Landscaping Ideas for a Contemporary Easy-Maintenance Look

A nicely designed landscape makes a good first impression on your visitors and passersby. Besides, landscaping is a great way to add curb appeal and value to your home. Unless you’re comfortable with your not-so-good-looking backyard, lawn, or front yard, you might need to incorporate a few landscaping ideas. 

Most people think landscaping is all about having a lush green lawn. If you’re one of those people, you’re mistaken. There are so many ideas you can apply to make your landscape appealing. Here are some ideas that should help improve your outdoor space and make your home more welcoming.

1. Swap Grass for Gravel

Low-maintenance lawns are increasingly becoming popular, and this trend isn’t going away any time soon. Your yard can still look beautiful without grass, and that’s why xeriscapers recommend the use of gravel and stone. Amazingly, landscaping with gravel will reduce your reliance on chemical fertilizers, watering, and regular mowing to keep the lawn beautiful.

Gravel and stone landscaping can be ideal alternatives to grass, mainly if your home is located in hot, dry areas. Materials such as crushed granite, lava rocks, pea gravel, and river rocks can complement the rest of your landscaping, so don’t be afraid to use them.

2. Expand Your Living Space

If you feel that neither grass nor gravel cuts it, try bringing your living space outdoors. You just need to ‘steal’ a little more space and use it for your outdoor living areas. You can liven up your home’s exterior with outdoor seating areas and a few fire pits.

Not only will you be expanding your living space, but also reducing the need for ground cover plants. You can take your landscape design to the next level by creating the perfect outdoor living space. 

Be as creative as possible during the ideation phase, but if creativity isn’t your thing, involve a landscaping professional or advisor. Professionals should come in handy when developing a plan on how to create an inviting outdoor living area.

3. Landscape with Succulents

Watering restrictions are slowly inspiring the trend towards low maintenance gardens. It’s becoming challenging to maintain lawns and flowerbeds, meaning you have to keep water guzzler plants to a minimum. Luckily, you can still develop a lovely-looking garden with succulents.

Surprisingly, succulents can thrive without frequent watering. Besides, they can withstand extended dry spells without losing their colors or withering. 

Unlike other plants, you’ll have plenty of design possibilities when using succulents. As you well know, these plants come in different colors, textures, and all sorts of exciting forms. If you want to create a desert theme around your landscape, there’s no better way to do so than using succulents. 

4. Embrace Hardscapes, Pathways, and Pavers

If you’re willing to adopt xeriscape, you might want to incorporate hardscape into your yard. Hardscape refers to wood, gravel, concrete, stone, and bricks. All these elements should bring harmony to your landscape. 

Landscapers will help you add a modern touch to your home by using evenly spaced pavers. Moreover, the use of different-sized pavers allows you to create geometric patterns that will intrigue your visitors. 

Ensure you make a statement with your garden pathways and walkways. Luckily, building a pathway system can be fun, and the good thing is you can incorporate a few pattern ideas to make it unique. All you need to do is find inspiration from photos, videos, and landscaping advisors.

5. Try Out a Few Shade-Providing Structures

Shade providing structures not only make your home look luxurious but also helps cool your landscape by a whopping 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep in mind that shade-casting structures are not limited to trees. You can also add covered driveways or porticos to your home. Such structures will cast plenty of shade upon your yard and provide a striking entrance as well. 

6. Install Artificial Turf

Installing artificial turf is another idea worth considering if you want to achieve a modern and easy-to-maintain look. Fake grass requires little to no maintenance, meaning you don’t need to apply fertilizer, deal with weeds or pests, mow it, or water it. 

With artificial turf, you can create spectacular curb appeal, one that will have people around your block talking. The good thing with artificial grass is it blends in well with other landscaping features and can be used in small and big spaces. 

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot of value in landscaping, and it’s high time you give your yard a face-lift. You don’t have to invest a lot of money to make your outside look attractive. It’s the simple things you do that make your yard livable and gorgeous.

Regardless of where your house is located, you can’t go wrong with the above xeriscape ideas. Incredibly, these ideas will keep your yard looking amazing with minimal maintenance efforts. If you’re ready to proceed, our landscapers and designers at DK Landscaping can help you incorporate various landscaping ideas into your yard.

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