Landscape designing is no different in designing the interior of your house. Whenever or whatever you put something together yourself, you are engaged in designing.

Yard landscaping is an art. The art of landscaping sees the aesthetic balance between the elements of your garden or backyard.

Planning for a

backyard landscaping or

front yard landscaping for the first time, you don’t need to hire landscaping companies if it only requires nominal work. But if it does, you can contact your local landscaping company.

However, if your are on a budget but still wanting to achieve an incredible outdoor scenery on your property, here are some ideas to get you started.

The basic elements of landscape design are SCALE, COLOR, FORM and TEXTURE, and LINE and FOCAL POINT. These elements should be considered in designing both the softscape (gardens, lawns, shrubs, trees) and hardscape (sidewalks, drainage, etc.) of your property.

You may wonder why these terms have to do with your backyard or front yard; as mentioned, landscape designing is an art. And just any other art forms like painting you will treat your property as your canvass.

What is the scale of your property? Is the blueprint of your house bigger than your yard’s land size? Measuring the scale of your landscape will determine which other elements you will incorporate.

The color element is, in fact, your theme. If you feel like doing a spring or summer theme, it does not matter. The objective of color element in landscape design is to create a unifying family of colors that are perfect for your family’s preference but still aesthetic. Some families’ preference is verdant, others niche it with flowers, and others – specifically the uptown neighborhood – have boast it by landscaping it with bridges, water fountains, or mini ponds. These hardscape structures cannot be considered a color element but a form and texture element.

The objective of any landscape design is to bring those colors that are complimenting to the architecture. This is where the form and the texture elements come in. The forms and texture that I emphasize on this matter are the plants, the lawn, your housing architecture, and your fencing. If you are to put forms and textures in your landscape, make it a point to not overdo it. You don’t want to turn your house into a rainforest, right -- or not unless you intend to? Your landscape should complement your house and create a focal point to do so.

Line and focal point pertains to the eye level and the flow it goes through governed by the arrangement of your softscape or hardscape. Eye movement is unconsciously influenced by the way plant groupings fit or flow together, both on the horizontal and vertical planes. The focal point is the center of visual attention, often different from the physical center of the work. You can make a fountain your focal point or other hardscape forms, which is essentially the trend in gardening industry.

The key in doing landscapes for the first time is to customize it according to your pleasure. Yard landscaping is a depiction of scenery you want to have in your own property. In doing so, it requires proper planning, designing and managing.

To make landscape designing more at ease, make sure to take a picture of your property before the main landscaping. As a tip: develop it in a local photo station. Doing this, you can assess the types of plants or flowers you want to buy or if you can plant a tree in your property, or add hardscapes. On your photo, at the back of it, write the scale of your property to keep a measuring guide so your yard elements won’t overshadow other elements.

The key in landscaping is proportion. The proportion should cohere to your house architecture and your yard scale.