The crown jewel of the American home can be the landscape—and the more you personalize yours, the more you’ll get out of it. First, you’ll need to consider how you like to experience your backyard, whether it’s mostly for entertainment, relaxation, exercise, or a combination. From there, you can choose the landscape features most important to you and your loved ones. Here are six custom landscaping features that will personalize your backyard oasis in Huntington and Southampton, NY areas.
Patio Pavers
Patio pavers are a common way to personalize a landscape no matter your aesthetic style, the size of your outdoor living space, or the way you like to enjoy the great outdoors. If your home is more traditional and rustic, there are many options that can really elevate your landscape with a feeling of coziness and tasteful elegance. If your home is more contemporary and modern, consider using sleek and minimalistic pavers to help create an expansive feeling that gives your backyard a wonderful soothing feeling.
Aside from the pavers themselves, you can personalize your space with various laying patterns and custom features such as inlays and borders.
Retaining Walls
Masonry features have many useful functions, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be focal points as well. For a sloped landscape, retaining walls can be added to your landscape plan to control erosion. However, walls don’t just hold back the soil. Retaining walls also provide wonderful structures that help define spaces, house lighting fixtures, and even offer built-in seating, or a stunning backdrop for an outdoor kitchen. You can even use artistic expression to create fantastic accents within the wall itself such as accent bands or niches, so that the utilitarian structure can become a work of art.
Raised Plant Beds
Keeping your landscape feeling alive and colorful can revolve around where your plants go, and masonry features can make accessing and viewing your plantings more convenient. Raised bed planters can be incorporated into your living space and they help you be more comfortable as you tend to flowers or even vegetables and herbs. Meanwhile, the raised structure allows for gardening innovations such as an automatic drip irrigation system to minimize the work involved in tending to this fine garden. Raised plant beds also provide a wonderful place for a smart landscape lighting system that offers ambient light for your outdoor living spaces.
A Water Feature
Perhaps nothing helps create drama or a relaxing atmosphere like a water feature such as a fountain or a waterfall. Installing one or both of these features in your landscape that can easily adapt to any design scheme. You can likely find room for one of these timeless and wonderful landscape features, even in the tiniest backyard space.
A Fire Feature
An outdoor fireplace offers an amazing opportunity to customize your patio. Whether you opt for a kit fireplace or go fully custom, you can add personal touches. A custom hearth, mantel, or a stone accent could be a way to personalize a kit fireplace. Of course with a custom fireplace, the sky’s the limit. The addition of a wood-fired pizza oven and even an integrated water feature can transform any fireplace into a truly stunning gathering spot.
Mixed Materials
A mixed-material outdoor living space could be a way to infuse the backyard with personality while defining spaces. A paver patio next to a slightly elevated teak deck, for example, adds dimension while allowing the activities on the deck to take “center stage.”
Related: 5 FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN PLANNING OUT A LANDSCAPE DESIGN IN BABYLON AND OYSTER BAY, NY AREAS