by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: October 08, 2008   Last Updated: July 05, 2010

To improve the look of your home while being environmentally friendly, go green. You can, if you have the time and are oriented toward plants and their creative ways of enhancing your home, create your own do-it-yourself landscape design; if you have money, an interest, but little time, hire a professional for your landscape designs. Make this a two-fold effort, create energy saving ideas while at the same time beautifying your home. However you manage to do this, your comfort and your overall pleasure and your family's health should dictate the plants and the use of rocks, furniture, and other design paraphernalia.

Begin with what you have. If you live in an area with lots of space all around, you might want to enclose, or to at least mark off your property with trees or shrubs. Although, if you have children and pets, a fence might be a better option, especially for the back yard. If however you are limited to a small space you will want to make every inch of it count, front and back. Even with minimal space you can create depth and space with trellises, container growing and hanging baskets.

After removing all unwanted items such as dilapidated furniture, plantings from previous owners and you are down to the bare essentials you stand distance away and visualize what it will look like. Take pictures, if you are computer savvy buy landscape design software that will help in putting together your landscape design plan. In this phase of your plan decide how much you can spend, if and where you want landscaping lighting design. If it is not necessary for actual lighting - you already have adequate lighting and it would be too expensive to replace - then maybe low-voltage lighting in and among the plants will be better choices.

Since you are doing this yourself you will of course give yourself lots of time. Your landscaping design plan will, however, of necessity be complete. You will not want to plant anything until you get the bigger picture. Maybe the first six months will be learning and planning and getting acclimated to your software and learning about the best greenery for your area.

You will learn your soil type, what kind of trees will do best where and how much moisture it will need and for what purpose, other than decoration, it will be used for. After you are acquainted with all your choices and have lived in the house long enough to find out what its special needs are- where do I need shade, more sunshine, and other pertinent questions answered, will you ever lift a shovel to begin.

You have it all figured out to your satisfaction and your landscaping will begin to take shape. On a small scale probably because to rush in and get it all done immediately will be too expensive. You, being a frugal designer, care as much for the process as the finished product, intend to enjoy every little bit along the way. You buy some small trees and plant them and wait for them to grow. You do not buy them completely grown. You pacify your green thumb with some potted plants and a flower bed here and there. And you wait patiently until you can afford the next step.

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