Have you cut out and collected pictures of great landscaping ideas, but now wonder how to actually put them onto your own property? Have you wanted to capture the vision of a stately French mansion on your property in Houston, Texas? Would you like to know whether the plants you’ve admired in European and New England countryside estates will grow on the Texas coastal plains?
If so, you need the services of an experienced residential landscape professional. A competent landscape designer or landscape architect takes you through the entire design development process, which includes: consultation and program development, analysis of the existing site, conceptual landscaping planning, construction documentation and permitting. And then on towards turning the vision in your mind from virtual reality to actual reality.
Analysis of the Site
An essential part of the initial consultation with your landscape professional or landscape architect is a walk around your property. Here is where you get to share your overall vision, detail your wants and needs and desires. It should be a free-flowing discussion about aesthetics, which includes your likes and dislikes of materials, preferences on arrangements—all the “wouldn’t it be nice if…” things you’ve been considering.
Try to be as specific as you can. For example, you may want a deck to seat a party of ten people or a large lawn area on which your three- and five-year-old can play with your Labrador retriever. This detailed information will be brought together by your residential landscape designer or landscape architect to create a program of uses. The program organizes uses by their relationship to one another, much like the inside flow of your home. In fact, the architecture and flow of your home should relate to the architecture and flow of your landscaping. Understanding these relationships and interpreting them well separates the artist-architectural designer from a landscape horticulturalist-contractor.
Residential Landscaping Design
The next step in the design process develops out of the meeting notes, site analysis, program of uses, and the design professional’s experience. At this conceptual level, the designer or architect conveys the overall design intent, such as the general use areas and their sizes, swimming pools and other hardscapes, outdoor kitchens and outdoor fountains, lawn areas, and plantings. This phase will also be the time when it is determined which wish list items are possible on the site and which are not. An overall cost study is developed from the conceptual design as well.
Moving Forward with your Design:
Once you have agreed on the overall design intent, sizes of use areas, general material selections and their applications, you are ready to begin the landscaping design development and construction phase. The documentation for this phase can be broken down into three groups: 1) design drawings for permitting. 2) drawings to convey final design intent and material selections for you and the installation contractor 3) drawings, called construction documents, with specifications for materials, specifications for their installation and installation methods.
These drawings may be accompanied by a full package of additional drawings to include an existing site survey, tree disposition and elevation plan, tree preservation plan, demolition plan, swimming pool plan, landscape drainage systems, irrigation systems, hardscape plan including outdoor kitchen and outdoor water fountains, landscape planting plan, landscape lighting plan, and construction details for the above plans.
As for permits, each city has its own unique requirements for landscape plan approvals. The norm is a submittal of the entire permitting package to be approved or rejected by a committee board. For this reason, it is important to hire a landscaping company that is fluent in these areas, one who knows what vital information to include, such as lot coverage ratios, engineered drainage plans, pool fencing layout and specifications. It is equally important to omit unnecessary information that could create confusion or send up a red flag that would keep the project from getting approved. A knowledgeable residential landscape professional or landscape architect helps win approval as quickly as possible.
Garden Design and the End Results
Whether your project is a simple landscaping design that only encompasses landscape planting or is a complex construction package, it is vital that you hire a landscape designer or landscape architect that is competent in the skill sets detailed here. For your satisfaction, it is also important to distinguish between off-the-shelf landscaping design and a designer who can reflect your unique style. Always ask to see a portfolio and visit the website to determine if the landscaping company under consideration has the sense of style you appreciate and is one who can design a landscape that complements your home and lifestyle.
Additionally, it is highly recommended that you utilize a design company that not only does the design work, but also performs project management and landscaping installation. There is a world of difference between someone who has great ideas and another person with great ideas who also knows the availability and best use of local materials, local contractors and their methods of construction, overall cost and budget development, and can then maintain the finished product. In short, you want a designer or architect who can deliver a design solution that flourishes in the Houston climate over the long term.
Since 1987, Exterior Worlds has been making dream landscapes come true throughout the greater Houston area including the Memorial Villages, Tanglewood, River Oaks, West University, Bellaire and the greater Houston area since 1987. Call 713-827-2255 and ask about its residential landscape design services.
There are many landscape designers in Houston. Some specialize in basic lawn and tree services. Others offer basic softscape design such as gardens, flower beds, and decorative hedgerows. As essential as these basics are, we feel it is important to offer a much more comprehensive range of Houston landscaping services. Only by treating the yard as an outdoor living environment equal in comfort and diversity to home interiors can we
Outdoor Landscape Design creates forms of function that merge the boundaries between the purely aesthetic and the purely practical. Nothing in a yard that has been professionally landscaped ever looks purely functional in nature. Likewise, few things on the landscape, if any, are there for mere decoration. Even deliberately aesthetic elements such as fountains and outdoor gardens often serve a very practical purpose as focal points for gatherings or transition
Minimalist design is a design style that takes a less is more approach to aesthetics. In landscaping, it refers to a subservience of content to form more than a specific style. Minimalism can be found in many different types of gardens and landscapes, including formal, French, Italian,Mediterranean, and small garden design. This is due to the fact that all of these styles originate with the Greeks and Romans designs,
What are the Guiding Principles of a Mid Century Modern Landscape?
A mid century modern landscape features a blend of formality and abstraction. There is just enough formality to generate a clean, orderly outdoor living environment, and just enough of the abstract to allow for a spectrum of innovation ranging from the subtle to the bold. Rather than creating a single focal point for the yard, this style creates multiple
The intent of home exterior design is two-fold. On the level of aesthetics, home exterior design provides an external and sophisticated compliment to the architecture of a house. By integrating Nature and man-made structures, the home interior designer creates a framework into the usefulness of the home interior can be expanded into the world beyond without compromising the beauty of the landscape. This is very important, because the functional elements
While most parts of the Houston landscape are remarkably flat, properties that border Buffalo Bayou and its tributaries often have a hilly terrain. With some basic hill landscaping ideas, and the help of Exterior Worlds, you can watch these areas can be transformed into some of the most attractive features of your yard that your children, family members, and guests will immediately be drawn toward.
The slope of the terrain
Contemporary landscape architecture is characterized by a subjective determination to sculpt the landscape into spaces that reflect the human living experience. It develops these spaces with respect to Nature, and in some way or another always works to create a relationship between architecture and the contemporary landscape. Contemporary landscape architecture can be used either unify architecture and the surrounding landscape, or it can be utilized to starkly contrast the differences
The contemporary landscape attempts to create a mentalist microcosm of the cosmos by presenting a view of the world that everything resides within the mind and proceeds out of it.
Subjective expression is the only guideline to go by, because assumed standards or reality are now held suspect at best, if not rejected outright.
The only sense of absolute becomes the self and the expression of self. This contributes to
Have you cut out and collected pictures of great landscaping ideas, but now wonder how to actually put them onto your own property? Have you wanted to capture the vision of a stately French mansion on your property in Houston, Texas? Would you like to know whether the plants you’ve admired in European and New England countryside estates will grow on the Texas coastal plains?
If so, you need
Berm landscapes are characterized by an attractive vertical impact that adds scale and scope to any Houston landscaping design. Architectural accents are reflected in the landforms that correspond to motifs expressed in the build of the house. Smaller berms create boundaries around unique zones of interests, patios, and gardens. Larger earthworks form beautiful walls that support tree walls that protect the privacy of personal outdoor living.
The basic form of
