A beautiful outdoor space can make all the difference in how a business or home is perceived. It is called curb appeal, and beautiful curb appeal usually means beautiful landscaping. What many people may not realize that landscaping is divided into two categories. Softscaping is all the living elements in the landscape, such as grass, trees, flowers, and other plants. Hardscaping is the other element of landscaping and includes everything that is not alive. Rock, pavers, waterfalls, driveways, walkways, and retaining walls are all hardscaping. Even wood, although it was once alive, is considered an element of hardscaping.
Hardscaping is becoming increasingly popular because it is low maintenance and in times of water shortage, it does not require water at all. While most people use a combination of softscaping and hardscaping in their designs, it is not too uncommon, especially in desert areas, to see a landscape entirely made up of hardscaping elements. There are several benefits to hardscaping. One is that it is so low maintenance. It requires little time and effort on your part to keep it beautiful. It is not something you have to water every night, and on hot days when softscaping elements wilt, hardscaping features will not. Another benefit is that hardscaping, for the most part, is permanent.
When planning the layout of the area you will be landscaping, it may be easier to plan your hardscape features first, especially if there are things like large boulders or walls that are too big to move. Design your layout around features like these to compliment them. The next step would be planning where other hardscape elements will go, such as walls or pathways, so that you can arrange the softscape elements to compliment the layout. Finding a balance between hardscaping and landscaping so that they work together and compliment each other is the key to having a beautiful landscape. For more information on hardscaping or if you are interested in an estimate, check out https://www.ciminellislandscape.com/services/hardscaping/.