5 Ways To Make Your Landscape Flexible For Entertaining
How can you make your backyard work better for entertaining purposes? With more Americans than ever before utilizing their homes and yards as prime entertainment locales, creating a landscape that facilitates more entertaining use is vital. And one key to accomplishing this is to build in flexibility. Here are five ways you can boost flexibility in the backyard.
1. Add Different Zones
Zone-based landscape designs seek to create different spots for different activities. You might add a dining zone, a lounge zone, a conversation zone, a garden zone, and a pool zone, for instance. These zones allow several different types of activities to occur together or separately, and zones can be repurposed without altering the design as a whole.
2. Create Double Duty Areas
If your backyard isn't large enough to support all the zones you want, work to make each one pull double duty. Your pool or spa area could double as a conversation grouping around a fire pit. With the right layout, the deck can support both cooking and dining. And a flat, unadorned wall could turn your patio into an outdoor movie theater at night.
3. Keep Greenery Mobile
Avoid installing too much permanent greenery in areas that may otherwise be utilized for entertainment. Rather than plant a lot of large trees, for instance, use container gardening to make boundaries more alterable. Pots, hanging baskets, window boxes, and planters are all easily rearranged to make space for new uses. Plant permanent landscape features as a more skeletal function so you can build on it later.
4. Include Lots of Shade
Shade is key to making the backyard useful for most entertainment. Don't skimp on it. Include both artificial sources like awnings and overhangs as well as natural sources like strategically-placed trees and climbing vines. A good shade plan includes flexible options such as movable umbrellas or retractable awnings and seasonal shade from deciduous plants.
5. Make Landscape a Canvas
The landscape around entertainment areas should operate as a canvas of sorts. This canvas should provide plenty of flexible space and neutral areas you can use in various ways near the home, pool, spa, and outbuildings. But the farther away from these spaces you go, the more your landscape should become a beautiful backdrop.
Want more ideas to keep your backyard as flexible as possible so you can entertain in all the ways that please you? Start by meeting with a landscape designer in your area today. Together, you can assess your goals, your yard, and your resources to create something that will make you happy to stay home with friends and family.
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