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As fall approaches and the temperature drops it’s time once again to begin working in the yard. If you live in a seasonal climate, this is the perfect time of year to put in the touches that will accent your garden come springtime.  You’re lucky if your landscaping or garden design is for a blank canvas or a big lawn with some trees. You’ll have a lot less work to do.  But if there are rocks to remove and areas that just don’t work, like the vegetable garden you tried to do last year that never produced, then you’ve got a little more work ahead of you.

Regardless of where you are, all projects should begin with a plan.  Measure out the approximate square footage of your yard and use graph paper to draw it.  If you’re not a landscape professional or an engineer, no one will mind if your measurements are approximate and you’re not entirely to scale.  This road map of your landscaping ideas is to help you assess the areas of use and what you most want to do with the real estate you have available. Everyone who lives in the house should be included in the plan so that everyone gets the satisfaction of having their own special place in your outdoor living space. 

Enjoy inviting friends over for a Bar-B-Q?  Then draw in a space where you’d like to set your grilling station.  Determine where the sun is the hottest in the evening and avoid placing your grill there!  Also if at all possible, avoid the sun when determining where you’d like to set up your outdoor dining table and chairs.  Give yourself an additional area where you’d like to build your deck.  The nice thing about putting everything down on paper is that it can be a plan that doesn’t have to be done all at once.  You can take several years to put it together depending on how elaborate you want your yard to be. Or you can plan several weekends to do everything by keeping your features simple, like a small loosely laid brick or pea gravel deck.


If you have kids, plan to put in a play area or sand lot.  Surround it with railroad tie for definition. Make room for a vegetable garden there,  perhaps the kids will do a better job of tending it than you did.  It’s fun for the kids to feel secluded.  Separate their play area with flowering hedges. Get some other ideas. Look at some landscaping and garden pictures. Let you imagination run wild.  Paper is cheap and you can start over if you don’t like what you’ve done.  Remember, the most important step in this process is the plan.  It helps you decide many, many things including where your priorities lie, where the plants will go in the spring, and how much to budget for this all.

Tags: backyard landscaping | backyard landscaping | landscaping ideas | landscaping ideas | landscape design | landscape design | garden design | garden design