New Landscape Design Concepts for Your Garden

Falling out of love with your garden? Want something new? Maybe some flowers, vegetables, or fruits? Or a patio, some tiles, or a tree or two?

You’re not the first to fall out of love with your garden. But you can’t just start planting trees, flowers, or tiles here and there. I mean, you can, but it won’t look like a relaxing escape where you can lounge with a book, tend to your plants, or entertain your friends and family.

If you want a beautiful outdoor space where you can relax, you need to know what you want it to look like before you start moving grass patches or planting trees. But finding what you want your garden to look like can be confusing.

Let’s look at 20 garden design concepts that’ll inspire you to get outside and begin planting.

20 Landscape Design Concepts for Your Garden

Looking for some design ideas for your garden? Let’s get some inspiration by checking out some of the best:

1. Install Garden Lights
Garden lights can enhance the beauty of your hydrangeas, orange plants, or cypresses. You can also use them as a focal point at night, to make a statement, or to highlight your landscaping décors, such as stone pillars or flower walls.
You can even use garden lights on flower walls or hedges as subtle pathway lighting.

2. Put in Stone Pathways
If you want to put pathways into your garden, choose a stone because it’s one of the most resilient materials out there. It can withstand heavy weather conditions and extreme foot traffic, requires almost no maintenance, and looks incredible all year round.

3. Use Tiles to Create a Pop of Color
Instead of grass, think about using colorful tiles in your garden. The tiles will create a natural conversation pit, provide a welcome pop of color, and are easier to maintain than grass.

If you’re worried your garden won’t look as lovely, you can put plenty of plants or flower beds around the tile pit.

4. Utilize Cactus to Add Textural Contrast
A cactus can provide a much-needed textural contrast in a garden full of lush flora. Plus, cacti are easy to care for and grow, look great in potted plants, thrive in various climates, and require little to no maintenance.

5. Brighten Your Landscape with Bougainvillea
If you have a small garden in your backyard, you could have a bougainvillea spilling over the wall. It’ll add texture to your garden and give it a color of pop.

6. Add Mini Water Features
Making a pond is difficult in a small- or mid-sized garden. Yet, if you want some water features but think a fountain is too much, consider adding mini water features. You could make a small stream lined with colored pebbles, a short waterfall, or a miniature pond.

You could even put a carved water basin to the side of your garden — great for any birds who like to perch in your garden.

7. Create Flower Walls
If you think the white wall in your backyard looks sparse, decorate it with flowers. You could use climbing rose, bougainvillea, sweet peas, star jasmine, Virginia creepers, scarlet runners, hydrangeas, morning glory, honeysuckle, or clematis.

8. Grow a Fig Ivy Canopy
A climbing fig is an evergreen climbing vine. If you have an iron or stone canopy in your garden, you could create a green breezeway at the entrance of your garden. You could even weave another plant, like a climbing hydrangea, to give the fig ivy some added pop.

Plus, you could use garden wall lights to highlight the ivy and call attention to its leaves.

9. Allow Greenery to Grow Between Stone Tiles
If you’ve already got stone tiles in your garden but make sure nothing grows between them, consider allowing grass to take up space in those runnels. The grass will provide some much-needed contrast and make the path look more inviting.

10. Limit Yourself to Roses … or Not
Most people think of roses when looking for flowers, but they’re not your only option. You could go with jasmine, carnations, tulips, zinnias, sunflowers, marigolds, Angelonia, alliums, begonias, daylilies, hyacinths, and so much more.

You could plant flowers anywhere you want — besides a walkway, in front of a box-cut hedge, around trees. Plus, some flowers, such as hyacinths, grow for weeks, making your garden look like a stunner whenever you host a party!

11. Get a Raised Bed or Two
If your garden is flat as far as the eye can see, throw down a 6-inch wooden hedge, fill it with soil, and plant your favorite vegetables or flowers. The raised beds will look great and allow you to grow delicate vegetables like lettuce because there’s zero foot traffic.

12. Grow a Living Archway
Remember how we asked you to grow a fig ivy canopy? Scratch that idea. Instead, make a living canopy from grape vines, climbing roses, star jasmines, or Japanese wisteria. If you plant an edible vine, it’ll give you food for several months of the year.

But if you plant a flowering vine, you’ll have picturesque views all year round!

13. Use a Modern Fountain to Set the Scene
If you have enough space in your garden and love the sound of water falling because it calms you down, what better way to create a soothing zone in your home than by installing a modern foundation?

The fountain will be great for relieving stress when you’re overworking and a fantastic background for outdoor parties. A win-win, no?

14. Grow a Flower Border or Wall
Forget using leylandiis as hedges. Instead, go for flowers like lavender, dwarf crape myrtle, viburnum, summersweet, weigela, potentilla, lilac, chaste tree, azalea, bridal wreath spirea, forsythia, deutzia, oleander, or hardy hibiscus.

All of the above flowers can help you add a pop of color to your garden and make it a lively place all year round.

15. Create a Shaded Patio
If you don’t have a stone archway to decorate with climbing vines, you can let a climbing vine crawl all over your patio shade. A lilac or climbing rose vine will create a stunning contrast when paled against dark patio shade pillars — a welcome sight when your guests are tired from eating.

16. Cover Your Walls with Ivy
Some gardens are surrounded by old walls. If you’re the proud owner of such a garden, hide the rusticness of your walls with ivy. You can choose whatever type of ivy you like!

17. Plant Towering Cypress Trees
Do the flowering beds and shaped hedges need a little something to create contrast? Plant some towering cypress trees in your garden.

If you can, get your trees near the entrance of your garden. They will create a natural entry and look great when you put some lights throughout them.

18. Think About an Orange Grove in Pots
If you don’t want trees to take over your garden, plant them in pots, especially if you’re going with fruit. Why? Because they’ll be easy to manage, prune, and look after. Plus, bugs will have a hard time falling on you when you’re pulling fruit.

19. Install Tree Lanterns
If you have a tall tree in your home or maybe several short, thin ones, think about how great they’ll light all lit up at night. You can use a wire light or small tree lanterns to highlight the leaves and patterns of your trees.
The lanterns will help light the pathway, lessen shadows in dark places, and help you keep an eye on children playing under your trees. Plus, they make a show-stopping statement.

20. Put Gravel in Your Garden
Gravel is the queen of looking good. It looks great when you walk all over it, provides a contrast to flower beds or trees, and makes your garden look more interesting. It will make it easier for your guests to walk between raised beds, provide a more stable surface, and draw the eye toward the flowers, vegetables, or trees in your garden.

Plus, you won’t have to stomp through wet mud after a rainfall event. So, if you have raised beds in your garden, think about putting gravel between them.

The Bottom Line
There are a million and one ways you can make your garden look more beautiful, but if you’re out of ideas and need inspiration, we hope the above ideas helped you!

But if you’re hesitant about messing with your garden or have too many options to go through, you could consult a landscape architect or company. They’ll help you narrow down what you want and create a plan for how you can achieve that, which is easier said than done.

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