Olioboard.com Great for Landscaping

Love Olioboard.com!!  I've used it to design my own home, and now I use it for landscaping ideas as well.  Here is a house with a similar street address to mine, but in Merrick NY instead of Salt Lake City:

You can see that the tree in the middle of the front lawn is covering up too much of the house, and the asphalt driveway that doubles as a walkway to the front door can use some dressing up.  In 20 minutes, I made this:

olioboard.com potential for curb appeal

What a turn-around a stone walkway would be, matching bushes on each side of the front door, removing the tree in the middle of the yard (not the trees in the parkstrip or the far corner), and planting some bushes under what is probably a living room window to the right of the front door, and a tall tree at the corner of the house??

What fun to tinker for just a few minutes with the landscaping for a home for free!

Landscape Gardens with a Pro for 3 Reasons

Today I had Britten Sadler, a local landscape designer, come to give me a consultation on our new yard.  I found her through a local nursery, and paid her $150 for 1.5 hours of her time and a drawing of our new front yard and a drawing of our new back yard.  She is well worth the money!!  Here is why.

1. She has ideas that I wouldn't have come up with.

There is a flagstones planter about 20' x 2.5' in the front yard that is falling forward and is in the way for people getting out of their cars in the driveway.  We'll use those stones for a new curved low wall in a better spot near our flagstone chimney.

wdlandscapes.com, Stonework

2. She knows what is dying, what is not good to have near the foundation (trees like aspens that send suckers up), when a lawn grade is off, and what is so valuable and worth featuring as part of a new design.

This is something that you can't grasp just by listening to the radio garden talk show on Satuday mornings.  Just walking around the yard for 15 minutes with a professional taught me more about the yard than hours and hours of radio shows.

thegloriousgarden.blogspot.com, Aspens, love them or leave them?

3. Her opinion trumps future second guessing by me, previous owners, and my neighbors.

peggyparks.wordpress.com, Dealing with Nosy Neighbors

Our neighbors are teasing us that they have to approve our landscape plans.  I'm sure they will love what we will do, although the design is a little different from the amazing cutting flower beds that the home's original owner labored over so many years.  She was an amazing gardener.  We can prove to these neighbors that we put a lot of thought into what we do with the yard when we show them the plans that our designer drew up for us today.