Taming Mother Nature: Renovating Your Garden
When somebody talks about a renovation project, they’re usually referring to the interior of their house. Of course, the inside of our home is a warm, relaxing and cozy retreat from the outside world, so it makes sense that we’d want to sculpt this area into our ideal image and create a welcoming, happy place to chill out at the end of the day. However, this doesn’t mean your home has to stop at the four walls of your house.
To many, their garden may uninterest them. Still, this may be due more to the fact that it currently looks uninspiring or poorly-maintained, and the untamed, wild look of nature isn’t always an appealing sight from your kitchen window. Yet, you should be viewing this outdoor space for its potential, rather than its current poor state. Mowing the lawn isn’t enough. If you want to renovate your garden, you’ve got to view it as an extension of your home, and that means you need to take some of those renovation methods you apply to make your indoors cozier and reshape them for the outdoor world. If you have no idea where to begin, here are some great pieces of advice for renovating your garden and reclaiming it from mother nature.
Make your backyard neat and tidy before planning.
A plan is important here. You may only have minor tasks in mind to spruce up your outdoor space and make it look prettier from the window, such as planting a few neatly arranged flowerbeds and perhaps a couple of plants, or you might have grander aspirations of installing a patio, a nice path of paving slabs and perhaps even a fountain. Either way, if you fail to plan, you really do plan to fail.
Before you get to the stage of creating a design for your garden, however, you need to give yourself a blank canvas on which you can work your magic. It’s time to clean up your outdoor area, much as you would if you were planning to renovate a room within your home. Get rid of old, withering plants or flowers you might have planted years ago, give the lawn its first good trim in months and shoo away any bugs or animals who, because you’ve been missing from your garden for so long, may have decided this was now their property.
Turn the outdoor world into an outdoor room.
The next step to renovating your garden is to view it as much more than just “nature”. This is your property, and you can shape it into whatever image you so desire. There’s no restriction on the manmade element here. You could even look into some outdoor gas fireplace products to create a warm, cozy hangout area in your back garden. Some plush seating arrangements, cushions, rugs and a table to have barbecues or family meals during the summer are all things which could create a homely feel in your outdoor space.
Blend nature and manmade elements together seamlessly.
The key to keeping the natural beauty of nature intact within your garden is to ensure the manmade elements you install, such as paving slabs for a footpath, blend seamlessly with the natural elements of this outdoor space. This is why planning is so important; you want to ensure your manmade additions weave in and out of existing plants, flowers and other natural elements with which you don’t want to clash.
