Cashiers landscape architects

What’s the Best Way to Create an Outdoor Social Setting?

February 16, 2015

Outdoor rooms rank among the top requests with homeowners and homebuyers. And it’s no wonder because there are so many purposes and benefits that can be enjoyed with outdoor living spaces.

Maybe you want an outdoor venue for entertaining guests and throwing fabulous parties or an intimate space for dining al fresco with close family and friends. Maybe you envision an outdoor space that enhances the look and feel of your home while providing a safe and convenient place for your children to play outside. Perhaps you just want a space that will encourage you to spend more time in nature and find better ways to entertain. With the right landscaping, you can achieve a gorgeous outdoor room that brings beauty, style, health and pleasure to your home.

Ensuring your home has a space for gathering outdoors can bring wonderful health benefits to your household. After all, social interaction is healthy for all individuals at any stage of life as it promotes healthy physical and mental development.

Outdoor social settings are usually designed within the perimeter of the home, which means around seventy to a hundred feet from the house. These spaces are most popularly used for social activities and entertainment but can also be strategically designed to serve as multipurpose spaces. For example, a dining terrace can be decorated with vegetables planted in pots, all of which could be adjacent to a small outdoor spa. With the help of a professional, your outdoor room can be carefully planned to take advantage of every spatial opportunity.

Outdoor rooms for socializing can include decks, terraces, pavilions, loggias or lawns. They can include grills, wet bars or even entire outdoor kitchens. They can be more subtle such as a bench niche in a shaded area under a large tree or an outdoor fireplace or firepit to allow you to use your outdoor space year-round.

We’d love to help spark some ideas for your very own outdoor room for social gatherings. Feel free to browse through our photos for inspiration or contact us at Dargan Landscape Architects to begin discussing a potential project.

How Can a Waterfall Environment Enhance my Landscape?

February 12, 2015

As the essence of life, water can become the heart and soul of your landscape with a well-designed waterfall feature. Bringing your landscape to life with movement and sound, a waterfall environment can stimulate more than just your sense of sight. You’ll quickly find how a waterfall goes far beyond beautifying. The personal benefits of a waterfall feature can actually far exceed the aesthetic impact it has on your landscape.

There’s nothing quite like the sound of a waterfall. It is nature’s symphony. Creating a beautiful sounding waterfall, however – just like creating a beautiful sounding symphony – is more complicated than you might think. When water separates and hits different surfaces, it creates different tones. The acoustics of a waterfall feature, therefore, must be properly tuned to optimize the positive impact it has on your senses and emotions.

A thoughtfully-designed waterfall can also stimulate your sense of touch. It often goes overlooked, but interacting with waterfalls can be just as enjoyable as the experience of seeing and hearing them. Close your eyes and imagine the soothing feeling of the liquid moving around your hand after a stressful day of work, or imagine the refreshing feeling of the mist subtly hitting and cooling your skin on a hot summer’s day.

The movement of a waterfall certainly brings landscapes to life, but it also draws wildlife to your landscape. Birds, butterflies, and other majestic creatures and beings will grace your landscape and your life when there’s water flowing. Water features additionally open up your landscape to a diverse world of plants that you would otherwise not be able to include in your landscape. A waterfall can coalesce into a pond featuring spectacular water lilies, lotus plants and other blooming plants that require water.

No need to worry about wasting water or energy. A self-contained water feature can consistently and sustainably run 24-hours a day, 365 days a year.

Let us help you achieve a landscape design that stimulates all of your senses. Contact Dargan Landscape Architects in Atlanta to set up a consultation for a water feature installation or other landscape architecture project.

What Should be Included In a Kitchen Garden? Ideas for Cultivating a Kitchen Garden

February 10, 2015

Benefits abound with kitchen gardens. From healthy sustenance to therapeutic power, kitchen gardens can be customized to provide just what the doctor ordered and more. Here at Dargan, we’ve designed and built several kitchen gardens that do more than offer wholesome ingredients. They enhance quality of life.

A classic approach to a kitchen garden is to create circular design with four pathways leading to four central beds all encircled by a tall wall. The four central beds can be anchored by different types of boxwoods such as Kingsville dwarf, parsley or chives to provide evergreen armature during the winter. For a less formal look, allow nasturtiums to cascade over and mingle with the walkways. Raised beds can be constructed from 12 x 2-inch edging boards with six inches above and below ground to promote proper drainage.

For pathways, bricks or stone set without mortar will prevent storm runoff and add naturally beautiful color and texture. The wall encompassing the garden can be accompanied by a living fence designed out of fruit trees to add to the aesthetics while extending the garden’s harvest.

The interior beds can feature seasonal vegetables protected by exterior beds of tough and tolerant plants such as kale, asparagus, chard and comfrey. Lettuces can be intertwined with annual herbs such as borage and mustard plants. Separate compartments can harbor string and stable root vegetables.

After the beds are strategically designed and arranged, aesthetic accents and features can be added to achieve and personalize the look and functionality. Herbs, for instance, can be planted in cast-iron gypsy kettles at the garden’s entryway for a charming touch. Benches can be positioned in particular corners to provide a place to relax and enjoy the garden as well as provide convenient surface areas for tools and baskets when maintaining the garden. Other features to consider including are birdhouses, fountains and even bee houses and chicken coops.

Are you feeling inspired to add a kitchen garden that will help you with your New Year resolutions to take control of your health and happiness? Contact Dargan Landscape Architects to set up a consultation today.

Creating Focal Points with Garden Color Palettes

January 30, 2015

When decorating our homes we generally choose a color scheme and then create focal points with contrasting colors. Often when gardening however, we create color explosions due to the vast array of plant types and colors available. Using your garden much like an artist uses a blank canvas, you can easily be creating focal points with garden color palettes.

Even a carefully thought out garden plan might look jumbled and lack cohesiveness when you have many colors in bloom at once. Monochromatic schemes can provide a soothing yet far from boring alternative to such garden spaces. If you would not enjoy a fully monochromatic scheme, you might opt to use one as a border, or for focal points to break up the variegated colors. To create a monochromatic scheme, choose plants with blooms in similar colors, such as blues, mauves, and purples. To create texture and depth throughout the space in your garden, use plants that vary in height.

Another means of creating focal points with garden color palettes is to create a virtual river or lake of plants. Since it takes multiple plants to create this effect, you should choose a plant that spreads easily and grows quickly to keep costs down. Choose one color for your “water” and use only one or two plants to make the best impact. Add structure using well-placed shrubs, grasses, or even boulders. If using tall blooms for your river effect, consider creating a “shoreline” with low plants in a contrasting color to define the edges.

Dargan Landscape Architects has been designing Utopian gardens for nearly 40 years. We invite you to browse our online designs and contact us to design your perfect garden.

Add an Eclectic Vibe to Your Garden with Animal Garden Vases

January 29, 2015

Part of the fun in designing your garden is to create unique displays that are not only beautiful, but also include hints of your personality. Our Boundless Garden product line includes a wide variety of decor items to appeal to all tastes and style types. Today we will feature how to add an eclectic vibe to your garden with our animal garden vases.

Rabbits with glass stand six inches tall and are available in white or bisque. Each rabbit is finely detailed, carries a wire-woven basket, and sports a glass vase just waiting for your imagination. Use these lovely creatures to create beautiful spring centerpieces or combine them with some of our other animal vases to create a whimsical look in your garden.

Squirrels can be a nuisance when designing a garden to attract other small wildlife, but our squirrel vase will only delight your visitors. Finely crafted in gray and white, this little guy will not steal food from your feeders since he carries his own coveted acorn. You might consider this vase as a centerpiece for fall displays or include it in a mixture of our animals.

Reindeer with glass stands atop a green grassy knoll proudly showing off his antlers. Muscled and shaded to be realistic-looking, these reindeer come in a set of four ready to inspire creativity or perhaps become lovely centerpieces during the holidays.

With its spindly legs and head turned as if tuned in to conversation with you, our white bird with glass stands 5 1/2 inches tall and can be used to show off flowers from every season. Used as centerpieces or interspersed through your garden as points of interest, these are a true delight.

If you prefer your birds with splashes of color, our warbler or thrasher will be sure to appeal. Designed to look like their friends from nature, these bright and detailed birds are poised for song. Decorate with wild flowers for your tables or place throughout your garden to attract their friends.

Dargan Landscape Architects invites you to view our full product line and contact us for design help.

Photos via Dargan Landscape Architects

Cashiers landscape architects

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