8 Amazing Landscaping Ideas to Make Your Yard Stand Out

A beautiful yard can not only be a source of joy to you and your family but also enhance the aesthetic appeal of your home. Here, we have presented some creative landscaping ideas to add elements of interest, functionality, texture, and color to your yard. Create a beautiful and timeless landscape that’s a treat to the eyes as well as easy to maintain! 

Landscaping Ideas to Increase Your Yard’s Appeal 

1. Go for Native Plants 

Just like grass, which should be chosen based on suitability to the region, you should choose native plants that call for less upkeep. Choosing plants which are native to a specific area or grow well there, would keep your pruning and water costs down, and your plants would thrive.  

2. Create Curved Lines 

Landscapers often create edging around driveways, sidewalks, the house foundation, and flower gardens. Creating the edging as curves instead of perfectly straight lines lends character and appeal, and so, is one of the most interesting landscaping ideas. Since the edging is permanent, your landscape looks great all-round the year. This is quite an easy way of turning your lawn from plain and boring to beautiful.  

3. Get Potted Plants 

Adding pots into landscaping lowers the maintenance needs of a yard as well as boosts its versatility. With potted plants, you can add color to various parts of your yard easily, and you can move them from one place to another easily too. For some added interest and color, match flowers to the season. Go for red and yellow flowers in the fall, and white and pink flowers in the summer and spring.  

4. Combine a Wide Range of Plants 

Select a broad range of plants, the flowers of which bloom at different times. Hence, ornamental leaves would be visible throughout the season. If all flowers blossom at the same time, your yard would look appealing during that timespan but would lack color during remaining time of the year. Consider going for a perennial such as Rozanne geranium as it blossoms from the month of June through October.  

5. Plant Lavender 

Lavender adds a pop of color, a relaxing aroma, and you need to water it once or twice every week only, if the climate you live in doesn’t have regular rain. Lavender also acts like a bug repellent, hence consider planting it near the patio. 

6. Connect the Attractive Elements with a Walkway 

Rather than trampling down your lawn and creating a makeshift walkway of dead grass between the garden, fire pit, patio, create a visually appealing path with concrete stepping stones, decorative brick, natural flagstone, or crushed stone.  

Create a walkway, pathway, or any other feature of landscaping using material which is similar to or the same as that used on the house’s exterior, like stone or brick, as this will tie the walkway to your home aesthetically. Alternatively, use the material for creating an attractive edging along your walkway.  

7. Create a Natural Water Feature 

Add a water feature that looks like it’s a part of the surroundings. It can be a self-contained, small unit standing alone on the patio. You can employ natural stone for building it, or you can go for the same material or stone that’s on the house.  

Avoid using too many materials as the effort may not be effective. A good practice is not using more than 3 elements in an area, or the region may look too congested.  

8. Lighten Up Walkways and Focal Points 

You would want your beautiful landscaping to be visible even after sunset, and that’s why you need landscape lights. Installing outdoor lighting is one of the best ideas for landscaping your yard. These lights have many roles to play – showcasing interesting elements in the landscape, illuminating sidewalk and steps for safety, and enhancing the appeal of the home.  

Types of Landscape Lighting 

Following are some of the chief types of landscape lighting you can choose from: 

• Step Lights 

There’s a risk of tripping and stumbling on outdoor steps and stairs at night. Step lights are a solution to this issue. Installed immediately nearby steps or directly into steps, step lights facilitate safe passage during nighttime. 

Apart from boosting safety, the lights increase the visual appeal and overall look of the stairs and steps too. 

• Deck Lights 

If you have a deck or patio outdoors, especially in an area that’s otherwise area, it’s a must to install deck lights on it.  

The purpose of these lights is making the whole deck surface visible at night.  

Although the primary purpose of deck lights is enhancing safety by creating a clear, visible boundary, these lights can act like the primary lights for entertaining too.  

• Postmount Lights 

Postmount lights are formed by mounting outdoor lanterns on the top of tall posts.  

Known as piermount lights sometimes, they are great options for fences, entryways, and gates. Consider placing them in regions where your guests assemble, like a patio or deck, to make sure sufficient light is available for everyone.  

Columnmount lights are a similar option. These lights do the same job, but are mounted over brick, concrete, or stone columns rather than posts.  

• Path Lights 

A lighted path guiding your guests to the door creates a welcoming ambience. You can do this by installing path lighting. This is the most common type of outdoor lighting and is used for lightening up driveways, walkways, and paths making up the landscaping of your home.  

Other applications of path lights include framing a particular region of the yard, highlighting a foundation or pond, or emphasizing a specific feature in your yard.  

• Bollard Lights 

Bollard lights – the heavy-duty version of path lights – does similar jobs, including illuminating driveways, walkways, and pathways. 

They have some decorative elements that make them a popular outdoor lighting option. As these lights are larger compared to path lights, they usually comprise more complex ornamentation and designs.  

For illuminating paths, small bollards are the right option, while larger bollards make a suitable choice for framing gateways and entrances. 

• Spotlight 

The most versatile outdoor lighting type is the spotlight. You can use them for highlighting natural features like shrubbery, flowers, trees, or other plants, or for emphasizing man-made features like buildings, sculptures, or architectural elements of other types.  

Owing to the powerful illumination offered by spotlights, they also make a good choice for security lighting.  

 

Summing Up 

Now that you know these front and backyard landscaping ideas, try them out to take your lawn décor to the next level. These garden landscaping ideas can make your yard a safe and appealing place even after dark. The types of outdoor lighting discussed here would help you choose the lights for your yard. 

If you want your yard to stand out, we can help you with our professional Architectural Landscape Lighting Services. All American Turf Beauty is a reputed lawn care company based in Iowa with expertise in landscaping and outdoor lighting installation for homes. If you have a landscaping project in mind, we’ll love to hear about it! Give us a call today!  

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Benefits of Outdoor Lighting: Safety, Security and More!

We all love to have a beautiful home – one with a lush lawn, flower beds, and a porch. However, once you’ve had all these elements to beautify your home in Iowa, your work isn’t over! You need to add outdoor lighting and garden lights around your home to enhance safety as well as highlight the best features of your yard.  

Outdoor lighting offers a number of benefits to homeowners besides increased safety and aesthetic appeal. Listed down are the chief benefits you can get by adding outdoor landscape lighting around your home. 

Key Benefits of Outdoor Lighting 

1. Illuminates Your Living Space Outdoors 

Besides your living room, let your living space in the outdoors be a place where you can spend quality time with family and friends. Your backyard and patio are great places for entertaining guests, having meals, and spending time with children. Outdoor lighting illuminates your outdoors making them suitable to be used at nighttime.  

Outdoor landscape lighting can lend the right ambiance to the outdoor space whether you are sipping a cup of tea before bed alone or you are spending time with your family. You can also go for outdoor lights equipped with the dim feature. This would let you use the bright lights when your kids are playing outside and the low lights while spending romantic evenings with your husband/wife.  

You can find outdoor lights in various designs and shapes, which simplifies finding lights fitting other characteristics of your home. From functional to decorative, the range is quite broad for these lights.  

2. Boosts your Property’s Curb Appeal and Value 

Any upgradation of your property will boost its value. The plus with exterior lighting is that the return on investment is immediate, while you can enjoy all the benefits they offer. As per the National Association of Home Builders, outdoor lighting is an essential quality for 41% of prospective buyers for a desired home, and it is a desirable quality for 49% of buyers.  

The strategic placement of exterior lighting throughout the yard can help you increase your home’s curb appeal and showcase its great features. These lights can also help you highlight your home’s special architectural features.  

3. Highlights Your Landscaping Décor 

Outdoor lighting can highlight several features of your landscaping décor.  

Energy-efficient solar lights are great ways to guide people to the front door over walkways and paths. Exterior lighting can also be used for marking property lines and creating barriers to yard areas where people should not walk over. These lights can also let you showcase your yard’s special features. Consider placing lights beside water features such as ponds or fountains, or to highlight trees.  

You can also use garden lights throughout the flower beds to showcase all the beautiful hues. This would let you enjoy your garden during nighttime too. Landscape lighting can be incorporated into railings or posts in staircases, used overhead on your porches, or placed on the ground.  

4. Increases Safety 

Outdoor lighting is not only visually appealing, they are also an effective way to increase the safety of your property, making it safer for your family and friends. Light posts can be used for illuminating your driveway, walkways, and paths, which enhance your property’s safety. Additionally, it’s important to place exterior lighting near any uneven areas or stairs.  

By guiding people, the lights will help in preventing injuries from falling at night. This would also decrease the risk of slipping and falling of passersby near your home, and you being sued for damages.  

Consider placing landscape lighting at high traffic areas such as outdoor seating area, around the pool, decks, and patios.  

5. Hinders Crimes 

A key advantage of outdoor lights is that they make your home more secure and hinder crimes. Many sources state that the most common crime occurring in homes is burglary – which happens every 13 seconds in the United States.  

Illuminate the dark nooks and crannies in your property’s outdoors by installing flood lights. A well-lit porch and an illuminated, clear path leading to your home’s front door also make guests feel more comfortable when visiting your home at nighttime.  

Well-maintained outdoor lighting indicates that you care well for your home, which can prevent theft and trespassing.  

In case you’re worried about increase in your utility bills owing to constant outdoor lights, consider using lights equipped with motion sensors that come on only when there are people in the range. These lights will not only save you money but also surprise people that try trespassing on your property. Several outdoor lights come with the option to set timers, which causes them to come on when it becomes dark outside, or during the time you are away from home.  

6. Increased Functionality 

Outdoor lights increase the functionality of the outdoor space. When you have proper lighting, it’s possible to use the front and backyard even after sunset and during nighttime.  

Flood lights installed outside a house provide enough light to illuminate a section of the yard or a patio area. Outdoor lights attached to the deck posts brighten up the space for late-night conversations or dining. To add extra lighting around your patio table, you can avail special lights that are designed to be attached to table umbrella. 

 

Summing Up 

Considering the valuable benefits of outdoor lighting, make sure your next landscaping project includes installing them on your property! All American Turf Beauty, based in Iowa, can expertly handle your landscape light installation requirements. We can beautify your home with quality outdoor LED lighting, LED garden lights, porch lights and more, according to your requirements. Gives us a call today to discuss your project!  

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Add Value to Homes with 11 Types of LED Landscape Lighting

LED landscape lighting can beautifully transform your gardens and take your yard from basic to bling in a minute. But, before you upgrade your outdoor lighting system, you need to have a proper lighting plan. Often in order to create drama and intrigue in a well-lit space you need the perfect interplay of light and shade. Here are 11 landscape lighting ideas which will help you to highlight the best features of your garden.  

1. Up for up lighting? 

Although up lighting is known as one of the basic forms in landscape lighting design, it can create a lot of beautiful diversions in your garden. Taller structures like trees are best illuminated with this technique. If you want to accent specific features of trees in your yard, the up-lighting system is the best solution. Mount a floodlight or a spotlight on the ground for accentuating the tree trunk or the underside of tree’s canopy.  

2. The adorable effects of moon lighting 

If you have larger trees in your garden, they can be best highlighted with moon lighting or alternatively known as down lighting. In this kind of lighting technique, the light fixture is placed high up on the tree. But the light is aimed down which illuminates the branches and the ground below with light. This type of light creates an impressive effect on an open-branched tree. 

3. Silhouetting the architectural features 

Often the dramatic accents of your garden remain hidden in broad daylight. With silhouetting you can highlight these shapes and create a fantastic effect. With this kind of accent lighting, you just need to put the light behind the specific item and create a vantage point. Even though spaces are illuminated, the light source should always remain invisible. 

4. Effective cross lighting for outdoors 

When you want to create a soft shadowy effect with landscape lighting, think about cross lighting. The horizontally positioned lights on the ground are placed in precise positions to create texture and depth. As the light beams blend with the evening shadows, they create a crisscross illusion and a magnificent display, something that will make your gardens stand out.  

5. Impact of shadowing with LED landscape lighting 

Known as the reverse technique of silhouetting, the LED garden lights are placed between the garden accent and the main vantage point in shadowing. The source of light should be aimed at the accent piece. When you have a flat surface like a wall behind the accent piece, the effects are more vivid. You will love the soft moody effect of shadowing in your outdoor landscape. Some of the commonly used lights in shadowing are flood, well and spotlights.  

6. The grazing effects of LED landscape lighting 

When most of your garden boasts of hardscape, the grazing technique can work beautifully for your outdoors. In this design, the lights are placed close to hard surfaces which creates an interplay of light and shadow. The grazing effect can be displayed either in upward or downward movement. It is the texture of the surface which determines the grazing effect. The lighting technique works best if you have an irregular or uneven pattern.  

7. The awesome path lighting technique 

You can reinvent the concept of security lights with innovative path lights. Light up your driveways and paths with different lighting fixtures of varied shapes and styles. These will not only beautify your outdoors but will make your perimeters more secured. These lights will also help to prevent accidents along the pathways. 

8. Light washing technique for your gardens 

If you are keen on ambient lights, you may consider the light ‘washing’ technique. You can flood a hedge or a wall with light so that the space looks well-lit. Go for a wide-beamed light which can be placed between the wall surface and main vantage point. The entire area will be flooded with light, but the effects will not be overwhelming. 

9. Step up with step lighting system 

When you desire soft illumination without a glare, think about small fixtures in the form of step lights. They are placed in such a manner that they cast a shielded light across decks and steps. Although very similar to path lights, the step lights allow you to figure out any obstructions on the way. Choose small step lights to create concentrated illumination in specific areas.  

10.Accentuate your outdoors with accent lights 

Known as spot lighting, this form of LED landscape lighting is a step ahead of security lights. When you want to highlight a particular feature of your garden like a statue, signage or a sculpture, you can use the accent lights. These types of lights are more directed towards the specifics of a garden. These are particularly useful in showcasing separate elements of a garden.   

11. Add style with layered lighting 

When you add highs and lows to your lighting plan, they add drama to your outdoors creating a layered effect. Layered lighting is crucial for creating the right ambience for different situations. You can either put different lights in one circuit. Or you can take help of specific controls and dimmers to create different light settings for an outdoor environment. 

You can be as much creative as possible with layered lighting. Connect step lights to motion sensors so that stairs would illuminate with every ascent. Or arrange for preset levels of LED landscape lighting in the patio for evening festivities.  

Why LED landscape lighting is a good choice for outdoors? 

Switch to LED landscape lighting as they are less expensive compared to traditional light bulbs. An LED lighting system can have a lifespan of 25,000 hours or more. LED lights require less maintenance and can survive years of use.  

You will save a lot of money in the long run if you switch to LED landscape lighting. Although the upfront expenses are more, LED lights are more energy-efficient in the long run. You will notice a reduction in your energy bills by more than 80% once you install them.  

Both halogen bulbs and incandescent lights produce a lot of heat. On any property, this can enhance the risk of fire if there are inflammable products or dry leaves. In case of LED lighting system, the amount of wasted heat will be less. To conserve more energy, you can also switch to solar landscape lighting, if only your property receives a fair amount of sunlight. 

Why not increase your property’s green appeal by making an intelligent switch to sustainable LED lights? By installing LED lights, you are directly contributing to the energy conservation movement. As LED lights are known for their potential to save more energy, they are environment friendly. Unlike traditional lights which have filaments, LED lights have a solid structure which can not only withstand shock, but do not damage easily. 

Pro tip for the homeowners: 

• Have an extra-large tree in your property which deserves special treatment? 
• Combine the spotlight and moonlight effect by putting two spotlights halfway through the trunk.  
• Aim one light up and the other light down to create a diverse effect.  

• The foliage will hide the light sources beautifully, but the illumination will create a dramatic effect. 
• Hire an AATB expert to know more about LED landscape lighting. 

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