Mark Brandon is a blog contributor at Safe and Sound Property Inspections, who loves to share his home renovation ideas and tips online. In this article, he gives us some useful information on dramatic home gardens designs.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a safe and beautiful home? Now you can ensure the safety of your property with the help of reliable professional building inspections and keep it looking great on the outside with an impressive garden design. Although many would think that the whole landscaping and gardening has to be left into the hands of the experts, not many can afford such luxury.

If you have a small front lawn and would prefer to design your garden yourself, then by all means grab the chance to do so. Of course, this plan can be quite challenging, but the end result will make all the hard work truly worth it. Keep your eyes on the price, and visualize what you’ll like your garden to look like. This will keep you inspired in times when you think that the project is too tiresome.

Porthole Garden

Garden Basics

To start, you need to determine whether your front lawn is inhabited by garden pests. Professional building inspections are of great help in this case. This is to make sure that your garden plants will grow out beautifully without any harm or damage from harmful insects or pests.

Next, you’ll need to create a simple garden plan, a draft of how you want your front lawn to look. If it gets too difficult for you to create a plan, you can take a look at your neighbors’ gardens, check out garden design magazines, or view garden pictures online for inspiration.

You can be creative with choosing and combining the designs. Do make sure that you pick out something appropriate for your garden space. For smaller garden designs, it might be a good idea to choose smaller flowering plants, or use potted plants instead. For bigger spaces, you have a wide variety of garden designs to choose from. If you do have a background in simple landscaping, you can also make use of that to come up with a better and more attractive garden design. After formulating your garden plan, you can create a draft, and lay it out on paper.

Garden Plant Selection

August Schell Brewery and Gardens - New Ulm, Minnesota

Plant selection may depend on the type of weather condition in your local area, the type of soil that’s in your front yard, and your preferences.

If you want plants that would be around for at least two growing seasons, you can add perennials to your garden plants. Although they’d be expensive compared with the other flowers, you’d know that they’re truly worth it. Then you can add plants with brightly colored flowers to make your garden look livelier. Some of these are quite affordable so you can fill them in between the perennials after winter.

To protect your plants and keep them healthy, check your garden area from time to time for any unwanted pests or harmful insects. If you want to leave this kind of job to the professionals, companies that offer house and homes inspections services can also help you out.

Sunken Garden, Kensington.

If the soil isn’t suitable for growing plants, you can grow some potted plants instead. There are several ways to arrange them so they could look more attractive as well. Aside from that, they are easier to move around, just in case you decide on a different front garden design.

Adding Drama to Garden Design

Bonneville Garden, OR 9-06

Now that you’ve picked out your garden design as well as the plants for your garden, it’s time to add a little bit of drama to complete the look. There are several ideas that will help you add drama to the design. One of the most common options for many homeowners is to add something that would become the focal point of the garden. This, of course, would still depend on what you would prefer.

For a more classic look, choosing to add a statue would be more preferable. The statue can be put in the middle of a lush foliage or perennial garden plan. For a more dramatic effect, you can mix subtle and bright lighting for your garden so that you may admire its beauty during the night. Brighter light can be installed to light up your garden’s focal point. You can also opt for more than 1 color for the lights.

Kleine vos

If you want to soothe your senses while sitting in the garden, you may as well choose to add a water fountain, or a mini pond. You can also add brightly-colored lilies or fish to your pond. Just make sure that you don’t overdo it. If there’s too much, then your garden could look crowded and unattractive.

Your garden can also be full of life when birds, butterflies, and other insects visit or inhabit your garden.  They could be a better sight to look at, and these insects could help keep the other plants in your garden alive. To invite more birds, you can add a birdbath or two. Also, be alert for any rodents or pest. Knowledge of simple pest control and house and homes inspections services can be very helpful in this case.

Mark Brandon is a regular blog contributor at Safe and Sound Property Inspections and an experienced DIY builder in home renovation, and home inspection. Every time he gets the chance to learn something new, he shares this online through blogs. You may catch him on Twitter: @DIYMarkBrandon.