Spring offers an opportune time to start realizing landscaping projects you have dreamed about all winter. From adopting eco-friendly standards to designing native greenscapes, from a new shelter structure to water features and permeable driveway pavers, your outdoor living space can benefit from an update. Here’s how you can freshen up your landscape design in Sag Harbor and Old Westbury, NY.
Update to Eco-Friendly Standards
If minimizing the impact your home has on the environment is a priority for you, there are special considerations to make. One option is updating the landscape lighting strategy to eco-friendly LED (light-emitting diode) outdoor lighting that is energy efficient, versatile, and attractive. Today’s landscape lighting allows you to create lighting zones in your backyard: more light in high-activity areas such as the outdoor kitchen, and softer ambient lighting in low-activity areas such as a fireside lounge. The result is a gorgeous nighttime experience that does not diminish from the magic of the night.
Switch to Native Greenscapes
Exotic plants might help evoke a feeling of another place, but they do not necessarily have a positive effect on the landscape itself beyond aesthetics. Not suited to the landscape, they require frequent maintenance. Often, species of grass used in most lawns fall into the exotic category as well. Instead, you could propagate the lawn and greenscape with native plants and grasses. Not only could this dramatically reduce water usage and maintenance, but many plants native to New York are extremely beautiful.
Add a Shelter Structure to Your Landscape
Beautiful shelters such as pavilions, gazebos, and pergolas are simple, yet effective landscape features that can greatly enhance your outdoor living experience. Although each type of shade structure has its differences and unique benefits, these landscape shelter options can provide a rudimentary structure where you and your loved ones can take a break from the sun or the rain and continue to enjoy your time outside. Endlessly customizable, these shelters are also perfect opportunities to express your artistic style preferences with outdoor curtains, climbing vines, and landscape lighting.
Add Drama with Water Features
Beautiful fountains and waterfalls give your landscape an enjoyable visual feast and tranquil atmosphere and provide endless fun for kids of all ages. The constant trickling and splashing created by a water fountain or waterfall creates an excellent atmosphere for relaxation and entertainment. These water features become even more impressive at night when highlighted or backlit, making them dazzling backdrops for entertaining.
Update the Patio, Walkway, and Driveway
The patio is the heart of outdoor living, but don’t forget the visual impact of walkways and your driveway. Concrete pavers create a harmonious relationship between the home and the environment and significantly enhance its curb appeal.
As well, pavers make for more eco-friendly hardscapes. Traditional paved driveways and concrete walkways and patios are essentially a solid surface that prevents rain or snowmelt from seeping into the ground: the result is a slick surface, pooling, and runoff. By switching to permeable pavers on your patio, walkways, and driveway, you can greatly reduce the risk of slick surfaces and help replenish groundwater while creating a much more attractive space.
Related: COMBINING MODERN LANDSCAPE DESIGN WITH HISTORICAL MASONRY IN HUNTINGTON, NY
