Water feature designed for the middle of the turning circle.
Design ideas for an expansive tropical front yard garden in Sydney.

Carl Mayfield
This is an example of a mid-sized traditional partial sun driveway in Houston with natural stone pavers.

Recycled timber green wall, Photography by Andy Jones
This is an example of a small country courtyard partial sun xeriscape for spring in Newcastle - Maitland with a vertical garden and concrete pavers.

Photo of a mid-sized country backyard shaded garden for summer in Charlotte with a garden path and natural stone pavers.

Low light reflecting off the house.
Inspiration for a small contemporary garden in Surrey.

A once forgotten side yard turns into a charming gravel garden Martin Residence Cardiff by the Sea, Ca
Small mediterranean side yard formal garden in San Diego.

The landscape plan clarifies how all the components were integrated into the design on the 1.5 acre site. This rendered version magnifies the level of detail applied throughout the landscape.

This is an example of a large contemporary backyard full sun garden for summer in DC Metro with a retaining wall and natural stone pavers.

Landscape contracting by Avid Landscape. Carpentry by Contemporary Homestead. Photograph by Meghan Montgomery.
Inspiration for a mid-sized transitional backyard full sun garden in Seattle with a fire feature and gravel.

The back of the house has a large bank of windows that extend from the dining area to the main living area; so there is a very strong indoor outdoor connection. Curving planting beds filled with green plants of varied textures enclose the new bluestone patio. To the right is the Tea House which is a major focal point in the rear portion of this Zen Garden.

The new waterfall is now a place that the birds REALLY enjoy!
Photo of a small mediterranean backyard full sun garden in Phoenix with with pond.

In south Seattle, a tiny backyard garden needed a makeover to add usability and create a sitting area for entertaining. Raised garden beds for edible plants provide the transition between the existing deck and new patio below, eliminating the need for a railing. A firepit provides the focal point for the new patio. Angles create drama and direct flow to the steel stairs and gate. Installed June, 2014. Photography: Mark S. Garff ASLA, LLA

Photo of a small traditional backyard garden in New York with brick pavers and with waterfall.

David Winger
Large modern front yard full sun formal garden in Denver with concrete pavers and with rock feature for summer.

Richard Brown Photography Ltd
Photo of a small contemporary garden in Cheshire.

Opening up this front entrance by adding a 14ft Sylvester palm tree along the driveway and layered planting throughout the front makes for a clean but colorful tropical space. Landscape designed and installed by Construction Landscape, Jennifer Bevins 772-492-8382.

Design ideas for a mid-sized country backyard shaded garden for summer in Charlotte.

We were contacted by the owner of a Houston, Texas home who asked us to design a series of gardens and landscaping features that would compliment and expand the Mediterranean theme of his house into the surrounding landscape. This house sat on a very large lot of several acres in a secluded Memorial Drive neighborhood located near the 610 Loop. The home featured a symmetrical, linear appearance in spite of its two-story build, and our client wanted a landscape and garden design that would follow these same principles of self-contained regularity and subtle linear motion. Creating a Mediterranean theme in a Houston, Texas garden and landscape is a bit more complex that it might appear at face value. The southern coast of Europe—particularly in Italy and Greece—is a mountainous area where homes and gardens are built on steep angles and sharp vertical rises. Gardens and fields are often built in terraces that climb the mountains due to the limited planting area and rough, rocky terrain. Limestone is the predominant rock type in Italy and Greece and has become iconic of this part of the world in our collective consciousness. Mediterranean homes and gardens are historically famous for their white stucco walls, olive groves, and carefully sculptured greenery embedded in a rugged limestone backdrop. The challenge lay in taking an essentially three-dimensional landscaping style and transfering it to a Houston property. As we all know, this part of Texas is very flat, so a hillside garden is out of the question in the literal sense. However, using a combination of symmetrical forms and linear progressions, along with some innovative garden materials, we were able to mimic several aspects of seaside European terrain. The key to doing this was to establish a combination of circular forms and linear patterns in the multiple garden elements we designed. French and Italian gardens place a heavy emphasis on order and symmetry, and both tend to utilize right angles to establish form. We planted a variety of low level growth around the house and rear swimming pool patio to emphasize its walls and corners. We then added three keynote forms to the landscape to create a Houston equivalent of a Mediterranean garden. The first of these forms was a knot garden centered on the front door, located just in front of the home’s motorcourt. We planted boxwoods in three circular rows that looked like terraces on a hillside. In the center of the knot garden we planted Loropatalum, punctuated with a lone Crinum lily as the center piece. The rich purple of the Loropatalum draws catches the eye, and the vertical dimension added by the lily draws it upward to the front entrance of the house. Moving then to one side of the house, we transformed a substantial portion of the yard into a parterre garden that centered on a large glass room that extended from the west wing of the house. This garden was populated by low-growth rose bushes whose amenability to constant trimming makes them an ideal plant material for parterre gardens, and whose colorful blooms a made them stand out from multiple vantage points throughout this Houston neighborhood. The garden borders were made from of boxwood hedges, and the central pathways were made using European limestone gravel that mimics the color of the limestone cliffs of the Aegean and Adriatic Seas. We then completed the design by adding dwarf yaupon, a small shrub that bears a curious resemblance to clouds, all along the borders of the gravel walkways. This helped create the impression that the garden was located on a hilltop near the sea, and that the clouds were rolling across the shoreline. One of the most appealing attributes of this Houston, Texas property is its superb location. The back of the yard borders a 50-foot ravine carved out of the earth by a major tributary of Buffalo Bayou. This seemed to us a natural destination spot for garden guests to visit after strolling around the west wing of the home to the pool. To encourage them to do so, we planted an alley of crepe myrtles leading from the pool area all the way back to the woods along the ravine. We then built a walkway out of limestone aggregate blocks that started at the parterre garden, ran alongside the house to the pool, then ran straight out through the alley of trees to the scenic overlook of the forest and stream below. For more the 20 years Exterior Worlds has specialized in servicing many of Houston's fine neighborhoods.

Wood fence with boards horizontal instead of vertical with spacing for air movement. Definitely not your average fence! You could also do horizontal with no spaces for more privacy.