What You Need To Know About Landscaping And How To Apply It In Your Home

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Completely revamping your garden or backyard requires a lot of planning, but if you’re ready to turn your gardening dreams into reality, you first need to know where to start.

Landscape architecture

Landscape architecture or landscaping is the art of designing, rehabilitating, and conserving natural spaces, consciously respecting the configuration of the environment.

It is about visualizing an image for a space and then creating that space in a multidisciplinary effort.

Here we will give you some tips and ideas so that you can test your landscape skills, however, we recommend that you consult a professional.

Determine Your Needs And Desires

The first step in renovating your outdoor space is determining exactly what you want. Do you want to create a garden at home? A space for your pets? An area for family gatherings? Do you want privacy? Is your space surrounded by walls or other buildings? Ask yourself these questions and create a list according to your needs and desires.

Identify How Much Light Your Garden Receives (And Where)

It is particularly important to take note of the amount of sun your garden receives, the areas of shade, and those that puddle when it rains. This will help you address existing problem areas, choose plants that are appropriate for each climate, and define resting places.

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Look For Inspiration!

Even the greatest design geniuses look for inspiration (or find it in the most unexpected corners), so once you’ve familiarized yourself with your garden and the design that best suits your lifestyle, search the internet for inspiration, gardening books, parks, or botanical gardens.

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Combine Textures

The use of natural materials will make your garden a more harmonious place. However, if you want to venture a little further, you’ll need to combine the textures, sizes, and colors of your hard surfaces (hallways, walls, fountains) with soft ones (trees, shrubs, grass) to create a cohesive landscape.

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Find A Focal Point

Emphasize the importance of finding a good balance between repetition – which will give a cohesive feeling – but to avoid being monotonous, find a focal point. The good news is that it is a very simple principle to implement since you can achieve it with some sculpture, an impressive plant, or a vibrant pot.

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Exterior Painting and Landscaping

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Exterior painting with Austin painters Tex Painting is an important element of maintaining the beauty of a home and the landscaping of its yard. With a few simple steps, a homeowner can completely transform the look of the house, while keeping their work within budget. Exterior painting is also a great way to increase the value of a home, provide protection from weather and other outdoor elements, and can even enhance the landscaping of a yard. This article will explain in detail the numerous benefits of exterior painting to the landscaping of your yard, including improved aesthetic qualities, added protection, increased convenience and cost savings.
Aesthetic benefits
One of the most obvious benefits of exterior painting is the improved aesthetic qualities that it brings to the yard. A few coats of the best exterior paint and a new trim colour can make a huge difference to the look and feel of the house. Painted surfaces also provide an extra layer of protection from the elements, prolonging the life of the overall paint job, and even adding a subtle hint of colour to the garden that can further enhance the landscapes aesthetic appeal. Painting also allows for more creative freedom – you can choose from any variety of paint colours to create a totally unique look.
Protective benefits
Another benefit of exterior painting is the protection that it provides. Exterior painting provides an extra layer of protection from the sun, rain, wind, and other elements that can gradually erode and damage the exterior surfaces of a home. This can help to maintain the structural integrity of the home, as well as protect the landscaping of the yard. Additionally, painting also helps to protect the exterior surfaces of the house from rot, mould, mildew and other forms of damage, further prolonging the life of the house.
Convenience
Exterior painting also provides convenience in terms of time and money. An exterior paint job requires fewer supplies and less time to complete than other home renovations. This makes it the perfect choice for homeowners who need to spruce up their landscape in a hurry. Additionally, painting is usually cheaper than other landscaping projects, which makes it a great option for those who are on a tight budget.
Cost Savings
Exterior painting also offers homeowners the opportunity to save money on their landscaping expenses. Painting only requires a few supplies, such as paint, primer, and brushes, which are all relatively inexpensive. Additionally, painting a house requires fewer steps and less time than other complex landscaping projects, resulting in cost savings in both time and materials.
Exterior painting is an excellent way to improve the look and feel of your home while also protecting it from the elements. It can also add a unique aesthetic touch to your garden and increase the value of your property. Additionally, painting is a cost-effective way to spruce up your landscaping without having to spend too much time or money. Whether you’re looking to give your home a fresh new look or to add some extra protection to your yard, exterior painting is an affordable option for any homeowner.
For many homeowners, planning a landscape design involves more than just selecting the right plants. A beautiful landscape also incorporates the color of your home, which can be achieved by strategically coordinating your exterior painting with landscaping.
When done correctly, coordinating the exterior painting of your home and the landscaping around it can create a beautiful, cohesive design and give added curb appeal to your property. Here are some steps to help you coordinate your exterior painting with your landscaping, so you can make the most of your outdoor space.
Step 1: Select an Exterior Color Palette
The first step in coordinating your exterior painting and landscaping is to select an exterior color palette for your home. Start by selecting the main color for your home, as it will be the main background throughout the exterior. Then look at complementary colors, such as jewel tones, which can be used to enhance your home’s color palette and make it more vibrant.
When choosing a color palette, consider factors such as the architecture of your home, the existing landscaping around it, and the typical weather in your area. Doing this will ensure that your chosen palette is aesthetically pleasing and suited to the style of your home and its environment.
Step 2: Choose the Right Plants
Once you’ve selected a color palette for your home, the next step is to choose the right plants for your landscape. When picking plants, think about how the plants will look against your home’s exterior and how they will complement your exterior painting. Some plants can even be used to break up a large area with their unique colour and texture, or to draw the eye to certain areas of your home.
When selecting plants, look for ones with flowers, foliage, and bark colors that will match the color palette you chose for your home’s exterior and go well with your painting. Evergreen plants with unique textures and vibrant foliage are great for creating visual interest and adding emphasis to particular areas of your home.
Step 3: Use Lighting to Brighten Up Your Exterior
One way to really make your exterior painting and landscaping stand out is to use lighting to highlight the contrast between the two. Proper lighting can bring out the color and texture of your home’s exterior, making it pop, while also drawing attention to the landscaping around it.
You don’t have to use a lot of lighting — a few floodlights or uplighting, strategically placed in and around your landscape, can make all the difference. Plus, it’s energy-efficient and will create a soft, welcoming ambience during the evening hours.
Step 4: Don’t Forget About Accessories
Don’t forget about accessories when coordinating your exterior painting and landscaping. Accessories such as outdoor furniture, wall art, outdoor rugs, and decorations can all add visual interest to your outdoor space and help tie the two together.
When choosing accessories, look for items in materials and colors that match the palette of your home and the landscaping around it. Using accessories that are either the same color as your home or a few shades lighter can help break up a large area and create a unified look.
Coordinating your exterior painting and landscaping can be a great way to spruce up the exterior of your home and give it a more cohesive look. By following the steps outlined above, you’ll be able to create a beautiful outdoor space that stands out from the rest.  And with the right exterior color palette, plants, lighting and accessories, your home will be the envy of the neighborhood.
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Common Residential Landscaping Tips

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Currently, residential landscaping is a projection of environments that many people seek. It has been highly requested by those who are building, renovating, or who want to change an external area.

This practice has even become valuable because it can completely transform the look of an area, regardless of its size.

When we invest in landscaping for our home or business, we are opening ourselves to the use of natural elements, such as foliage, stones, and other important elements for this type of decoration.

This is reflected in the quality of life, because we began to live in more functional environments and, of course, beautiful ones. All this without distorting the style of the residents and all the decoration of the property.

Thinking about the landscaping of a house is not just about aesthetics, but about all concerns for making the environment more pleasant and healthy.

We must think of the garden as a space that complements your home and guarantees the coexistence and proximity of all with nature.

Understand What Landscaping Is All About

Landscaping is a job that involves the projection, planning, management, and preservation of free urban or non-urban areas, located in public and private spaces.

It is also part of architecture and urbanism projects, focusing on organizing the landscape of the environment.

The entire space is rethought, taking into account the characteristics of the soil and its vegetation, mainly to preserve the botany. Rather than bring beauty to these areas, gardening and landscaping make them more functional.

Many people look for professionals in this sector to beautify their outdoor areas, that is, we want to build a setting that encourages good coexistence within the home and also with companies.

The objective is to provide a homogeneous and balanced aesthetic, without opening up from other components of the landscape, such as vegetation, movement of people, the size of the free areas, and the built area itself.

Even if it involves the use of furniture, such as a stainless steel table, it seeks to be minimally invasive to nature, taking advantage of all its plant beauty to help compose the surrounding urban spaces.

n order to create beautiful gardens, squares, and other free environments, the landscape designer carries out an environmental study to aesthetically value the area, without renouncing its practical functions.

With this, he manages to harmonize the composition elements, without harming nature and guaranteeing its presence.

In other words, each project takes sustainability into account and is therefore considered an important practice. The next.

Build A Vertical Garden

Vertical gardens are a trend in this type of architecture. For some free spaces, even, these gardens are a rule, present in houses and apartments.

In addition to ensuring greater proximity to nature, they are beautiful and elegant, as well as can be applied even when there are some soil restrictions, which may be covered by some vegetation.

Outdoor Furniture

When it comes to landscaping and using outdoor spaces, having furniture is a must. It is he who will provide socialization, recreation, and moments of rest in squares and gardens.

For this project to be complete, people need to have a place to sit and take shelter from the changing weather, such as the sun and rain.

There is furniture suitable for this and also some structures such as fountains and gazebos. A high-standard landscaping design has benches made of iron, wood, and synthetic materials that are resistant to weathering.

The use of textures combines foliage, furniture, fabrics, and larger structures to ensure beautiful and welcoming spaces.…

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Tips For An Energy-Efficient Landscape Design

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Part of the fun of owning a new home is creating the outdoor spaces that surround your new home. Carefully designing your new landscape not only adds beauty and cozy space to your home, but can also help reduce energy costs. Wise landscaping decisions can pay for themselves in energy savings over eight years.

Before you head to the plant nursery for your new home landscaping projects, consider these tips for creating a beautiful, energy-efficient garden.

Before choosing plants or designing your landscape, first know your climate region. What works and looks beautiful in cold regions may not be as effective in a hot or humid climate. The US Department of Energy has divided the lower 48 states into four broad climatic regions: temperate, hot-arid, hot-humid, and cool. Their website has a helpful map and overviews of the regions.

Regardless of your climate, shade is an important ally in lowering your home’s heating and cooling bills. Shade from trees can cool the surrounding air temperature by up to 6°F, according to the Department of Energy.

You’ll want to strategically plant trees that maximize summer shade, especially on the south- and west-facing windows, walls, and roofs. Deciduous trees are a good choice in cooler climates, say experts at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the United States Botanical Garden.

“Deciduous trees provide shade in the summer, then drop their leaves in the fall, allowing the sun’s heat to filter through their barren branches and help warm the house when the weather is cold,” they note. “Maples and other tall species with broad leaves and a tall, spreading crown are ideal for this purpose.”

Windbreaks protect your new home from strong winter winds and can save you considerable heating costs in the process. They also serve as a barrier, preventing snowbanks from building up next to your home.

First, you’ll want to decide where on your property a windbreak is most needed and how high up you want it. So get creative! Windbreaks are no longer relegated to a single row of shrubs or trees of a single species.

Drip irrigation, soaker hoses, and rainwater harvesting systems are energy-efficient alternatives to quench your plants’ thirst. Drip irrigation systems, says the ASLA, “use 20 to 50 percent less water than conventional pop-up sprinkler systems and can save up to 30,000 gallons per year.” Regardless of your approach, use a timer to ensure your plants’ roots get a deep soak without wasting water.…

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Tips To Create A Dream Garden

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Before beginning any reform in the garden that you already have, it is important that you carry out a project to design and create the garden that you want, and divide it into several phases to capture all your ideas.

If you do not have experience in gardening, you must seek advice from someone who understands landscapes and interprets each of your needs, to later accommodate them aesthetically and manage them efficiently, always taking into account your purchasing power.

Look at photos of gardens in books, magazines, the internet, or tour nurseries to find out more ideas that you can carry out in your garden.

Avoid buying plants just because you think they are beautiful for your garden while you have not defined the style of it and the decoration it will have. It could happen that the plants do not look as you imagined or that due to the weather conditions they are not the most suitable for your green space.

What Plants To Grow In The Garden?

Designing a garden with many plants or a terrace with your favorite flowers can be a luxury. Alegrias, petunias, begonias, geraniums, and daisies are excellent combinations to place in your pots.

An excellent investment could also be the purchase of different bulbs, which will give the garden a lot of color for several years.

Remember that the ideal season to grow these plants is late winter and early spring, while in the middle of the spring season, plants with orange and yellow flowers will be ideal, as well as orchids, hyacinths, lilies, lilies, and bromeliads.

Avoid planting all the plants together in the ground or else they will become malformed as they grow and pests can spread between them. For this reason, it is essential that you always leave a space between each plant and that the irrigation is not excessive so as not to generate any type of fungus.

Having a dream garden is possible, take these tips into account and avoid compulsively buying plants or accessories for the garden that are not part of your design, in this way your garden will not lack or have anything left over. It will be as you always imagined.…

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Do You Need A Landscape Permit For Solar Panels?

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With a photovoltaic system installed on the roof of the house, you can power the whole building with electricity produced independently and cleanly. This means no more high bills and a substantial reduction of polluting emissions into the atmosphere. Is it always possible to install the panels freely? To dispel any doubts, we wanted to clarify once and for all and specify which are the cases in which special authorizations are needed to install the photovoltaic system.

The installation, repair, replacement, and renewal of solar and photovoltaic panels serving a building, to be carried out outside restricted areas (referred to in the Decree of the Minister of Public Works n. 1444 of 2 April 1968) are exempt from the approval by the municipality.

In particular, it is possible to proceed freely, without authorization, for the installation of:

  • solar panels (thermal or photovoltaic) serving individual buildings, were placed on flat roofs so as not to be visible from external public spaces;
  • solar panels (thermal or photovoltaic) serve individual buildings, provided they are integrated into the configuration of the roofs, or placed in adherence to the roofs of the buildings with the same inclination and the same orientation of the roof of the buildings, according to art. 7-bis of the legislative decree 3 March 2011, n. 28, not falling among those referred to in art. 136, paragraph 1, letters b) and c) of the legislative decree 22 January 2004, n. 42

According to the provisions of Presidential Decree 31/2017, the rules relating to the request for landscape authorization envisaged for photovoltaic installation interventions in areas subject to landscape protection have been amended (Legislative Decree 42/2004).

Here’s What They Are:

  • Immovable things that have conspicuous characteristics of natural beauty or geological singularity;
  • Villas, gardens, and parks that stand out for their uncommon beauty;
  • Complexes of immovable things that make up a characteristic aspect having an aesthetic and traditional value (e.g. historical center);
  • Panoramic beauties are considered paintings and so are those points of view or belvedere, accessible to the public, from which one can enjoy the spectacle of those beauties.

However, compared to a few years ago, the procedure is now more streamlined.

The application must be submitted electronically using a unified form. The document must be accompanied by a simplified landscape report drawn up by a qualified technician containing:

  • The indication of the preceptive contents of the landscape discipline in force in the area
  • A description of the current state of the area affected by the intervention
  • A certificate of compliance of the project with the specific prescriptions for the use of landscape assets, if any
  • A description of the compatibility of the project itself with the landscape values ​​that qualify the reference context
  • Indication of any envisaged landscape integration measures

The process must therefore be completed within a maximum of 60 days from the submission of the request.

The limitations on the installation of photovoltaic panels can be summed up with a single rule, which applies to everyone: it must be possible to guarantee zero visual impact or perfect architectural integration of the panels on the roof.

If you manage to comply with the provisions and ensure that the system is seen as little as possible, you will finally be able to enjoy the advantages of installing photovoltaics on the roof of your home.…

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Budgets And Rates To Hire A Landscaper

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This work consists of converting an outdoor space that is barely used into a pleasant space that can have the necessary function. The work includes the creation of green areas, but also the installation of relaxation areas, access, or gazebos, among others.

To achieve this, the basis is to adapt the land to the project, which is why it is sometimes necessary to move the earth, level, or create slopes or spaces. For this reason, the cost can be very variable, from €150 to clear a small garden to more than €1,000 that it can cost to level it.

Landscapers can decorate a terrace in many ways. For example, a large terrace can be decorated by renewing the outdoor furniture and painting it in a new color. The floor can be covered with synthetic wood tiles or with artificial grass.

One of the most attractive alternatives is vertical gardens, which can cost from €200/m² on average, although the simplest ones do not cost more than €100/m². As for the furniture, a basic one can cost from €200 for a small terrace.

Landscaping, gardens, and houses are closely linked concepts. Gardens are becoming increasingly important. These spaces are no longer neglected and now the trend is to design green spaces that accommodate the lifestyle of the residents in the building. In this way, you can find Zen-type gardens, Mediterranean gardens, sustainable gardens, etc.

The price of the projects will depend, fundamentally, on the dimensions of the land on which they are going to work. A small garden project will cost around €200. If it is a piece of land of more than 1,000 m², the cost would amount to €500 on average.

It is useless to have the services of a professional if the green spaces created are not cared for, which is why landscapers also offer services when it comes to properly maintaining designed gardens. The work of the associated gardeners makes it possible to maintain the aesthetics and state of the garden in perfect condition.

The price of the service may depend on whether it is occasional or a permanent job is established. By the hour, it can be between €18-€20/hour. If it is a contract with fixed hours per month, the cost will be somewhat cheaper. Maintaining a garden of about 100 m², two hours a week can cost around €150/month.

The price that landscapers apply to their portfolio of services can be highly variable. First of all, it will depend on the difficulty of the project. Secondly, whether it is only a question of carrying out the design or also of its execution. And, thirdly, the plants and elements that give shape to the garden.

The work of landscaping and garden design can be carried out by different types of professionals. Landscaping consists of modifying the visible physical characteristics of a certain space, including living elements such as flora, but also taking into account natural elements such as landforms or artificial ones such as buildings.

Not everyone has the same notions of gardening or the same time to dedicate to the garden. When hiring a landscaping and gardening professional, it is convenient to clarify what you are looking for. For example, if it is going to be a garden that will have the usual services of a gardener or if, on the contrary, it will be a garden with particular maintenance.

The quality of the work and the experience of the landscaper are essential in this type of service, but the price must not be lost sight. The best thing to do is to ask for three estimates to find out what the average price is in the area of ​​the service that you want to hire.

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