The plot of land around a country house is not just a piece of property and freedom from neighbors around the site in a city apartment, it is an opportunity to express yourself, your dream, your imagination with the tools of nature - trees, flowers, water, stones. Create a landscape design of a country house with their own hands is not difficult, but the skills to care for plants, artistic taste, hard work will still be needed.
The main thing is not to hurry, to approach the arrangement of the plot deliberately, the result will surely please, maybe not immediately, but only after a few years. But it's not scary, because the process of landscape design itself is a pleasure. Having a beautiful result once, you simply can’t stop.
Start is just the beginning.
Getting to the landscape design of a plot of a country house, carefully inspect it, evaluate the pros and cons, especially pay attention to:
- the location of the site relative to the cardinal points;
- shape, relief - the presence of hills, lowlands, ravines, ditches;
- growing plants - large trees, shrubs, perennials;
- composition, soil quality (wild grasses well characterize the soil composition);
- the location of the house and outbuildings;
- ground water level.
Starting work on the improvement of the site, get ready for the fact that you never finish them. Refining the site - a continuous process associated primarily with plants. Plants grow, they require watering, pruning, weeding, transplants, they are alive, and life cannot stop and stand still in the result.
From the location relative to the sides of the world depends on the illumination of the territory, security from the north, north-west winds. On the north side of the plot it is reasonable to plan protection from cold-resistant large plants, high fencing. It is possible to arrange farm buildings in this part. On the south side there will be comfortable heat-loving fruit plants, vegetable beds, flower beds.
Difficult terrain is not always worth aligning. This is the case of landscape design, when the minuses easily turn into pluses. It will be well decorated with a slope equipped with a staircase with stone steps, or a retaining wall, a gabion near the ravine. Natural elevation is ideal for alpine slides, and a marshy lowland for the pond. The shape of the plot defines the lines of planting trees and shrubs, the location of paths, and recreation areas.
Powerful old trees - a real landscape treasure. By making a large tree center, you can create a unique composition. High-sized plants give volume to the surrounding space. If the old trees on the site are not needed, interfere with the overall style, do not rush to remove them until the suitable plantings grow. Large plants perfectly retain moisture in the soil during dry periods, during periods of rain they well drain it, in the heat they protect it from the scorching sun, and cover it from cold winds in bad weather. To cut a big tree for a short time, and it will take several decades to grow. Removing large old trees, you expose the site for a long time, for 20-30 years, until new plantings grow, thereby worsening the general microclimate of the site.
Successful landscaping of a country site is an excellent microclimate.
Decorative, elegant plot is achieved by creating an optimal microclimate for growing plants. If this item is not observed, the care of plants will require tremendous efforts.
Soil features are difficult to track right away, sometimes it takes several years to abandon the cultivation of any plant due to improper soil. Laboratory soil analysis will clarify the situation, but the quality of the soil in one area may be different at a distance of several meters. Experience and observation will here become a lifesaver, and if there is no experience, just refuse to grow plants that grow poorly in your area with proper care. So you will save strength and nerves.
A big plus will be the location of a residential building in the depth of the plot. This layout gives comfort, security, hides from prying eyes, unusually decorates the house. Beautifully designed entrance, driveway give the landscape solidity and reliability. Not lucky with the layout, the house is located right on the road, and the plot behind it? The situation can be corrected by issuing from the site a beautiful open terrace, a cozy patio. Farm buildings are better placed on the north side of the site in order to protect it from the cold and make the most of the sunlight on the south side.
Groundwater is the “underwater rock” that destroys the already flowering gardens several years after planting. Well-established, giving the first fruits, apple trees begin to die for no apparent reason, the cherry does not grow at all, and water accumulates in the basement of the house. Investigation of the groundwater level is the first, most important, research that should be carried out when choosing a site. If the groundwater lies less than one and a half meters from the soil surface, additional drainage will be required.
Assessing the pros and cons of the territory, you can proceed to the detailed planning.
Design project - the basis for orderly work
Perhaps you are a creative person and can create a landscape by inspiration, today - a flower bed at the porch, and tomorrow - an arbor behind the house. The most experienced artist does not dare to draw a picture without preliminary sketches. Working on a site without a plan, you risk creating chaotic jumble of small architectural forms and overgrown plants. Then you still have to redo everything, structure and organize.
A preliminary project of landscape design will save time, effort and money, allow you to see the site in perspective, open up new opportunities. Highlight a couple of evenings for thinking through and detailed design of the project.
At this stage it is necessary:
- Highlight functional areas;
- Choose a style direction, appropriate decoration;
- Consider the location of sites, tracks;
- Choose the method of fencing;
- Decide on the irrigation system;
- Develop a scheme for power supply of garden communications, technical and decorative lighting.
Functional areas
These include places for recreation - gazebos, terraces, patios, cozy garden nooks, tea houses. A garden is a purely practical function (although it can be made decorative). It is necessary to determine the place for fruit crops, berries. If you are planning greenhouses, greenhouses, map out their location. A small reservoir - a pond with aquatic plants, a swimming pool in hot weather will greatly decorate the site. For dry soils on the sunny side, you can plan an alpine slide. Be sure to mark the lawn.
A lawn, even a tiny one, will decorate the garden at any time of the year. In late autumn, he pleases the eye with fresh greens all the way to the snow, and in spring he revives the garden before the leaves bloom in the trees. In the summer - serves as an excellent background for flowering plants.
To cook meat in the open air, consider a barbecue area, fireproof, protected from rain and wind. For children, plan the equipment of the play area - a sandbox, swings, children's houses.
Style direction. The choice of style depends on personal preferences and capabilities. The area near the house should make you happy every time you approach it, returning from work, from your trip, or simply go out to admire the flowers in the early morning. Choose the style of landscape design to which your soul responds, and the possibilities of realization will certainly be found.
- Regular style of English gardens requires impeccable taste, constant care of the lawn, plants, significant investments in paving, decorative flowerpots, sculptures, seedlings, garden equipment;
- The elegant light Mediterranean style implies a combination of stone - marble chips, sea pebbles, wooden elements (arches, pergolas, terraces) and climbing plants.
Having added evergreen coniferous plants to any style, one can achieve landscape expressiveness at any time of the year.
- Japanese style is not as simple as it seems at first glance. Accurate forms are achieved by the correct selection of plants, well thought out, verified planning, additional decoration with stones, wooden accessories.
- Landscape design in the style of "wildlife" is minimally expensive and easily adapts to the existing terrain. This is the best option if you come to a country house just for the weekend, you do not have the opportunity to regularly take care of plants.
- Rustic style is simple to implement, it is close in spirit to the "wild" natural, but is complemented by original elements from a tree such as a cart or wheel from it, clay pots, wicker weaves, simple decorative unpretentious plants - nasturtium, sunflower, mallow.
Landscape design of the area around the country house should be combined in style with the house and outbuildings.
Tracks and grounds
Paths connect the house with functional zones, allow you to move around the site in wet weather without problems, form the internal geometry of the territory. The covering of paths depends on the chosen garden style.
Regular style requires dense, even, homogeneous paving, the Mediterranean - more liberal, - here are acceptable combinations of different materials - stone, wood, pebbles, mosaic decoration. In rustic, natural, landscape styles, paths sprinkled with pine bark, lined with wooden circles or just lawn paths are possible.
Paths and paved grounds decorate the landscape, facilitate the care of the garden, movement on it. Having shown imagination in the design of the tracks with your own hands, you can really get a spectacular coverage with minimal investment.
Fencing
A very important, most costly element of the landscape design of a country house, depends primarily on the purpose - whether the fence is intended to protect against unauthorized entry or separates nearby areas purely symbolically.
After determining the destination, it is necessary to take into account the stylistic orientation of the house and, accordingly, the entire site. Brick and stone fences with wrought iron elements perfectly complement the English-style country cottage with a regular garden. A wicker wicker fence will perfectly decorate and protect a country house in a rustic style with a “wild” landscape, and a professional leaf fence will “kill” the most exquisite patio near the house.
There is no possibility to choose a fence that is stylistically suitable for the chosen landscape design? Decorate the fence with vertical gardening, wooden structures (gratings, screens), shrubs, trees.
Irrigation system
70% of plant care - watering work. Of course, you can limit yourself to an ordinary garden watering can, but you need to realistically estimate the amount of time and physical costs with this method.
The modern market of goods for the garden offers a huge amount of watering plants, from simple hoses with nozzles to powerful automatic systems that allow you to completely avoid manual labor, to control the humidity of large area plantations.
When designing plantings near the house, be sure to evaluate the possibilities of watering, if you do not do this in advance, then it will be very sad to watch exotic exotic specimens of flowers, shrubs or trees dry under the scorching rays of the sun.
Power supply and lighting. Maintenance, decoration of the territory requires electrical equipment - a pumping station, a pump system for a pond, a pool, a stream. It is possible to use an electric lawn mower and, of course, coverage of the area. The entire electrical system is mounted in view of operation in humid atmospheric conditions. It is good if the technical connection is separate from the decorative lighting.
An early solution of technical problems of electricity and water supply will relieve you of heavy manual labor in the landscape design of the site with your own hands, freeing up time for a pleasant stay and real creativity.
Plant selection
- This is the most important stage in the landscape design of a country site of any stylistic orientation.
Plants must comply with the climate zone in which the house is located. No matter how you wrap a date palm for the winter, it does not overwinter in the Moscow region. Most novice gardeners make this mistake by trying to temper the southerners with winters in the middle lane. The result is obvious, but attempts to subject the inhabitants of the subtropics to winter mutation do not stop.
- Relevant humidity. Marsh, coastal plants will not be able to grow on dry, stony soil, and succulents will "toil", rot near the pond. Plant requirements for a certain humidity are vital to them.
- Lighting. Plants of sunny places will be pulled out in the shade and no longer bloom profusely. Shade-tolerant species "burn" in the hot sun, do not develop in full force, "shrink" from the heat. Planting seedlings, flower seedlings, depending on the illumination of the place, will enable each plant to express itself in all its glory.
Do not hurry. You planted a sapling, and he "froze" does not grow? Do not touch it, do not undermine, do not transplant. Any plant needs to “get comfortable” in a new place, harden, take root well. A grassy plant will need several days, a deciduous tree sapling a year, and a coniferous plant 2-3 years.
The basic vegetative landscape design of the site is laid by large tall trees. Shrubs fill the "matrix" of large trees, flowers decorate, decorate it. Plot without krupnomerov looks flat, unfinished. If the trees have not yet grown, there is an easy way to add additional garden space with vertical gardening - near-wall, on arches and pergolas, with the help of climbing plants (maiden grapes, hops, different types of clematis).
For a better microclimate at the site, in order to lessen the damage to plants by pests and diseases, one should avoid planting monocultures and practice mixed plantings. High, winter-hardy species of plants are preferably planted on the north, north-west sides of the site, and gentle heat-loving plants - from the east and south sides.
To reduce the number of works on planting, transplanting plants into flower beds and ridges, it is better to plant winter-hardy perennials, fill the gaps between them with bright annual flowers. The principle of landing on rabatki - tall plants on the remote part, lower in the center, very small curb on the edge of the flower beds.
The combinations of flowers in terms of flowering, colors are infinitely varied. A couple of years of experiments on landscape design do it yourself to help you find your favorite options. Do not be afraid to experiment, the main thing is to do it with love for plants, and they will thank you for sure.
When landscaping a plot of a country house there is another golden rule. Do not grab all areas of work at once, do not try to cover the entire site at once in one season, if you do not have the opportunity to hire a brigade of gardeners. Even if the area is small, the amount of work to be enormous. Work gradually, consistently in accordance with the project.
First make a small flower bed near the entrance, keep it in perfect condition. It turns out? Then continue further, lay the alpine hill with your own hands, bring it to perfection. Do not deviate from the master plan, gradually, step by step, master the entire area.
Garden furniture and accessories
Wicker chairs, a table on a paved, cozy area in the shade of trees, a wooden bench between rose bushes, a comfortable lounger near a pond with an alpine slide will complement the overall landscape design of the site, make it more comfortable to enjoy.
Figures of small animals - hedgehogs, mice, snails, - fairytale characters - gnomes, fairies, - will give the garden fleurs of mystery, romance, inner fullness. It is important that they naturally, unobtrusively fit into the overall atmosphere, and even better, that each figure has its own personal story of the appearance in your garden.
Stories attract attention. This fills the garden with a special spirit of life, hidden from prying eyes. To turn the landscape design of a large country house with your own hands into a continuous creative process ... is this possible? Yes. Just take your time ...
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