When designing a backyard makeover, it’s important to think vertically as well as horizontally to give your landscape interest and dimension. Here are some ideas on how raised beds and other popular ways to incorporate masonry into an Old Westbury, NY, backyard will add beauty and function to your outdoor living design.
Raised Beds
If you love gardening (and even if you don’t), raised beds offer a convenient way to add color to your garden or culinary herbs to your outdoor kitchen. Even people with a “black thumb” find that raised beds make gardening easier and more enjoyable. First, there’s no need to till the soil (just add compost or fertilizer on top) for rich, fertile, and well-draining soil that plants love. Raised beds are easier on the back and knees. You can make your raised beds as tall as is convenient for you.
Raised beds also minimize weeds and damage from insects. It’s easy to achieve a neat and tidy landscape by using raised beds: no migrating mulch and no lawnmower damage to overhanging flowers. Raised beds can also bring flowers and herbs right into your outdoor living space, and serve double duty as seating walls and outdoor “room” dividers. Masonry raised beds can become decorative focal points even in winter when filled with twinkling lights, oversized ornaments, and greenery.
Walls
Masonry walls give your home an instant sense of history. A masonry wall can have a practical purpose such as holding back soil on a sloped lot or an aesthetic function such as creating a transition between a home’s foundation and the landscape. Any wall can have seating and lighting built in. Design options for masonry walls are endless: seating walls, vertical planters, privacy walls, retaining walls, or the surrounding of a sunken conversation area. You can even create terraced gardens on a steep slope for a lovely Mediterranean touch that also increases usable space.
Fire Features
Nothing draws people together like fire. A masonry fire pits adds a touch of elegance to what would otherwise look like an ordinary campfire. It can be constructed as a square, rectangle, or circle depending on your design aesthetic, and it can be as large or intimate as space allows. Masonry pillars are often used to support fire bowls to create a stunning and sophisticated ambience, and an outdoor fireplace transforms an ordinary patio into an outdoor living room that invites people to enjoy the outdoors even on chilly days and evenings. Fire tables that combine fire and dining are becoming more popular as a way to bring people together.
Related: 9 IDEAS FOR UPDATING YOUR OUTDOOR FIREPLACE IN LONG ISLAND, NY
Water Features
Masonry can take center stage when used as a backdrop for a water feature such as a waterfall, water wall, or fountain. Depending on the type of stone used, a water feature can be classical, ultramodern, rustic, or any other design style; and even in winter when the water isn’t running, the wall will remain a beautiful part of the landscape.
Landscape Lighting
Masonry is often used to house low-voltage landscape lighting. This creates an unobtrusive lighting design and allows for precise placement for fixtures to create the desired effect. A low wall that runs alongside a walkway is an aesthetically pleasing way to hide fixtures while safely illuminating the ground without the harshness of overhead lights.
Related: 5 MASONRY FEATURES TO BOOST YOUR BABYLON, NY, OUTDOOR LIVING SPACE
