After finishing the construction of your custom home, you must start working on the yard, as all you have around the house at this point is a rough construction site just waiting to be transformed into something beautiful by designing your landscape. After you’ve completed your home, take comprehensive photos of its exterior and its surroundings. These photos will be invaluable tools as you purchase plant materials or talk with landscape designers.
The landscape plan you or a professional create offers a blueprint for your landscape’s finished product. But keep in mind that you don’t need to complete everything the plan specifies immediately.
Hiring a Professional for Designing Your Landscape
If you decide to use a landscape designer, you need to figure out which one can help save your home from that just-built look, instead making it look like your house and grounds landed on the earth fully matured. You may hire a landscape architect, bound by the strictest licensing requirements, or hire a landscape designer, who usually has a background in horticulture, but no specific training is required to assume the title of landscape designer. When selecting a landscape designer or architect, take the extra time to do some research. Ask for at least three references and talk with previous clients to see if they’re satisfied with the work before making any decisions.
In addition to landscape architects and designers, you can call on other professionals for help, including nurserymen or growers. These helpful folks who staff nurseries or garden centers offer great experience with and knowledge of plants. Also, the contractors who do landscape work may be licensed like other home-improvement contractors, or not, depending on your local restrictions.
The detail in your landscape plan varies based upon the designer. Some designers may refer to other drawings in your original working drawings to reference items such as utility placement. This plan will be the canvas for you or your landscape designer to paint your new home’s landscape. Save it, even after work on the landscaping is done. In years to come, the plan can be very helpful, assisting you to find the location of buried utilities, for example.
Before you map out your new home’s landscape or meet with a professional who can help you, make a list of your wants and needs for your outdoor spaces. When designing your yard, look in home catalogs or even shop the aisles of discount stores for ideas to find all the accessories of indoor living, moved outdoors.
Another factor to consider in planning your landscape is how the location affects your needs for privacy or open space. Your lot’s size will obviously have a major effect on these needs. An urban townhouse owner, for example, may long for privacy from close neighbors, while a rural homeowner with a view of the mountains may want a greater degree of openness.
Your landscape designer needs to understand your area’s general climate as well your site’s specific microclimate. Temperature ranges, levels of annual precipitation, and the paths of prevailing winds are among the factors that dictate what types of plants and trees will thrive on your lot and those that won’t.
The designer takes your ideas for your landscape and, with the help of her knowledge and experience, creates a landscape design on paper for you to review. Take the time to look over this plan carefully, asking questions about anything you don’t understand. If you don’t like certain elements, or some elements don’t seem to mesh with your needs, tell your designer. Together, you can come up with a plan that’s perfect for you in designing your landscape.