DESIGN A FRONT YARD GARDEN IN PITTSBURGH
There are a lot of factors that go into designing your front yard garden and hiring a garden designer can help. Designers are here to find the right design for you within the maintenance levels you want while creating curb appeal and cohesion with other areas of your yard. Read on to see how hiring a garden designer can help you design your front yard garden!
If you are looking for help designing your front yard garden in Pittsburgh, you can check out our design services by clicking here.
Fix existing pain points
Pain points vary from house to house but most issues can be solved with hardscaping or softscaping. A few examples are: Using hardscape paths in a variety of ways can help improve accessibility to the front of the house and smaller paths can be used throughout the front yard to give the owners access to garden beds for maintenance. Hardscape can also be added to make a space more usable, by adding a patio or seating area in the front of the house. Strategically placed plants (“softscape”) can create shade over a seating area or privacy for your home. A designer can walk you through various options during a consultation.
Example #1: I had a client with two doors on the street-facing side of their house and visitors were getting confused about which door to go to. During the consultation, I recommended ways they could differentiate the plantings around each of the doors to make them feel separate from one another. We used more formal, symmetrical plantings around the formal front door to make it feel inviting. We placed a tree near the other door to shroud it from view so visitors would be directed to the formal front door instead. The hardscape & lighting was also improved to make the pathway more clear to visitors.
Add curb appeal
Plants and hardscaping can easily be used to make your house feel warm and inviting. They can also be used to make the house feel more like a part of the existing landscape by adding layers of plantings around the front of the house to tie it in with the surroundings. Repetition of certain plants or textures in several areas can also make the entire front yard feel cohesive, which is another way to help with curb appeal. Usually, clients know when something feels off with the look of their front yard landscaping and want a professional opinion on how to make it look better. A designer can help with that!
Find your style
There are a lot of different styles of gardens to choose from - a few include modern, cottage, or Japanese-inspired gardens. Another style decision you make is if you want a formal or informal garden. There are also a lot of colors (bloom color, foliage color) to choose from when it comes to planning a garden. A designer can help you sift through all the options and create a space that you love seeing each day. Pittsburgh also has a large variety of residential architectural styles which can impact how a client wants their garden to look. Each client is different and has different tastes, and it’s a designer’s job to figure out what a client is envisioning and bring it to life.
Determine correct plants
Figuring out where sun and shade are in your yard is one of the biggest factors determining plant success. Water access is also something to take note of since plants under large trees or overhangs will receive less water than plants out in the open or plants at the bottom of a slope. Once we figure out the water and light conditions in the yard, we can start discussing other factors that influence plant choice like the level of deer pressure in your yard and your desire for native plants or low-maintenance plants. Designers have extensive plant knowledge that will help narrow down the list of plants that should grow successfully in your garden so you can avoid planting plants that won’t work in your space.
If you are looking for help designing your front yard garden in Pittsburgh, you can check out our design services by clicking here. Below is an example of how I have helped redesign a front yard using hardscape and plantings to make it more usable for clients and more inviting to visitors:
