Blog – Artistic Landscapes

Would you like a beautiful garden

Would you like to have a beautiful garden, a garden you can admire every day of your life? This is what Artistic Landscapes can offer you!

Deciding to entrust your garden landscaping to a landscaping professional creates great expectations. There are so many questions in order to succeed in your garden project: type of garden desired, which plants, what equipment, …

In summer, Americans love to not just renovate their homes, but also their gardens and yards. 2/3 of people invest a large part of their summer budget in the maintenance of their outdoor space with an exploding demand for landscaping contractors. Terrace, small installations or a large garden, a successful project has to be well thought.

Landscaping: what type of garden to choose

The garden or terrace should look like the personality of the owners. All the questions we ask the owners must allow them to define their project in order to adapt perfectly to their tastes and their expectations.

Whether in a town or in the countryside, desires may differ. Some people, especially in metropolitan areas, may dream of a country-style garden, a garden with the air of the countryside in the city. It will be rather unstructured, with a lot of flowers. A natural garden with many plants such as lavender, olive trees, cypresses and which plays as much on the colors as on the smells.

In another style, the contemporary garden includes very graphic plants, for example grasses and uses a reduced plant palette, with only 5 or 6 plants. It largely uses the mineral decoration, with black and gray decorative pebbles and even spheres, that is to say marble balls, placed on white pebbles, to create a beautiful contrast. Finally, you may also want a more classic garden that will be very structured thanks to hedges and beds.

Country atmosphere, heather earth plants, pink hydrangeas and flashy rhododendrons or azaleas, a landscaper can plant different varieties of plants to obtain variegated blooms throughout the year. The trick? A beautiful Virginia creeper as well as a climbing hydrangea that covers a wall of bricks.

Plants adapted to the terrain

There is what you want to do … but also what you can do depending on the ground or the exposure of your outdoor space. Soil analysis is essential. Depending on the region you are in, on limestone or clay soil, you will not plant the same plants.

If the soil is chalky, some plants like Heather Earth will not be comfortable. The latter (hydrangeas, camellias, rhododendrons or azaleas …) will rather thrive in acidic soil. Likewise, some Mediterranean plants that do not like waterlogged soils are not recommended in clay soils. Climate and exposure also play an important role in the choice of plants. In the South, the plant range is obviously not the same even if oleander and olive trees are still possible even in the North. Finally, if the plot is full sun or more in the shade, the choice of plants will also vary.

To dress up a small space near the swimming pool, a landscaper can choose to add a touch of the exotic and play with the different volumes. We can thus distinguish between small and large plants as well as different sizes and thicknesses of pebbles. The addition of blue crushed glass which harmonizes perfectly with the color of the swimming pool is a plus.

Think about your way of living your garden

The garden or patio has become the fifth room in the house and the way you live will influence the landscaping. Should there be a patio or rest areas, do you want a superb ceremonial lawn? A table for lunch with family or friends? A barbecue area?

It is also important to know if the family has children, especially young ones. If this is the case, we will of course avoid poisonous plants if ingested such as oleander or low stinging plants such as cacti or yucca rostrata.

In urban areas, the question of owners who intend to preserve their intimate space also often arises. Many people call on landscapers to create their cocoon. Various solutions are then possible, starting with hedges but rather than traditional cedar hedges which require a lot of maintenance, we prefer to recommend country hedges.

Composed of several species, there is always one that is flowered for an aesthetic hedge, that we do not need to prune and which promotes biodiversity.

A problem with too close neighbours? On a terrace, the solution can go through a wooden fence. In the foreground, a beautiful climbing clematis has been chosen which will gradually vegetate the space.

By landscaperDefault PostFebruary 5, 2021July 14, 2021

How to choose the right landscaper

It is difficult to choose the right landscaper for your garden. In recent years, the number of landscaping companies has grown steadily in the United States, to over 100,000 in recent years.

A search on Google in your locality and its surroundings, will already greatly reduce this number, but you will still have a substantial list. In this article, we offer some ideas to help you choose the right landscaper:

Notoriety

Before you even start researching a landscaping company, there might be a name you know spontaneously. You’ve remembered this name at a trade show, with friends, on advertisements, vehicles …

You may have already seen gardens made by this company during your walks. The notoriety of a company is not in itself a main criterion for your choice, but it proves that this landscaper is an important player in your sector. It reassures you about the sustainability of the business and the fact that other people have trusted it before you.

This physical notoriety can be coupled today with a virtual notoriety. You will probably find it easier to trust a business that shows up on Google. Or even more to the one who is present and who participates on social networks. Notoriety has a reassuring and reassuring side to all these elements.

Choose your landscaper according to your work

For small garden work, a company with less than 3 employees may be sufficient, for a complete landscaping or restructuring of the garden, this will no doubt be insufficient. Creating a garden requires multiple skills, but also mobilizes a team permanently in your garden.

The specialized equipment required for landscaping work is often expensive and depreciable only by companies with significant human resources.

While fellow landscapers are extremely versatile people, knowing how to move from carpentry to landscaping masonry, beware of companies offering too many services with few staff.

Likewise, many landscapers are now swimming pool specialists, in fact this professional association may prove to be logical. But while there are some very good landscapers and pool specialists, not all of them have the perspective and the experience that this dual skill requires.

Design

The landscaping of a garden is also and above all a design story, although many technical considerations may come into play when choosing your landscaper.

This should correspond to your needs and if possible anticipate them and this in a contemporary garden style, from this year and not from thirty years ago.

There are many landscapers whose garden design work comes down to following your guidelines and coming up with very few new ideas. However, when you call on a landscaper worthy of the name, he must be a source of proposals to suggest the solutions best suited to your land and your budget, even if it is totally contrary to the initial idea.

Finally ask to see examples of garden design, it is important to visualize the projects that this company offers. The designer can be very good, but if you, the client, do not understand anything about the project he is proposing to you, you will probably go your way.

The Showroom

What interest for you that your landscaper has a Showroom or an exhibition garden?

There are 3 main ones.

The first is to visualize the concepts. You have chosen landscapers offering innovative technical ideas or solutions. They are by definition not widely used, the showroom will help you easily make your choice by confronting you with the chosen solution.

The second interest is summed up in this proverb: “It is at the foot of the wall that we see the mason”. As you walk through the exhibition gardens, you will be able to visualize the know-how of each landscaper, see their area of expertise, their style, etc. The more you know about the companies you want to solicit, the more easily you will place your trust , or your distrust.

Finally, when the quote is signed, the showroom will make it easy to choose the materials for your project on site. It will be safer for you to choose a paving placed in a situation in a garden, rather than on a sample behind a desk.

The price

Despite the previous criteria, there remains a determining factor in the choice of your landscaper, this is the last line of his estimate. It’s a reflex that we all have to go right to at the end to see the overall cost, but of course you have to dig deeper into the estimate.

The first thing is to see if the estimate is already detailed item by item. To understand a price, it is important to see what it is made up of and therefore how you will be able to define the quality / price ratio.

For an identical service such as a paved courtyard, for example, you will get different quotes. Even if the paving is identical, a landscaper may have included the replacement of all the concrete manholes by more expensive cast iron buffers, or the passage of sheaths not provided for by his competitor. The joints may be sand for one when it is polymer resin for the other.

Then you will make your choice based on your quality criteria.

Affinity

All of us have have an immediate good impression when you meet your landscaping artist. You know this impression we have of people, of those with whom we immediately know that a relationship will be created for many years to come.

Well, the same can happen with contractors, you know from the first meeting the flow has gone well and there is a very good chance that you will sign your garden project with him.

This is therefore a significant factor in choosing your landscaper, even if neither you nor I can explain it.

As we have seen, many parameters can guide you in your choice of a landscaper. There are also differences specific to each company such as technical specificities… which will influence you.

By landscaperVideo PostNovember 20, 2020July 14, 2021

Landscaping with more or less maintenance

Another parameter to take into account, the time you want to devote to the maintenance of your garden.

If you prefer a maintenance-free garden or terrace, it is better to avoid strongly developing plants. In this case, do not opt for a French garden with its hedges or its beds to be pruned, and do not choose plants which will develop a lot and which will therefore have to be resized. On the contrary, bet on grass-like plants (angel hair …) which just require one size every two years.

The trend is also no longer necessarily for a perfectly mowed lawn, with more and more homeowners limiting the mowing of grass (or mowing higher) or even leaving part of their lawn in, like a flowery meadow, which limits maintenance while promoting biodiversity.

We can also offer perennials in the beds that bloom again for several seasons rather than annuals that must be replanted each year, with microphylla sage, lavender, gaura, etc.”

Finally, if you favor plants that require less water, watering will be reduced. The trick of landscapers? Mulch at the foot of the beds, which limits watering and weeding.

A beautiful terrace can combine compact Fermob furniture in colored metal, warm but maintenance-free composite slats and numerous plant compositions for a green rooftop setting. The landscapers can choose to plant persistent plants, for a green terrace all year round with an olive tree, a myrtle, a palm tree, a griseline and a small hanging rosemary.

Landscaping: thinking about the project as a whole

You might not have the budget to make the garden of your dreams come true all at once. However, certain points must be anticipated, otherwise complicated and expensive work may be required.

If you have planned a swimming pool, a pool house, a pergola … you have to reserve a dedicated space for them. You also have to think about how the garden is going to be watered.

In the hotter climates, many owners have a well. If necessary, they can install reasoned watering with a drip system which will provide the right amount of water to the people. For lawns, we install automatic sprinkler systems with timers, which must also be anticipated by burying pipes in the ground.

Lighting is also important in the design of the outdoor space, both to enjoy the garden in the evening and to bring out the contrasts of the beds or the decor.

For electric lighting, you have to think about integrating it into your electrical panel. Solar lighting can also be a solution with economical and nomadic lamps. Finally, do not forget that it will take some time to realize this garden and that the best season to plant is fall.

Some professional landscaping advice

In the event of an unsightly wall to hide, landscaping experts advise to bet on painting. An unattractive wall can also be painted in black or emerald green, consistent with the interior space. You can also plant climbers or add beautiful trellises or palisades in wood or metal.

The garden must be as attractive in winter as in summer and play with shapes as well as volumes. We will position the creeping plants in the foreground, the plants halfway up in the center and finally, the large subjects in the background. Do not hesitate to vary the colors of the flowers to brighten up the garden. any season.

Quite a few plants in a contemporary garden can give pride to a place with a mineral decoration. Natural riprap mixed with plants, oak staircase and white gravel and finally a beautiful lawn can give an ultra refined layout.

Think about the budget

The landscaping contractor will establish an estimate, taking into account the design but also the time he will spend on your garden.

We quickly ask our customers the question of the budget, especially if they have a little grandiose desires. $125 per m2 is a basic budget, for a few pretty beds, a lawn … But if you want a terrace in natural stone or exotic wood, lighting … the budget is not going to be the same.

It all depends on the time spent, the difficulty of the work but also the choice of materials. That’s why landscapers prefer to establish an ultra-detailed quote line by line. This way the client has an idea of the final budget, but he can easily remove this or that line and operation to fit it into his envelope.

By landscaperQuote PostOctober 20, 2019July 14, 2021