Create A Home Away From Home

Ways To Make Your Yard a Place to Enjoy

The word “staycation” crept into our vocabulary over the past couple of years when people opted to stay home rather than travel for vacation. Now the word is associated with making your home a destination of comfort, a place you’ll want to spend your free time with luxuries that make you feel like you’re at your home away from home. An easy way to expand your living space and create an outdoor oasis is to renew and regenerate or expand your landscaping. We have assembled a number of possibilities that can make your yard a place for relaxing and vacationing at a variety of budgets. Whether these thoughts are incorporated as a single project or combined to create a totally new look, our ideas will make your yard feel more inviting.

An easy way to create a new look for your yard is with a new patio that’s designed to fit your lifestyle. Patios can make a dramatic change to the appearance and usefulness of your yard. They can range from simple concrete to many types and styles of brick pavers, and finally natural stone. There are many choices of material that will match your home, needs and budget. Adding a new set of outdoor patio furniture will allow you to enjoy a vacation without ever leaving home. Patio furniture has progressed in recent years from the simple lawn furniture to more elegant and comfortable pieces that make your own back yard a paradise. Choosing the right patio furniture will give your patio a homey feeling and can allow for plenty of seating for family and friends.

A complement to any patio is enhancing the landscaping around your property.  Adding the beauty of new trees, shrubs and perennials will make your yard a place to enjoy in every season. Selecting and placing the perfect plants may take some work, but it is the most budget-pleasing way to make a large impact to your yard while creating an inviting feeling of pleasure and satisfaction. A well-landscaped yard can produce privacy, aesthetic beauty and year-round color and interest.

Enhancing that outdoor living space with a fire pit, fireplace or even an outdoor kitchen would further add to the usefulness, enjoyment and attraction to your outdoor living space. A fire pit can make your setting a warm, cozy location to enjoy the evening without the chill of the night. It can be built into a new or existing brick patio or be freestanding. The varied selections of fire pits make them the perfect addition to any backyard.  

 More formal than a fire pit, fireplaces create a beautiful focal point. Like fire pits, fireplaces create an immediate gathering place for family and friends. Fireplaces and pits can make any outdoor living space more inviting by adding light, sound, smell and heat, and will extend the use of your backyard well into the spring and fall seasons. 

An outdoor kitchen is another possibility for expanding your outdoor living area.  Like fireplaces and fire pits, outdoor kitchens come in many styles and designs.  A simple grill surround distinguishes the kitchen area and allows for additional shelf space while barbequing, or perhaps the master of the house may want to create a cooking environment with all the amenities of the companion indoor kitchen, including a built-in grill, refrigerator, sink and other storage areas. The possibilities are truly endless and should be planned for with your lifestyle in mind. 

Low-voltage landscape lighting is another way to add four seasons of beauty to your yard. Low-voltage lighting is safe, inexpensive to operate and will accent your night time hours of entertaining and relaxation. Well-placed lighting will bring out the beauty and textures of your landscaping and draw attention to focal points of interest, and create an individual mood that fits your style for evening entertaining. Outdoor lighting also makes spaces like a patio or outdoor kitchen more usable at night by adding enough light in which to dine and socialize. Safety and security issues can also be addressed with lighting. A function of nighttime lighting is to illuminate potentially hazardous areas such as steps and abrupt changes in path directions or elevation. Even though you know your property well, your guest may not. Lighting also provides an element of security; it is a proven fact that a well-lit home will deter home intrusion. 

Other ways to enhance your yard are with water features. Popular water features include ponds, waterfalls, fountains, and bubbling rocks. Water features can be made to be a focal point or just an accent to any yard. Hobbyists can enjoy a year-round fish pond with waterfalls, accented with rock gardens and lighting. Water features add beauty and soothing sounds that are sure to create a relaxing calm to your yard. Simpler features such as a pondless waterfall or bubbling rock are a low maintenance way to add water, sound and points of interest to your yard.

Finally, pergolas and arbors are a wonderful way to enhance an area of your yard and can provide beauty, shade and a centerpiece to a backyard design. Many arbors are used as an entry to an outdoor room, a transition from one area to another or if you have a large yard with lots of trees and paths, an arbor would make a great entrance. An arbor can also be used as a destination point, built with a sitting area or a swing.  A pergola is a larger version of an arbor, defining a larger area of the yard.  It is a beautiful way to define an outdoor space and adds shade to a patio or sitting area. A pergola can be added to a large deck or patio, next to a swimming pool or even over a hot tub.

There are many ways to enjoy your home’s outdoor living space. Remember to consider your needs, desires and lifestyle when planning any changes. Take into account how the areas will be used both now and in the future, and develop a vision that you can implement and enjoy for many years to come.

Light Up Your Landscape

An under coping light illuminates an address. Deck lighting makes evening entertaining possible.

Low voltage landscape lighting is a safe and energy-efficient way to beautify your garden and increase the time you can enjoy it. With a wide selection of eye-catching fixtures and numerous lighting techniques, the system will add value, safety and security to your home.

Landscape lighting emphasizes your property’s best features, adds mood and extends your outdoor living space well into the evening. A properly lit patio can provide just the right mix of mood and light to entertain guests, or to simply relax with your family. Going beyond your patio and selectively illuminating your garden will enhance your yard and extend the nighttime beauty your landscaping has to offer.

Another advantage of outdoor lighting is safety and security. Defining your walkway or lighting uneven areas, such as natural elevation changes or steps, will help minimize the risk of trips and falls. Illuminating poorly lit areas near back gates, alleys or alcoves will also add a level of security around your home.

Landscape lighting can be as simple as installing lights along a pathway, or as complex as lighting an entire property. Whatever the goal, outdoor lighting has come a long way from the harsh glare of flood lighting. Today’s systems use a transformer to reduce your 120 volt electric house current to a safe, efficient, easy to manage 12-volt system that can easily grow or change along with your desires and your yard’s needs. An advantage of a low voltage system is that it can be installed when planting a new garden, or easily added to your current landscaping.

Wall wash lighting increases a garden's evening ambience.

Homeowners can choose among many uniquely designed fixtures for pathway lighting. Accent lights can be used for steps, posts and pillars. More extensive lighting designs can include atmospheric area lighting; moonlighting; downlighting that filter light down from tree branches; backlighting to create silhouettes; wall wash lighting to accent wide areas; spot lighting to accent a particular feature; or water lighting to focus on waterfalls, ponds or fountains.

 A well-designed lighting system heightens curb appeal and distinguishes your property from your neighbors by highlighting a home’s special architectural features and exceptional landscape plant specimens A well planned lighted landscape will provide delightful views of your garden, from your patio, from the street and form the inside of your home, while creating an attractive, safe and secure nighttime environment.

First Impressions Are Important

A Clemson University investigation discovered that landscaping achieves more than a 100% return on investment. This return is of course contingent upon the quality of the work done. Landscapes that are installed competently and professionally distinguish themselves. A well-designed landscape increases in value over time.

‘Landscaping is one of the few improvements that adds more value to real estate property than it costs to install’. (Landscape-America.com)

Landscaping improves that crucial first impression a buyer gets when viewing your home. Creating an attractive, inviting appearance is a great way to reach out to potential buyers.

To enhance curb appeal:

Add a 3” – 4” layer of natural, shredded hardwood bark mulch to define and beautify planting beds, condition soil, minimize weeds and reduce the need for watering. Avoid the bargain cypress mulches readily found at discount stores, which tend to give an unnatural, garish look, or the spray-painted mulches, which are not good for the environment.

Add cheer and color to your home by installing pockets of annual flowers and bulbs to flank front entry walks. Fill urns near the front door with seasonal interest plantings. Tulips and Pansies are reliable choices for spring, Petunias and Begonias are just a few of many summer annuals available, Kale and Mums look great in fall, and evergreen boughs, redtwig dogwood branches, winterberry holly and eucalyptus pods bring much-needed color to the starkness of winter.

Concentrate your efforts in the front of your property. It’s the first impression prospective buyers get. A neglected, unattractive landscape can give the impression the home is also neglected.

Paint with a varied plant palette, using suitably-sized trees and shrubs in excellent condition.  A combination of evergreens and flowering plants give a dynamic look in all seasons. Using one or two of the same kind of plants won’t do much to bring attention to your home, and using landscape plants that are too small in relation to the scale of the house tend to emphasize a sparseness in your landscaping.

Consider landscape lighting to accentuate your home’s architecture, to direct views and illuminate walkways. Professionally installed landscape lighting brings attention to the best parts of your home at night and accentuates your garden in the evening hours.

Planning to sell your house this year? Landscaping is a practical and cost-effective way to prepare for the prime selling season ahead.

A beautiful landscape can express your personality and enhance the architecture of your home. Updating your landscaping is a home improvement that will bring  you joy and increase the value of your home.

Visit our on-line portfolio of landscape photos at naturesperspective.com