Lydia Quinn asked:




Once you have your dream log home built, your likely next step is landscaping. If your log home was integrated into the environment enough, you may not need to do much, if anything at all, since the natural surroundings, including trees, bushes and other native flora should grow naturally. But if your log home is in a residential area, is in an area which has little native plants, trees or shrubbery or if you are starting from scratch with totally cleared space around your home, you’ll need some ideas on where to begin. Here are some tips for landscaping around your log home:

Planning

Careful planning is crucial, especially if you’re starting with a blank slate. You can get advice from employees at a local nursery, they can often recommend appropriate native plants that will not only grow well in your area, but will also look natural with your log home. You may also consider using software to design your landscape. There are many programs available for your computer that will help you design your own landscape. Just plug in the measurements for your house and surrounding area and then you’ll be able to select from tens of thousands of different trees, plants, shrubs, flowers and many more options. It’s similar to a drag and drop interface. You’ll also be able to select the color and type of the exterior of your home, and view a 3D preview of how the plants will look when young and mature against the backdrop of your home. There are many good programs available but one excellent program is 3D Garden Composer, which includes extensive tutorials to make it easy for you to use.

Log Home Considerations

At every stage, you’ll want to be careful to consider not just how your landscaping will look against and around your house but also how it will affect your house. For instance, you probably won’t want to plant something like Ivy or a crawling plant against your home, since the plant growing too near your logs may cause aesthetic problems like water stains or even cause damage to your logs over time, even if they are extensively water treated.

Style & Aesthetics

Since your log home has a very different exterior than traditional homes, the style of your landscaping should be a good match for this. For instance, a formal garden, an Oriental style garden or an English Cottage style garden and plantings probably wouldn’t go well with your log home. A log home tends to look best with a more casual style of garden with plantings and trees selected to enhance not only the logs and the exterior of your home but also the natural surroundings.

Maintenance

Think carefully about maintenance before selecting your plantings. Will you have enough time to maintain flowers or trees that will need to be pruned every so often? Will you have the time to rake up leaves of the trees you have planted? This is another reason why native plants and trees are a good choice for log homes, as the maintenance of native species will usually be much less.

Whatever landscaping you choose, above all, it should enhance the look and feel of your log home but also add to it’s value.

Eddie Crooks asked:




About Home Landscaping

The first thing that you need to consider when do home landscaping is the kind of yard that you have. For example, do you have a yard that is small, or a yard that is small? Regardless of the size of your lawn, you should know that when it comes to choosing the right home landscaping looks, any size lawn can yield many different ideas.

For example, if you have a larger lawn, you can implement many different home landscaping ideas at the same time. For example, you like flower gardens, but you also like herb gardens. With a larger yard, you can have both! Although, it should be noted that some people with smaller yards have been able to implement many different landscaping ideas as well.

Make one garden in one area of your yard, and another garden in another area of your yard. It should be noted, however, that if you decide to make only one garden that is composed of both flowers and herbs make sure that the flowers are not overtaken by the herbs.

If you would like to keep your home landscaping simple, that is, of course, another good idea. For example, if you want to have privacy, consider planting flower bushes in the area that you want privacy. However, to keep it simple, you should make sure that the bushes you choose are slow-growing and do not need much care.

Another interesting home landscaping idea is to use rocks. Yes, rocks that are found in the backyard can actually be used in landscaping. For example, if you find a rock in your yard, consider painting it and placing it in your garden. This is an example of how some landscaping can also be artwork.

If you need more home landscaping ideas, go to your local garden center and ask for advice. You can also search the internet. Or, ask family and friends for their advice, especially if you like how they have landscaped their yards. With the proper research, you are sure to find the right home landscaping ideas!

Randy Letter asked:




You’ll want to use your savvy shopper’s skills to find the very best home landscape design software to help you with your future landscaping plans. If you’ve recently bought a home, or it’s finally time to spruce up your yard after a few years of making mortgage payments, you’ll probably be interested in all the delights home landscaping has to offer. You can just hire a professional landscape, but if you let them run wild with the project, they won’t necessary provide you with the results that you want or desire. If you leave your yard up to someone else, you might end up terribly disappointed. The right home landscape design software program can help you take control over your yard and make sure you’ll end up satisfied and content.

Where to Get Advice

Really the best place to find advice about which home landscape design software are best is from other homeowners who use this type of software. They are not experts, but they are people who have been in your position, and can offer the best perspective on your situation. A true gardener will tell you exactly what features work best in a home landscape design software to suite exactly what you want and need from this software. You can discover a great deal about what you don’t know that you actually need when you consult a person who already does a great amount of work with home landscaping. This type of consultation can help you not have to pay for fancy features that you really don’t need, while focusing on looking for the features in home landscape design software that is essential to you success.

Look Online

If you don’t personally know any home-landscaping enthusiasts to talk to about home landscape design software, you can search on the internet for review sites and forums to help you glean the information you need. People who are familiar with the software, and can often provide honest reviews and commentary that will help you decided with software package to buy often populate these sites.

What to Consider

You should consider your own priorities when picking out the perfect home landscape design software package. If your more interested in flowers and gardening, then you’ll want to pick up a home landscape design software more geared toward that type of landscaping focus. If you want to do things like build small ponds or gazebos and shrub sculptures, you’ll want to go with software that can help you design your yard using those things. Don’t ever forget that your preference is the most important, no matter what a self ascribed “expert” will tell you. You’re the one who has to live with the landscaping you end up with, so you need to have a strong say in every matter regarding your yard, from the home landscape design software used in the process the finished product. If you do it that way, you’ll be ultimately pleased with the end result, and you won’t have to worry about living with something you don’t really like.