A beautiful yard can not only be a source of joy to you and your family but also enhance the aesthetic appeal of your home. Here, we have presented some creative landscaping ideas to add elements of interest, functionality, texture, and color to your yard. Create a beautiful and timeless landscape that’s a treat to the eyes as well as easy to maintain! 

Landscaping Ideas to Increase Your Yard’s Appeal 

1. Go for Native Plants 

Just like grass, which should be chosen based on suitability to the region, you should choose native plants that call for less upkeep. Choosing plants which are native to a specific area or grow well there, would keep your pruning and water costs down, and your plants would thrive.  

2. Create Curved Lines 

Landscapers often create edging around driveways, sidewalks, the house foundation, and flower gardens. Creating the edging as curves instead of perfectly straight lines lends character and appeal, and so, is one of the most interesting landscaping ideas. Since the edging is permanent, your landscape looks great all-round the year. This is quite an easy way of turning your lawn from plain and boring to beautiful.  

3. Get Potted Plants 

Adding pots into landscaping lowers the maintenance needs of a yard as well as boosts its versatility. With potted plants, you can add color to various parts of your yard easily, and you can move them from one place to another easily too. For some added interest and color, match flowers to the season. Go for red and yellow flowers in the fall, and white and pink flowers in the summer and spring.  

4. Combine a Wide Range of Plants 

Select a broad range of plants, the flowers of which bloom at different times. Hence, ornamental leaves would be visible throughout the season. If all flowers blossom at the same time, your yard would look appealing during that timespan but would lack color during remaining time of the year. Consider going for a perennial such as Rozanne geranium as it blossoms from the month of June through October.  

5. Plant Lavender 

Lavender adds a pop of color, a relaxing aroma, and you need to water it once or twice every week only, if the climate you live in doesn’t have regular rain. Lavender also acts like a bug repellent, hence consider planting it near the patio. 

6. Connect the Attractive Elements with a Walkway 

Rather than trampling down your lawn and creating a makeshift walkway of dead grass between the garden, fire pit, patio, create a visually appealing path with concrete stepping stones, decorative brick, natural flagstone, or crushed stone.  

Create a walkway, pathway, or any other feature of landscaping using material which is similar to or the same as that used on the house’s exterior, like stone or brick, as this will tie the walkway to your home aesthetically. Alternatively, use the material for creating an attractive edging along your walkway.  

7. Create a Natural Water Feature 

Add a water feature that looks like it’s a part of the surroundings. It can be a self-contained, small unit standing alone on the patio. You can employ natural stone for building it, or you can go for the same material or stone that’s on the house.  

Avoid using too many materials as the effort may not be effective. A good practice is not using more than 3 elements in an area, or the region may look too congested.  

8. Lighten Up Walkways and Focal Points 

You would want your beautiful landscaping to be visible even after sunset, and that’s why you need landscape lights. Installing outdoor lighting is one of the best ideas for landscaping your yard. These lights have many roles to play – showcasing interesting elements in the landscape, illuminating sidewalk and steps for safety, and enhancing the appeal of the home.  

Types of Landscape Lighting 

Following are some of the chief types of landscape lighting you can choose from: 

• Step Lights 

There’s a risk of tripping and stumbling on outdoor steps and stairs at night. Step lights are a solution to this issue. Installed immediately nearby steps or directly into steps, step lights facilitate safe passage during nighttime. 

Apart from boosting safety, the lights increase the visual appeal and overall look of the stairs and steps too. 

• Deck Lights 

If you have a deck or patio outdoors, especially in an area that’s otherwise area, it’s a must to install deck lights on it.  

The purpose of these lights is making the whole deck surface visible at night.  

Although the primary purpose of deck lights is enhancing safety by creating a clear, visible boundary, these lights can act like the primary lights for entertaining too.  

• Postmount Lights 

Postmount lights are formed by mounting outdoor lanterns on the top of tall posts.  

Known as piermount lights sometimes, they are great options for fences, entryways, and gates. Consider placing them in regions where your guests assemble, like a patio or deck, to make sure sufficient light is available for everyone.  

Columnmount lights are a similar option. These lights do the same job, but are mounted over brick, concrete, or stone columns rather than posts.  

• Path Lights 

A lighted path guiding your guests to the door creates a welcoming ambience. You can do this by installing path lighting. This is the most common type of outdoor lighting and is used for lightening up driveways, walkways, and paths making up the landscaping of your home.  

Other applications of path lights include framing a particular region of the yard, highlighting a foundation or pond, or emphasizing a specific feature in your yard.  

• Bollard Lights 

Bollard lights – the heavy-duty version of path lights – does similar jobs, including illuminating driveways, walkways, and pathways. 

They have some decorative elements that make them a popular outdoor lighting option. As these lights are larger compared to path lights, they usually comprise more complex ornamentation and designs.  

For illuminating paths, small bollards are the right option, while larger bollards make a suitable choice for framing gateways and entrances. 

• Spotlight 

The most versatile outdoor lighting type is the spotlight. You can use them for highlighting natural features like shrubbery, flowers, trees, or other plants, or for emphasizing man-made features like buildings, sculptures, or architectural elements of other types.  

Owing to the powerful illumination offered by spotlights, they also make a good choice for security lighting.  

Summing Up 

Now that you know these front and backyard landscaping ideas, try them out to take your lawn décor to the next level. These garden landscaping ideas can make your yard a safe and appealing place even after dark. The types of outdoor lighting discussed here would help you choose the lights for your yard. 

If you want your yard to stand out, we can help you with our professional Architectural Landscape Lighting Services. All American Turf Beauty is a reputed lawn care company based in Iowa with expertise in landscaping and outdoor lighting installation for homes. If you have a landscaping project in mind, we’ll love to hear about it! Give us a call today!