The Green Scene: Planning and Planting Your Houston Landscaping
Just as the right frame showcases your favorite work of art, a well-designed landscape shows off your house to its best effect.
The green, growing garden surrounding your home—sets the tone, creates an ambiance, invokes certain emotions. Its purpose is to provide continual pleasure for you, your family and your guests. To get to this point, the best landscapes begin with an overall plan that addresses your wants and desires, your financial outlay and the required ongoing maintenance.
Houston Landscaping – In the Beginning
Like the architect for your house, a Houston landscaping designer or architect develops an encompassing plan. They will design for and around natural features such as surface terrain and drainage systems, types of soil, and the amount of sunlight and shade your yard receives. They’ll take advantage of your view—and if you don’t have one, they can help create points of interest. All of which means you maximize your enjoyment, avoid long-term problems and minimize any naturally-occurring disadvantages.
“The importance of garden design is that it supports and enhances the architecture of the home,” says Jeff Halper with Exterior Worlds. “It creates an experience and evokes emotion as you come up to the house. You want it to address how you get in and out of the space. What do you walk through as you approach the front door, the pool, the garage? What emotion is elicited?”
Your Dream Garden
During the planning and prep work, you get to dream. What aesthetics do you want to bring to your garden? Do you prefer lots of color or the more subtle effect of different textures of green? If you like color, which ones—sunny yellows and happy pinks, rust and golds, white flowers and silver leaves? Perhaps you own an outdoor sculpture you want to feature or have a theme in mind, such as a baroque garden, specimen garden, or an English garden.
While you dream, you want to factor in how you and your family live in the space. Will your Houston landscaping fit your needs, whether that means lots of kids running around or sophisticated entertainment? Another consideration is making your garden fit the style of your home; for instance, an Asian style garden beautifully complements a contemporary house. Finally, you want to be realistic about the ongoing landscape maintenance. Some elements of a garden require continual care. Other landscape choices are low maintenance. Only you can decide what works for you.
Money Matters
A designer or architect also addresses your budget. During this phase, the scope of the work is defined, including phasing in the different garden elements. Cost factors include items like hardscapes (i.e. patios, decks or walkways); tree preservation, fences and gates, arbors; outdoor kitchens; luxury swimming pools and outdoor fountains; lighting; sprinkler systems; types of grass, shrubs, trees, perennials and seasonal color.
Since 1987, Exterior Worlds has been successfully installing projects in the Memorial, Piney Point Village, Bunker Hill Village, Hunter Creek Village, Tanglewood, River Oaks, West University, Bellaire and the greater Houston area. Call Exterior Worlds at 713-827-2255 to request an estimate.
For more the 20 years Exterior Worlds has specialized in servicing many of Houston's fine neighborhoods.
You are more likely to achieve your landscaping goals by hiring a professional landscaper—no matter if your project is a themed garden, like an English garden design or a Mediterranean landscape design, a small garden design that only encompasses landscape planting or a complex construction project. A well-versed Houston professional landscaper will take into account not only your desires, but the specific challenges of this region: dense soil, weather
Regardless of whether it is a dramatic modern landscape design orenglish landscaping, a well-planned, well-maintained property says something about the owner. The well thought-out landscape plan and profession landscape service conveys a message about who you are and can make the property stand out among all the others on the street.
Professional Landscape Service: Design
Landscaping has proven itself as a means of increasing your property’s value, both residential
Exterior Worlds ensures the highest structural, functional, and aesthetic quality of its professional landscape designs at a cost representative of a high level of excellence well worth investing in by clients looking to improve home value and maximize their quality of life. Estimating these costs is done systematically in conjunction with a master plan we develop through close, ongoing consultation with each client. We never assume anything, but rather make
In a survey taken among more than 2,800 U.S. adults (ages 18+) and conducted by Harris Interactive in December 2012 for PLANET, the national trade association of landscape professionals, many serious homeowners were confirmed in what they already knew about professional landscaping. When asked the main reason for maintaining or improving their yard/landscape, homeowners said:
showing pride in their home (the primary motivator at 42 percent)
creating an outdoor relaxing space (16 percent)
We have talked about privacy landscaping trees in other articles on our site, and how they can be used to build walls and enclosure that insulate residents from the sounds and prying eyes of the outside world.
As effective as they are, though, trees cannot be the only thing used in landscaping for privacy.
Many Houston landscaping plans require a diversity of elements to succeed. Some of these elements can
Privacy landscaping trees fulfill many important roles in Houston landscaping design. Some of these roles are practical, and by nature relate to the practical aspects of a very genuine need for privacy. Tree plantings also give definition to a landscape by creating zones of interest. They also add vertical impact to our basically flat terrain in a manner that increases the curb appeal of any property.
Walls have always been
Spanish moss landscaping is a very easy thing to do here in Houston. This so-called moss is technically neither a moss nor a fungus, but rather an epiphyte. An epiphyte is a rootless plant that absorbs moisture and nutrients directly from the air.
Spanish moss will not harm the plant around which it grows, and it is indigenous to the Houston landscape. It provides a ready, natural, and authentic accent
We will be planting new gardens and flowers for the spring sooner than we realize. Peat moss landscaping is one of the best ways to prepare the soil now for new seedlings, fertilization, long-term plant health, and minimal garden maintenance. It will be well worth the investment you make because it is one of the few soil amendments that does so many things at once. Both immediate and long-term optimal
Many of you have expressed increased levels of interest in growing moss for landscaping in Houston.
Our recent series of articles on this topic have been published with the intention of showing just how many different elements can be created with moss that will compliment any yard, garden, or outdoor architectural motif.
While the design possibilities are truly endless, getting moss to successfully take hold in your yard can also
If you can’t figure out how to make a natural pond work for your back yard, consider how it can work if it is highlighted with moss landscaping. Houston has an ideal climate for planting mosses of all kinds of species. These mosses can grow on boulders, waterfall ledges, logs, and tree roots and make you a true wilderness scene no matter how large or small your yard is.
