, Paprika Yarrow, Feather Reed Grass, Verbena, and Dwarf Hawthorns. Also on the other side of the driveway there is a cut out with another Palm and plantings. This helped create balance to an otherwise massive and blank slab of concrete.

The lawn and bedding areas are edged with 4 inch wide pound in metal landscape edging. This type of edging will work fine in this project because we’re using Fescue lawn sod which is a non agressive lawn type that doesn’t invade flower beds. More agressive lawn grasses such as Bermuda would require deeper edging to keep the lawn in its place.

The lawn area is minimal which is mainly due to the clients request. Again, it is a hybrid Fescue sod which is a wonderful lawn grass that keeps most of its color through the Winter in this area of zone 7. And of course, the lawn area and all planting areas have an automatic sprinkler system for convenience and efficient watering.

The rock areas cover quite a bit of space which is a contributing reason to two colors of groundcover rock. In areas this large or larger, a second type of groundcover may just be the answer to a need for another design element.

The all information have been taken from http://www.the-landscape-design-site.com