Driveway Landscape Designs

What is driveway landscape design?
Driveway landscaping can consist of both hardscape and softscape. Hardscape options include walls and fences, while your softscape driveway landscaping can consist of flower beds, ground covers, trees or shrubs.

What is the best style of driveway landscape design?
That depends on your home and your yard. The direction and shape of the driveway will always draw the eye toward other landscape elements of interest. If the home is characterized by a very orderly and symmetrical architecture, a straight driveway that runs to a side motorcourt and entry garden can lend itself well to a sense of majesty. If the home appears lower to the ground, and more spread out on the sides, then a circle driveway is an excellent way to keynote the entire property around a central focal point, such as a water feature or contemporary garden.

If the home is set far back from the street, then the driveway can be built to accommodate parking in the front, and a walkway can be built to link the parking area to the front of the home. This is a nice touch that adds a sense of grand entrance to homes in private neighborhoods.

What types of softscape can be combined with driveway landscape design?
Any type of hedge or shrub can be planted along a drive to decorate it with greenery. In most cases, it is best to use more than one shade of green in order to create fullness and dimension.

Flower beds are very popular addendums to driveway landscape design. You can choose to have flowers of a single color to compliment the color of your hardscape and home, or you can you have a layering of different colors designed by our gardening specialists.

An alley of trees is also a good way to ornament your driveway. Many different types of ornamental trees, including Red Maple, Pear, and Myrtle, work well with Houston landscape designs. Larger shade trees are very popular for longer driveways.

What kinds of hardscapes can be used with driveway landscape design?
Masonry walls and ornamental fences are two common hardscape elements used to augment the appearance of a driveway. Small walls add vertical impact to the sides of the driveway. They also help keep vehicles on the pavement and away from delicate plants. An ornamental fence or stone arch can be built at the entrance to the driveway to generate presence and formality.

What type of materials should be considered?
Popular materials range from concrete to asphalt, concrete pavers, brick and natural stone. Concrete is surprisingly more popular in Houston landscaping than you might assume. Thanks to today’s technology, what was once a rudimentary, practical building material can now be rendered highly decorative. Concrete can be stained with a wide variety of colors, and it can be treated in a number of ways to create very interesting textures and patterns in its surface.

Concrete pavers are a great way to create the look and feel of real stone and save a considerable amount of money on your driveway. Brick always lends itself to traditional, Colonial, and Old World themes, and asphalt is a great driveway landscape design to use in conjunction with modern and contemporary landscaping.

Should I light my driveway?
Yes. It is much safer to pull into a lighted driveway at night. Also, outdoor landscape lights are a great way to show off any flowers, shrubs, or trees that you have planted along your drive. These lights will also help increase visibility in your yard and improve the security of your property.