One way to bring a little structure into the nature of your backyard is through hardscaping. Hardscaping uses concrete, stone, bricks, and other materials to create designs and systems within your landscape.
Hardscaping adds a lot of benefits to your yard, from aesthetic to structural. If you’ve considered hardscaping but weren’t sure it was for you, here are Custom Acres’ solid answers to why you need hardscaping in your Florida home.
Keeps People off Your Grass – Walking Paths
You put a lot into your lawn. We live in a region that can have green grass all year long, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take work.
Lawncare takes fertilizer, aeration, overseeding, and watering, especially in the Florida heat!
With all the time and effort to maintain that beautiful lawn, you don’t want people walking on it any more than they have to. After all, too much foot traffic compacts soil and causes bare spots.
The solution? Create walking paths through your property to lead guests from one foot-traffic-friendly spot to another. Walking paths are a lovely addition to a yard and have ancillary benefits.
Leads the Eyes and Feet to the Best Parts of the Yard
Besides keeping foot traffic to a minimum, walking paths and other hardscaping features have the benefit of creating focal points for the rest of your yard.
Walking paths act as a frame and tell the feet as well as the eyes where to focus attention. You can use your walking paths to show the connection between your patio and your favorite gardens.
We’re In Florida – Expand Your Living Space
The subtropical Floridian weather means that we can spend time outdoors for most if not all of the year. One way to enjoy the outdoors in your home is to create an outdoor living space.
Patios, outdoor kitchens, and more are great places to throw dinner parties and entertain guests. The best way to have a garden party is to have a garden that makes people want to party!
Outdoor Living Spaces Increase Home Value!
Adding outdoor living space is like building an additional room to your home. But unlike traditional home remodeling and additions, a patio or other outdoor living space creates a lot of bang for your buck.
Outdoor hardscaping additions can be added to your home at a fraction of the cost and inconvenience of building a new room.
Less Upkeep
Flower gardens, trees, and shrubs have a few things in common. First, they are all beautiful and alive. But they also all take a lot of upkeep to manage!
One of the nice things about hardscaping is that you don’t have to spend much time maintaining it. There’s no need for fertilizer, seeds, trimming, or pruning. Other than a pressure wash now and then, hardscaping generally takes care of itself.
Poured Concrete – Easy to Shape to Your Unique Personality
Adding hardscape surfaces to your backyard not only requires little maintenance, but they are also comparatively easy to install when compared to other additions and materials.
Concrete is easy to shape to your tastes to create whatever feature you have imagined. In addition to shaping concrete, it is easy to change the color to match your home, landscape, or other property components.
Hardscaping lends itself well to modern and rustic aesthetics and just about everything. Incorporating stone and brick adds variety and choice to whatever hardscaping ideas you’ve designed.
Heat Up or Cool Down with Water Feature and Fire Pits
Ready for a hot take? Florida is hot! But we have our fair share of cool evenings as well.
You can use hardscaping features to work with the weather we have. Water features are an excellent place to sit and reflect as well as cool off. Fountains, birdbaths, and ponds are all examples of ways to incorporate water into your landscape.
Contrarily, in the cooler evening, you might enjoy sitting by a fire. Firepits are an excellent place for guests to gather. They add both light and warmth to a nighttime party.
Firepits come in varying degrees of complexity. You can choose a simple one that burns propane or wood that serves primarily as a focal point for guests to circle or go all out with cooking options, like grates or a full-on grill.
Retaining Walls – Style, Structure, and Seating
A downpour can turn a mulched garden into a mess quicker than you can grab an umbrella. Unfortunately, gravity and water are partners in crime; your gardens have difficulty protecting themselves from them.
Luckily, one way you can use hardscaping to benefit your gardens and other landscape structures is with retaining walls. Though you’ve likely seen tall concrete retaining walls bordering highways and interstates, there’s no reason your retaining wall has to be so dull!
Like everything else in your landscape, you can use your retaining wall to express your creativity. Bordering your gardens with creative materials, creating tiers, and carving or painting designs onto the vertical surfaces of your walls are just a few ways you can transform your retaining wall from simply functional to fabulous!
Retaining walls can also be a way to create additional seating around your firepit and patio.
Let Us Do You A Solid
As you can see, hardscaping is a versatile and dynamic method of creating more usable space in your backyard. The only question is, how do you want to use it?
Custom Acres is here for all of your hardscaping and other landscaping needs. If you have questions, please ask. You can also visit Custom Acres’ Facebook page to comment or ask questions.
And don’t feel like you’re putting us out. We’d love to do you a solid!