One of the best ways to make your garden something special is to build or add structures to your landscape. Structures can take the form of useful buildings, sports areas, decorative features, ornamental passageways or barriers, water features and many other features. Here is a list of some structures you can consider using in your landscape to make it more exciting visually while adding practical usage to your garden.
- Art sculptures
- Arches or archways
- Boulders or rocks
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Bridges
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(Bridges, small, ornamental)
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Built-in barbecues
- Built-in furniture
- Car ports
- Decorative pots
- Dry river beds
- Fences
- Fountains
- Gates or Gateways
- Gazebos
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Outdoor rooms
- Paths or pathways
- Patios
- Pergolas
- Pilasters
- Play area
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Ponds
- Potting sheds
- Ramadas
- Shade cover
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Sport courts
- Steps or stairways
- Storage sheds
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Swimming pools
- Trellises
- Walls
- Waterfalls
Any of these structures can be done simply or elaborately, on a large scale, small or anything in between. Your budget along with the scale of your garden design will help to determine how your garden features should be built.
Make sure you use structures as a part of an overall design. Features should be integrated with the flow of your landscape. Paths, stairways and other passageways can lead up to large structures. Another version of the same concept is the flow of a dry riverbed leading the eye to or from a water feature or a group of large rocks and boulders. Your structure can create a focal point or be the central theme the whole garden is designed around. Don’t design too many features or structures into a landscape or they will visually fight against each other. If you need to build unrelated structures close to each other, divide up the space with screening walls, fences, trees or other ways to visually separate the features.
Build structures into your landscape to make your outdoor space more useful and inviting and to transform your garden from the ordinary to the extraordinary.
Comments
Beautiful options to give depth and scale to a garden.
These are great suggestions and I really want to build a cabinet for the bar-b-cue area.
Structures can supplement or detract from a landscape. What steps should a person take to achieve a good balance?
I am going to build a dry creek bed this week.
Keep up the good work with all the great articles.
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