Areas to Incorporate in Your Landscaping

A play area that will keep your young children in their own backyard, where you can keep an occasional eye on them, need not be an unattractive one. Include a paved area, if possible, for bicycle riding, skating, hopscotch, etc.

The sandbox might be a sunken one, flush with the lawn, or it might be a raised box, an extension of a wall or fence that can be planted later. Most choose to have something more than this to decorate their lawn, such as wall water fountains, old world wall fountains, or resin wall fountains.

Such imaginative ideas as hollowing out and painting an old stump to be used for a puppet theatre; getting hold of an unseaworthy rowboat which can be brightly decorated for playing Robinson Crusoe; or putting up a ladder for climbing the side of the tool shed or a garden wall, so that climbing in other areas may be out-of-bounds, are ideas that will keep the "gang" at your house.

Plan to have your drying yard and service area out of sight yet close enough to the house so that you are not inconvenienced. Screen these areas with shrubbery or fences. The service area should include propagating beds, cold frames. A tool shed or storage locker and your compost pit if you have one. Hot beds and cold frames should be located in a spot where they will be protected from north and north-west winds.

Be careful not to place your cold frame in a damp place unless you have first drained it thoroughly with drain tile. A vegetable garden can be a source of great enjoyment. It should be out of sight in a corner or screened with shrubbery because of the seasons when they is nothing growing in it.

But it can be a decorative addition to the garden, particularly if there are grass walks and attractive flowers around it. Besides a vegetable garden, you could just as easily install outdoor wall fountains, garden statues, or patio statuary.

Planning your driveway and walks so that they take up a minimum amount of room and yet provide a strong enough surfaces for the traffic they will bear calls for careful thinking. The well-designed house and grounds have the garage close to the house and near to the street. The garage situated way in back of the house is a hangover from horse-and-buggy days when the stable had to be remote from the house.

Today when the majority of home owners have cars, you can save space by using a garage path that also serves as the house path, or feeds into a short house walk. Although the driveway can be a short one, plan for off-street parking by having your driveway at least 20 feet from the street.

Most home driveways break down under heavy service trucks and traffic because the soil under the driveway is wet. Adequate drainage for wet spots, therefore, is a necessity. Good driveway materials are stable, and should not get washed away by storms or shoveled up with snow.

If, however, the driveway must be long and does form an important feature of your landscaping, a stable material may have to be passed up in favor of one like gravel or crushed rock, which will blend better with the surroundings.

Well designed walks with neat edgings, steps that seem to belong where they are placed, and intriguing little paths that lead you deeper into the garden can do much to improve your grounds. Some people choose to go a different route by getting large waterfalls, outdoor water features, or even indoor wall fountains.

You should make sure that you place emphasis on the selection of materials for this purpose. Concrete paths and steps, for example, while they are often just the right thing, can form too sharp a contrast with the surrounding turf and planting.

Informal walks of wood butts, such as slices of telephone poles, flagstones or tanbark may be much more suitable for this purpose. Colonial houses are traditionally set off by brick. Modern houses favour wood and small houses call for flags.