Landscaping your yard allows you to express your creativity and design a space that reflects your personality and style. The good news is, it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money if you think outside the box. Whether it be your front yard or backyard, a patio that needs some revamping or a large scale project there are many inexpensive ways to tailor your space, making it your own personal oasis.
To start off you need to access your space and determine what goals you’d like to achieve, the look you’d like to create, and how much money you have to work with. Then you can start designing a basic plant that can incorporate some of the following inexpensive ideas.
Hide unwanted features.
An easy way to get started with a landscape plan in your yard is to think about the eyesores you’d like to cover up, making them more aesthetically pleasing.
Walls and fences can be covered with tall plants such as bamboo or ornamental grasses, or you can train ivy to grow over them. This not only creates a beautiful living screen but it helps to minimize sound traveling from one yard to another.
Buy reclaimed or scrap lumber and build boxes to cover air conditioning units and garden hose reels. The wood can be painted or stained to your liking all while turning an eyesore into a pretty accent.
Incorporate greenery.
Plants are the go-to accent for landscaping your yard. With so many different options in terms of size, color, whether they flower or not, if they attract butterflies and hummingbirds to your yard, and maintenance requirements there are plants to fit every need or want.
Container plants are perfect options if you have limited space or don’t want the hassle of planting in the ground. Plants can be swapped out as the seasons - or your tastes - change. With the help of heavy-duty rolling plant caddies, you can also try your hand at growing fruit trees in containers, moving them into the garage to safely overwinter.
Perennials are a little higher cost investment from the start but will come back year after year, providing your landscape with color and greenery with little work on your part. If you have friends or neighbors with beautifully landscaped flowerbeds you can even ask them for cuttings off their perennial plants to propagate new plants for your yard!
Define flowerbeds with a border
Adding borders to your flowerbeds or gardens help to differentiate space while adding accent pieces to your landscape. Many options are available depending on your style and budget.
You can section off flowerbeds by creating borders using plastic edging, landscape pavers, or you can create a more free-form border using larger river rocks or stones. If you have access to logs they can be cut to size and placed either vertically or horizontally to create borders; cinder blocks can be laid on their size with the holes used for planting flowers.
Refurbish or build furniture
Want to add a seating area to your yard or patio? Do you cringe at the price of outdoor furniture at your local store? Don’t worry, if that’s the case there are ways to add furniture and creating seating at a much lesser cost.
One great way is to shop your local classified ads and look for old furniture that can be refurbished to fit your space. Benches, chairs, etc. are good DIY projects; with a little elbow grease you can paint or stain them to fit your decor at a fraction of the price for new.
There are also many inexpensive ways to build your own furniture. Pallets from a local factory are often available for a small amount of money and can be used to make chairs, tables, and even benches if you’re handy with a saw and a hammer.
Maximize space by decorating vertically
When putting together landscaping designs people sometimes to forget about how much potential their vertical space entails. Take advantage of vertical space. You can hang stainless steel floating shelves to hold container plants such as flowering ornamentals or a potted herb garden. Be careful that shelves are not spaced too closely together, giving plants room to get taller or have access to enough sunlight for good growth.
Mix and match materials.
Decorating trends today combine a variety of colors, textures, and materials. Hit up your local salvage yard or architectural supply store to create an accent wall that depicts various wooden boards. Or look for old windows in various sizes to create a hanging display along the fence.
Mix metals such as a stainless steel art sculpture with patina-rich copper pots, or wrought iron furniture.
Use gravel as an accent.
Gravel is an economical way to add walkways or paths through your yard without breaking the bank or yard back by installing pavers. It also helps to keep weeds from popping up in your flowerbeds while retaining moisture in the soil instead of mulch that can easily be blown around.
Add lights for ambiance.
Inexpensive strings of outdoor lights can be purchased in numerous colors and bulb shapes to accentuate your patio or yard, creating a soft atmosphere to enjoy after dark. If you’d rather not have something that needs to be plugged in, opt for solar-powered lights that recharge during the day or group candles in areas you tend to hang out in after dark.
