Turning Your Garden Zone into an Outdoor Home
Friday, April 07, 2017
For some people, a backyard is a wonderland of opportunity in
terms of gardening stunning flowerbeds, but a garden, for others, is just an
outdoor space which came with the house. Whichever category you fall into,
there’s so much you could be doing with your outdoor space that you’d never
before considered. If you like nature but you just never fancied yourself as a
green-fingered expert in the garden, perhaps you need to instead approach the
task with the mentality you’d have when conducting a little interior design
around your household; this can be a creative venture.
Turning your garden into something homely involves creature
comforts just as much as planting flowerbeds, trimming weeds and other chores
which you might deem mundane. This can be a fun project if you approach it with
the right mentality. This is the extra room of your house which may have been
neglected up until now, or perhaps it’s simply missing a bit of flavour even if
you have done a little gardening in the past. The key to turning your garden
zone into an outdoor home starts with the pieces of advice below.
Clear out pests
Unfortunately, you need to start with the boring stuff. Don’t be
discouraged just yet. Think of this as a renovation of that old, dusty forgotten
spare room in your house. Maybe it’s overflowing with cobwebs and endless stacks
of boxes, but you know you’ll feel so much better once you’ve cleared it out and
you have the opportunity to work with a sparkling, brand new room.
In much the same way, you need to start by “tidying up” your
back garden and getting rid of pests. Any plants or flowers you do have in
your garden [or hope to have at the end of this project] will be devoured by
pesky slugs and other small creatures if you don’t work towards keeping your
outdoor space free of them. Take it as a testament to the sheer beauty and
attractiveness of your garden. Still, that doesn’t mean you should welcome your
visitors with open arms.
Do some research, and plan your garden
Getting the perfect blend between nature and manmade elements is
the key to a perfect garden, as you’ll likely want to push yourself further than
a few garden gnomes dotted around the grass. You need to do some research and form a plan before you get stuck into
your project, otherwise you might find that you haven’t calculated how much
space you need for the flowerbeds and the path which will weave through them.
You don’t want to realise halfway through that you’ve run out of room for
everything, as you wouldn’t “improvise” if you were designing the layout for
your living room or kitchen.
Your garden is much the same. You’re working with a finite
space, but this patch of land can feel infinite if you do enough research.
Looking into online magazines or perhaps even real-life libraries [books are
still a thing] for inspiration might be just what you need to get started. You
can cherry-pick your favourite elements from different garden ideas, much as
you’ll be doing throughout this article, in order to create a solid overall
image of the kind of garden you want.
Cut out or save any intriguing pictures to your computer, and
start to form a plan based around them. Ensure you take some measurements of
your garden and try to create an accurate diagram displaying where every object,
natural or otherwise, will be situated. By doing this, you’re ensuring that
you’ve planned for the space available but also that you’ve thought of
everything you might want in your garden before you get started. Small
improvisations are okay, but big improvisations might cause problems.
If you’re not quite sure which manmade things you want yet, then
perhaps simply dedicating a certain patch of your garden to natural plants or
flowers and another patch to manmade things will suffice as a plan. The
following points will include some potential ideas if you’re still drawing a
blank.
Keep it cheap
Believe it or not, renovating your garden doesn’t have to cost
the moon and the earth. If you have a creative mindset, then this project can be
a challenge in creativity with regards to doing a lot with a little. You can
even look into getting some freebies online to add some character to your
garden. Whilst old, tacky tools and peculiar items might have been things you
would never have considered around your household, there’s something charming
and aesthetically pleasing about an old, rusty watering can sitting amongst
gorgeous flowers and the general nature of your garden.
If you’re wondering how freebies or cheap items could really
blend in with the sleek, clean and chic aesthetic of your new garden, then
perhaps you could see these old objects as retro aesthetic pieces with practical
applications. That watering can could be filled with beautiful flowers or
perhaps old and unused items from your own house could be unique and quirky
plant pots for your outdoor area. Given that you’re trying to create a homely
feel to your back garden, this is the perfect way to blend manmade creations and
nature together.
A manmade flourish
Of course, even if you do want to keep this project as cheap as
possible, you can reward yourself for conducting all this DIY work and saving
yourself a heap of money. Allowing yourself one manmade treat as a centrepiece
in your garden will help to lift the overall feel of the place. Perhaps you’ll
create a fountain or a pond as the main focal point. In amongst your natural
paradise, this might be quite a nice place to put a bench, sit and enjoy your
surroundings.
Maybe you have a family, and the kids want something a little
more exciting than a fountain or a pond [even though those sound quite exciting
to me]. You could look into pool
landscaping if you’re considering a centrepiece which could really transform
your garden into an outdoor paradise in the summer. You could also look into a
patio area with a dining table and barbeque. Your budget is the only limit, but
hopefully that’s still quite sizeable given that you’ve probably saved a lot
through sheer hard work and as many free resources as possible.
Lighting
If you want your garden to truly become an outdoor room for you
and your family, it needs to be somewhere in which you can relax on warm summer
evenings. Much like any other room in your house, then, you need to ensure that
there is sufficient lighting. You’ve put all this hard work into
creating a beautiful, cozy outdoor space, and it’d be a shame if you could only
use it during the day. Perhaps a well-lit patio area could become the spot for
family film nights if you set up a TV in front of a few comfy loungers and lay
beneath the stars. That’s when you know your garden has truly become part of
your home.
The dull “practical” things
Your garden is still a part of the outdoor world, which means
that forces of nature will try to reclaim and muddy your cozy garden paradise.
Some form of upkeep is necessary in terms of weeding, continuing to remove pests
if they return for your plants and keeping the grass as perfectly trimmed as it
likely will be when you finish your project. Maintenance is crucial, but
retaining the cozy, clean and beautiful image of your garden is also important.
Compost heaps and wheelie bins should be kept out of sight in a hidden corner of
the garden so as not to ruin the aesthetic.
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