Landscape Gardening Design Ideas: Grow Food, Flowers, Landscaping Types

Water elements such as koi ponds, waterfalls, and stone basins are frequent inclusions if space allows, as is the addition of a bridge. Adding ornamental flourishes is essential in bringing this tranquil landscape design to life.

These are just a few of the plants that may thrive in arid conditions, and even though they are often considered bland, some varieties display a wide range of bright colors and intricate shapes.

Although not for everyone and every house, this low-maintenance landscaping design should not be overlooked as it is ideal for dry environments where rainfall is often infrequent.

If you live in a hot zone, be sure to incorporate heat-resistant furniture that won’t scorch you when you take a seat, and provides enough shade to protect you as you’re enjoying your tropical garden.

Manicured hedges merge into flower beds and the colorful plants create a style that is not regimented but embraces the natural style of nature, and often has different types of evergreen trees to keep the garden lush even in the dead of winter.

The addition of a water feature is a design element that will provide a charming aspect to your cove of tranquility.

If you are short on space but still want nature on your doorstep, vertical gardening is easy to learn and easy to do and, even better, hardly requires any real estate at all.

Additional Landscape Design Elements

There is no one size that fits all nor one design that fits all when it comes to your gardening zones, or whatever landscape gardening ideas you can imagine.

It is not unheard of to combine different designs so your landscape is unique, one of a kind. Fortunately, landscape gardening isn’t all about what’s just green or colorful.

There are other components that are needed including the types of stones, slabs, or gravel used for walkways.⁴

• The style, height, and color of the walls erected to frame the landscape are just as important and can easily change the appearance of your front yard.
• A raised garden bed is a nice option to alter the topography and make a feature of a marigold flower, geranium flower, or even a small hydrangea tree.
• Colored block paving is an imaginative method to break up the landscape and create separate areas for different uses, a place for the kids, for example, and one for the adults.
• If you have the space, tall slim trees such as the Blue Arrow juniper can be used as privacy screens and windbreaks without detracting from the sunset landscape view you now have from your backyard.
• When arranging your flower bed in rows alongside a walkway, place them in such a way that your tallest plants are in the rear, the next tallest plants in the center, and the smallest plants in the front. In this manner, the rows will be neat and orderly and will impress your visitors.

Your imagination can sometimes be the only thing holding you back from designing an outstanding outdoor living area, but there are still simple rules to follow to keep you in line and hopefully enable you to make the best choices for the size and shape of your outdoor spaces.

Landscaping Tips for Your Yard and Garden

To make the most of your outside space, treat it like your home outside of your house by strategically dividing it into zones.

This method of division can be used to create separate areas for different uses and with a little imagination, every square inch will not be the same as the last.

But you will still want the individual areas to flow seamlessly into each other so it doesn’t appear like a patchwork of 3 opposing jigsaw puzzles mashed together.

(Image: davebaur¹⁴)

Connecting your areas is an important consideration so your family members and guests can easily navigate between the many sections of your garden without having to step over or squeeze past obstacles, or feel that they are in a different time zone.

•  Also, consider the plants’ intended roles in the landscape early on in the design process, and how they will thrive side by side. Just like people, all plants don’t always get along when planted too close to each other, and this can be important if you are planning an organic gardening environment.⁵
• Rather than erecting tall barriers or tall trees, using low-growing plants to create implied barriers that impede access but not the view, is a great way to keep your views open while still maintaining a modicum of privacy.
• Always be mindful of the spacing as some plants such as azalea bush and hosta plants tend to grow wider than they do tall and will not appreciate being crammed into small spaces with other bushy bushes.
• Creepers and vines are easy to train and grow over unsightly cables and exposed drainage pipes while creating eye-catching features at the same time.

Clematis vine, honeysuckle vine, and rambling roses are clear examples of what can be achieved with very little effort, and a bit of forethought at the planning stage.

Gardening Supplies, Landscaping Tools, and Safety Landscaping Supplies

The right gardening tools are essential to get your landscaping job underway without any delays and to make the task as easy as possible.

There is a wide range of tools available and the ones below are just a small sample of what an amateur gardener would need, and a professional would definitely have in their tool bag.

• A bucket
• Gardening gloves
• Steel toe boots
• Safety glasses
• Shovel
• Spade
• Pruning shears
• Trowel
• Wheelbarrow
• Soil knife
• Rake
• Stirrup hoe
• Tamper
• Manure forks
• Weeders

It is possible to proceed without a few of the tools above, but using them will enable you to complete your gardening tasks with ease, and finish your landscaping project with a flourish.

Gardening To Grow Food, Flowers, and More

Growing your own food is becoming an increasingly popular and sustainable landscaping sideline for millions of Americans who have decided to grow their own produce in the comfort of their own homes.

Known as foodscaping, these gardens are a combination of your favorite plants growing alongside your favorite vegetables and fruits.

By themselves, a garden filled with vegetables is not the most aesthetically pleasing sight, but that needn’t be the case.

This hybrid form of landscaping promotes the use of edible plants in home gardens and is essentially the practice of designing landscapes that serve more than one purpose.⁶

It is hard to imagine, however, that cabbages, carrots, and leeks could enhance your landscape to any degree, yet it is a form of companion planting. The advantages of growing your own fresh foods with traditional flowers and fauna have managed to change the growing habits and the outlook of many gardeners.

The art of foodscaping has served to broaden their skill set and to appreciate how to grow Black-eyed Susan next to your Black-eyed peas.

Several factors are attributed to foodscaping’s rise to prominence in the modern world even though it has been around for centuries. Some explanations point to the rising cost of fresh food in supermarkets and how the prices are continually fluctuating.

Other sources, however, state that increased urbanization, rising eco-consciousness, and climate change also account for the surge in foodscaping’s popularity.

(Image: MrDaiGraphicDesigner¹⁵)

If you’re interested in this form of landscaping and farming it’s not necessary for you to start from a blank canvas. Planned properly, to ensure that the vegetables or fruits do not compete for local water or nutrient resources, it’s possible to incorporate fruit trees, berry bushes, edible flowers, herbs, beans, lettuce, cabbages, and more into your existing beautiful garden

Foodscaping is a sustainable design concept that helps produce more food, reduces food waste, and improves food security in an urban setting that either has limited space or a large backyard, and that includes businesses and schools.

Many vegetable plants make for perfect companion plants as they have attributes that ward off harmful pests and keep some diseases at bay. Similarly, some flowers attract beneficial insects that prey on insects that hungrily devour any tasty-looking green leaf.

Prime examples to use in your landscape gardening/foodscaping gardening project are:

• Fresh basil
• Rosemary
• Onions
• Fennel
• Parsley
• Rhubarb
• Dill
• Kale
• Cilantro

There are more that you can plant to enhance the overall aroma of your landscape, and that will add an element of texture as well.

A bonus of combining these two gardening styles is that edible plants can often be grown in areas of your yard where ornamental plants cannot survive, such as where there is too much shade for most of the day.

Gardeners who have been experimenting with foodscaping for a few years quickly learn to transform an overrun bed of irises into a tropical paradise by adding rhubarb and edging it with deliciously red strawberries.⁷

A vegetable garden does not have to be boring, and not all vegetables are all green. Just as with flowers, there are deep purples, flashy reds, bright yellows, and a whole range of vibrant colors that can liven up your landscape quite dramatically.

Landscape Gardening and How To Landscape Sustainably

Climate awareness is spreading across the globe like wildfire.

There is hardly a person on the planet who is not aware of the damage being done by man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and everyone wants to do their part to mitigate that damage.

(Image: congerdesign¹⁶)

Landscape gardening with the proper conservation methods, can be a useful tool in the fight against climate change. Combined with a landscaping vegetable garden it becomes a sustainable force for reversing the harm being done to the planet.

Shifting to sustainable landscaping techniques where water is conserved and reused, and only organic fertilizers, will help you contribute to conserving your local ecosystems and prevent air pollution and soil erosion.

Simple techniques like grass-cycling work wonders for improving soil health. This is the practice of leaving some grass cuttings on the lawn after you’ve just finished mowing and, as they start to decompose, will leach nutrients into the soil.

Introducing organic matter such as compost and mulch into your sustainable landscape as often as possible will also aid in improving soil quality by enriching it with useful nutrients.

Mulch will prevent soil from drying out, weeds from sprouting, water from evaporating prematurely, and erosion, dust, and muck from spreading. It does break down over time so will need replenishing regularly.

As a homeowner and a keen gardener, you can play an active role in efficiently managing the available resources in your backyard and in the process reduce waste, prevent pollution, and conserve water.

Using sustainable landscape gardening practices makes good ethical sense and with a touch of forward planning, you will be able to design a self-sustaining garden that is both environmentally sound and aesthetically pleasing.

Frequently Asked Questions About Landscape Gardening