Backyard Landscaping & Garden Design Ideas

Design ideas and landscaping can feel endless depending on budget.

Whether you’ve moved into a new home, are wanting to revamp your current backyard or you’re just garden daydreaming, garden design can be stunning. I’m hoping this post will help you learn how to design and sketch your garden design ideas & plan your perfect garden.

Backyard Garden Design Ideas

There are so many garden design ideas out there it’s hard to choose when planning your garden.

Do you want a kitchen garden? Ornamental garden with plants like the colocasia mojito? Herb garden? Raised beds?

Will you be doing it yourself or hiring a professional?Gothic Garden gate to a secret garden (from Country Living)

Do you want a secret garden? An enchanting feel or modern? A patio area? Concave paths that have garden beds? Archways? Pergolas? Garden gates? A BBQ area or outdoor pizza oven?

Landscaping and garden design costs can add up quickly!

Chic ‘She Shed’ spotted on Country Living

Pretty path from HGTV

Before figuring out your garden design ideas you’ll need to measure out the garden space you have to work with and figure out your budget.

This can be a major factor and throw a wrench in some of your dream garden design ideas. You should also consider how much maintenance your dream backyard will take.

Sometimes it’s not our space or budget, but our time which gives us limitations.

Lavender walkway from Country Living

One way around this is to create a 1 year, 2, 3 or 5-year plan for how you want to add features to your garden.

Because most of us won’t be able to do it ALL the first year financially. If you can that’s fantastic and you can move onwards to the design and sketch part. If you have financial or space limitations then create baby steps for your landscaping project.

For example: if you know you’d like a patio and a pergola build the patio the first year, add garden beds and paths the second year and the third year add the pergola.

 

Love this patio and pergolo from Design Rulz

One way to reduce the costs is to do everything yourself, or at least some of it. If however, you want a gorgeous rock patio with a waterfall you’re better to hire a local professional.

One thing you can cheaply and easily do by yourself is to create brick edging at the edges of your lawn or garden that creates a very clean and beautiful look.

Check out your local professional design landscapers if you’re not doing it yourself. They often have a website with the work they’ve done.

Imagine your Dream Garden

This gardening blog is known for vegetable gardening and garden planning. That’s the gardening that I fell in love with and I’ve helped thousands of people with their garden planning with my gardening book and ultimate printable garden planner.

Now that we’ve moved homes I’m becoming more interested in landscape garden design. This winter I’m planning on creating a layout and garden design to make our front yard be both beautiful and functional with perennial flowers, herbs, and bushes. It’s been sadly neglected since moving in but I’m looking forward to sharing the transformation with you.

One thing I knew I wanted to add to our garden design list was a ‘She Shed’: basically, a pretty shed often with a greenhouse like the one below. See more wooden greenhouses here.

Other features I’d love to add is curved walkways with a mix of perennial flowers (lavender!) and lots of medicinal herbs in our garden.

Herb Garden design from Grow Veg

I’m also drawn to archways as vertical gardening adds great architecture.

Garden archway by John Glover

Night gardens are a beautiful touch to backyard landscaping

Outdoor lights from Lush Garden

Sketch a Plan & Make Notes

Once you have your dream garden in mind and have the realism of your finances, time and garden space you can begin to sketch out your plans. The more sketches and designs you create the less chance of regretting something you missed later on.

Some things to pay attention to are:

• Sun exposure
• Microclimate
• Local regulations for your city or town (for example you might want an urban garden in front of your home but not be ‘allowed’ to.
• Shade created from architecture like pergolas.
• What your plants need: some plants tolerate shade, some not at all.
• What your backyard borders are- you don’t want to be invading into your neighbor’s space.

Better Home & Gardens has many great garden designs on their website. 

Paper Garden Workshop offers a garden design course + lots of theme ideas.

Great tips for garden design perspective from Garden Therapy

Design ideas from Houzz

Love this height chart for plant design from Lisa Orgler. Her website is fantastic!

Fix has these informative infographics to help you with

Garden Design Ideas to Plan your Perfect Garden

Choose your plants

Source: Fix.com Blog

Source: Fix.com Blog
Source: Fix.com Blog

Conclusion to Garden Design Ideas: Plan your Perfect Garden

Be sure to check as we do a complete remodel of our front yard next spring. I’ll share garden design plans soon once I learn more about garden design, garden landscaping and garden sketches.