Improve Your Garden With Soft Landscaping
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- Administrator
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- Landscaping
- Posted date:
- 26-04-2022
Are you looking for ideas to improve your garden with soft landscaping? This guide offers tips and advice for using soft landscaping in your garden.
Before answering the question of what soft garden landscaping is and how it can improve your garden, let's clear up what soft landscaping means.
Soft landscaping is the act of adding plants into your garden to soften up the hard landscaping that you may have. It is a way of designing the elements of the garden that do not need construction. It adds the final touches to your space and improves the aesthetic and eco-friendly aspects of your garden.
These final touches take away the sharp edges of hard landscaping and blend them into a background of beautiful plants. You can separate specific areas of your garden, create boundaries, and make it a relaxing and vibrant space perfect for you and your family to spend time in.
You may want to visit some garden centres and public gardens for inspiration to get you going. You can also cut out some magazines to create a plan or use Pinterest to make a mood board. Look below for our suggestions for how to make the most of soft landscaping.
Use Of Soft Landscaping in Types of Gardens
If you are looking to create beautiful gardens that are also low maintenance, you will need to choose the right plants that do not need a lot of supervision. With the right plants and low-level lighting, you could add value to the property.
Your garden will remain manageable for a long time if you replace the grass with an automated irrigation system or gravel instead.
Whether you want your front garden to be a car park or an introduction to your back garden, soft landscaping can create a noise barrier, a privacy screen, or shelter for local wildlife if that's your focus.
For example, a well-positioned hedge can be the perfect fence to hide the front of your house if you don't want to see every car that passes the road while you're watching TV.
Many back gardens are the pride and joy of a homeowner. You could make your garden a space you can be proud of by planning first and planting later. If you have any beautiful views of hills, woods, or fields, you can build a garden that enhances them by placing taller and bigger plants along the sides of your garden.
You could also build a sensory garden with aromatic plants such as lavender, roses, lilac, sweet pea, and honeysuckle. You could plan your main lawn to be a space of leisure, while the sides could double as a growing garden where you accommodate vegetables, fruits, and culinary herbs.
In a rock garden, you can easily grow coriander, sage, basil, mint, and rosemary.
If you want to create a water garden, A well-maintained pond can be an asset to the local wildlife.
You will be creating a focal point of visual entertainment for the whole family, with dragonflies, frogs, birds, insects, and newts.
A pond can house koi or reflect the colourful flowers and bushes around it for you to enjoy from your living room window.
A country garden requires plants that blend in with the surrounding character of the countryside. These do not need to be high maintenance, and you can work with professional gardeners or landscapers to find that balance between manageability and aesthetics.
You could create biodiverse, flowering roofs from unsightly roofs using wildflower seeds, making use of the space above your property.
Urban gardens can work as spaces for you to unwind after work. If you apply clever landscaping by changing the size and style, a small garden could provide a hangout for friends and family or screen you from the neighbours.
A perfect balance of soft and hard landscaping can make even a small garden have multiple zones to it. Fencing is not the only way to divide a space. You can also use well-placed paths, plants, benches, and grass to dictate what space to stand in, sit on, and walk through.
Planning soft scaping
When it comes to planning soft scaping, it is necessary to prepare your garden first. It is important to consider if you need to remove any rubbish, level any ground, tend to overgrowth and weeds, deal with trees and shrubbery, or remove or repair any structures before placing turf or planting flowers.
Judging the acidity of the soil your garden has will help when deciding what trees, bushes, or flowers to plant. You can purchase pH test soil kits from most garden centres. Certain species of plants thrive better in acidic or alkaline soils, so be sure to keep this in mind when buying new plants.
You should also check the consistency of the soil to determine how much drainage your garden allows. After finding out whether the soil is part of the following soil groups: clay, chalky, loamy, peaty, sandy, or silty, you will be able to take better care of them.
Placing turf in your garden can be beneficial if you want to create a space for pets and kids to run around and play.
What's more, turf removes pollutants and cleans the air you breathe. You must ensure that you properly prepare your garden before turfing.
Make sure that your soil is well aerated so that the turf can absorb nutrients and water easier. It also decreases the probability of getting diseased.
If you want to fit loads of plants together but are doubting if you have the space to do it, consider planting flowers in a circular shape.
Alternatively, if you desire a basic design for your garden, you could establish flower beds lining the boundaries of your garden so that you have a surrounding area of colour.
It is useful to note which direction your garden faces, as east and west-facing gardens will accommodate most plants.
By mixing manmade and natural features, you can create a practical or leisurely garden. You could place bunches of flowers around your decking or small patches of grass between paths to create striking blank spaces or effective spots of colour.
Hard and soft landscaping working together
A balanced garden combines hard and soft landscaping features. Below are a few examples that show this combination done well.
Typically, a Zen garden is a Japanese-inspired rock garden. They offer a place of meditation in which you can ground yourself. Within these gardens, there is a necessary balance between manmade and natural elements to achieve tranquillity.
They have a specific arrangement of gravel, rocks, or sand that is raked to create a liquid ripple effect. Zen gardens are drier and less floral than most Western-style gardens, often including water features and well-trimmed shrubbery.
You may want to add pebbles to your garden design. While they can provide an aesthetic boost to your garden, they can also maintain the moisture of the soil around your flowers by slowing down the erosion of soil caused by excessive watering.
Pebbles could be used to create paths, pebble mats to remove mud from your boots before entering the house, or to outline flower patches and beds.
Bringing hard and soft landscaping together with pebbles helps your garden feel safe and connected.
Fencing has many uses:
Fencing comes in many forms, such as hedges, wooden fencing, and trellis.
You could also use plant wall creepers such as Honeysuckle, Pyracantha, and Wisteria to add spots of colour to walls, trees, and fencing.
Growing these plants softens the sharp edges of hard landscaping.
Applying decking and patios to your garden can add value to your property. Patios are weatherproof areas that require little maintenance if you get them made of durable materials like brick and granite.
If you are a fan of fire pits or hanging out at night to gaze at the stars, then having a patio would be highly beneficial. Having a deck lets, you have a homely space you can sit in with friends and family.
Additionally, you can embrace outdoor activities such as yoga, exercise, and DIY projects that would otherwise make a mess indoors.
Potted plants and bird feeders can be safely placed on decks to make use of your garden space. Not only does placing plants outside create more space in your home, but if you position them at different levels, you can achieve an admirable garden.
Driveways are a simple way of making a property more desirable, as well as inflating the value of the property by a certain percentage.
If you ensure the driveway is made of a durable material like asphalt, it will last longer and increase the property's appeal.
Furthermore, if you create a dedicated parking space in your garden, so too will your property's value go up.
This is an excellent investment idea if you are thinking about selling your home afterwards.
With the right plants, flower borders can make a garden bloom all year round and provide a gorgeous accompaniment to garden paths, arches, and water features.
When planning a flower border, you will need to keep in mind any fencing that could interfere with the amount of sunlight your plants receive..
You will need to keep sun-loving plants out of the shadows where they would not thrive. If you want to create borders with straight edges, we recommend using a string line or measuring tape to outline the border. Alternatively, if you wanted to create the illusion that your garden has more space than it does, you can create curved edges using a hosepipe
Are you looking for landscapers in Maidstone and Kent? We recommend visiting the following pages on our landscaping services website: