Architectural Landscape Design
Technically, the term architectural landscape design refers to any hardscape in your yard. However, we prefer to differentiate between structures that add true vertical impact to your property, and structures such as patios and driveways that function as aesthetic and functional surfaces.
Architectural landscape design is essential to the curb appeal of your home and the quality of your outdoor life. In order to make an outdoor environment appear truly professional, you will more than simple lawn and garden services.
Working with a professional landscape designer will help you transform your own personal values into tangible expression that will create the ideal state of awareness you have always wanted to experience when you walk outside. It is necessary to work with an expert in these matters, because sometimes you have only a feel for what you want that you cannot quite put into words. We can not only put your feel for things into words, but also put them into concrete forms.
A professional landscape master plan is consequently developed with several priorities in mind. The priority that we focus on is the extension of your personal lifestyle into outdoor space. You spend a great deal of time indoors surrounded by rooms and walls that are furnished and decorated with motifs to your liking. Architectural landscape design creates a complimentary setting outside of the four walls of your home by lifting up the landscape around you with a myriad of images, plantings, and lights that create a world of wonder and exploration for you and your guests.
This is not to say that you need to invest your entire life savings in the construction of one outdoor building after the other. Outdoor buildings are only one form of architectural landscape design. Anything that adds vertical impact to your yard will enhance work to develop your theme of outdoor living and add curb appeal to your property. This is because the flat Houston landscape will be transformed with variation that is truly appealing and inviting to you and your guests.
Outdoor rooms are one way to create this. They can be constructed in a myriad of ways that offer full views of the nighttime sky and full or partial views of the surrounding Houston landscape. Such rooms can be constructed on a budget if necessary by building the walls out of relatively inexpensive masonry materials, or by using hedges as organic walls. Just a few feet of vertical rise around a courtyard setting is all it takes to create a new point of interest in a truly superb setting. .
Architectural landscape design can also add a host of other vertical creations throughout your property. Some of these structures may have an exclusively aesthetic impact, but almost all of them can be customized to also play a functional role in outdoor living as well. Just a few examples include, but are not limited, to the following:
- Retaining walls that hold back the grade of the land, add dimension to your hard, and create boundaries between aesthetic zones of interest.
- Planters that lift up patio surfaces and act as housing units to beautiful flowering plants.
- Custom fountains that add impact to yards or swimming pool spas.
- Masonry fireplaces that warm chilly winter nights and add majesty to your particular spot on the block.
- Courtyard walls that provide an intimate setting for conversation and special occasions.
- Architectural walls around entry gardens that transition movement from front yard greetings to backyard events.
- Boundary walls on either side of a walkway or driveway that draw attention to the hardscape and simultaneously provide safety for vehicle traffic at night.
- Waterfalls cascading over a series of descending terraces that also provide water to plants growing alongside of the steps.
These and other similar, architectural landscape designs ultimately bring the manmade into closer relationship with nature and add emotional impact to those element of landscaping that are most admired and most used during the course of Houston outdoor living.
