To design a landscape that truly reflects your lifestyle and values, you have to think about visual impact, mobility, recreation, and functionality.  Having a sense of these things before you sit down with your professional landscape designer will go a long way toward getting the yard of your dreams. 

No one expects you to design a landscape yourself in the formal sense of developing a landscape master plan.  However, getting a few things sketched out, and writing down the things that are most important to you, can put your thoughts and feelings into the hands of experts who can make tangible reality out of often intangible—yet very real—feelings within the self. 

The first thing to do is list your priorities.  Do you intend to host events outdoors?  If so, you want a backyard landscaping plan that is geared toward Houston outdoor living, and you will want a front yard landscaping plan that will extend a sense of warm welcome to arriving guests.

If, on the other hand, you want something comfortable and tranquil, you need to think about the forms of Nature and art that make you most feel at peace.  Do not be afraid to write something down, even if it seems far-fetched or innately unrealistic.  Landscape designers have an uncanny ability to blend even the most complex of manmade elements into the organic components of a yard.

The next thing you need to do when you design a landscape is to be realistic about your budget.  There may be some things on the list you just created that are a bit out of range price wise for the present time being.  This is not to say they cannot be added to your yard at a later date.  However, if something is not affordable right now, and if it is not absolutely essential to the way your home and yard ultimately work together, then it can afford to wait.

One of the great things about Exterior Worlds is our honesty in telling customers that certain things that are exorbitant in cost can be added later.  Many of our landscaping plans are implemented in phases for that very reason.  The most important hardscapes and garden elements are added first, along with patio areas and walkways that provide seating and transit areas.  More elaborate structures like sophisticated outdoor rooms or outdoor buildings can be sketched out on paper and built at a later date when funding becomes available.

Have a lot survey and topographical map of your property ready when your landscaping expert arrives.  This will help your specialist design a landscape with proper drainage and irrigation systems that will manage water flow and water runoff efficiently and unobtrusively.  We cannot emphasize the importance of this enough.  The Houston landscape is very flat and prone to rapid flooding, and Houston weather ranges from too much rain to too little rain depending on the time of the year.

The only way to ensure that plants get the water they need without getting drowned in the rain is to get someone who can build the proper water management systems in forms that are concealed, yet also highly reliable.

Finally, bring pictures to the table when you sit down to design a landscape with an Exterior Worlds professional.  Sometimes you see something in a photograph that speaks to you and you simply cannot put your finger on why.  However, when you show such a photograph to an expert in patio design or garden design, he or she can immediately see how such a scene could be customized to your personal experience.