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.
The goal of Houston garden and landscaping design is to transform a property from a plane residence into a true work of art that speaks of luxury Houston outdoor living and enhanced curb appeal. The job of Exterior Worlds is to get a sense of the burgeoning vision our clients already have of what t...
The ideal location for a landscaping pond is in a part of the yard that gets continuous sunlight. A pond that is completely shaded will have trouble supporting plants that need light to survive.
A High quality landscape is distinguished by exceptional softscape elements and impeccably designed hardscapes constructed of superior materials. This combination creates an exceptional outdoor living space characterized by a quality of life that is comparable in terms of amenity to luxury indoor l...
The high-end landscape offers the upwardly mobile Houstonian the opportunity to communicate personal values and taste in a tangible form. It increases the joy of the living experience by bringing the comforts, amenities, and pure sophistication of custom home interiors into the outdoor realm of Nat...
Are you a homeowner on a budget? Do you have a big property with several big projects on your wish list? Are you bumfuzzled as to where to start on putting together a coherent landscape plan? If so, landscape phasing may be the answer to your question.
Learning how to estimate your landscaping investment before you contact a professional will go a long way toward improving the quality of life and the investment in property you have made. Generally speaking, a reasonable investment in landscape design represents 10-20 percent of the total home val...
Custom landscaping involves designing and building a landscape that is specifically tailored to the lifestyle of the homeowner. The property itself is literally shaped around the design of home architecture and the interests and activities of the residents. Custom landscaping requires more than a ...
The intention of backyard landscaping is to create an outdoor living experience that can rival the stimulation and comforts of interior space. In order to accomplish this end, we have to do much more than work with the organic aspects of the yard itself. As important as trees, shrubs, and garden d...
Lots of all sizes look much better when portions of the front yard are differentiated with a number of individual landscaping design methods. Entrances, transit areas, gardens, and seating areas all represent highly individualized elements that a professional landscaper will create and unify with l...
Xeriscaping is form of landscaping intended to reduce water and fertilizer consumption. Slow-growing, drought tolerant species are introduced alongside of indigenous vegetation already accustomed to the annual rainfall levels of a particular area.
Stone is a naturally durable substance that you can use to decorate virtually any landscape. It can work as a supportive element of a garden or ornamental feature, or it can work as a primary element to a special style or earthwork. It also provides an incredible building material that can not onl...
The Ranch landscape appeals to our senses of rural beauty, nature and living in a slower time. Ranch properties usually have vast acreage, old buildings that might have been built at different times and land uses that have changed considerably over time. Often times, the sheer scale of the rural l...
We love trees for the shade they give us. Trees actually alter their environment, improving air quality, harboring wildlife and moderating the climate. Perhaps the most poignant reminder of our lasting relationship with trees is how often trees are planted in memory of a loved one or to mark a signi...
Pathways are both object and metaphor within a landscape design. Functionally, they are the way in—into the landscape, the house, the property. Visually, they lead the eye in, through, across and around the space. There’s no way around it: pathways make a statement.
