Planning Walkways – Walkways are a great way to enhance the look and safety of the outside of your home, and incorporating them into your landscape design plans is easy. But there are several things you should keep in mind when planning walkways for your garden.
Take a look at the outside of your home and observe the natural paths that you and your family use on a regular basis. You want to be sure to have your new walkways installed along those paths since those are the ones your family is already used to using. That way, when planning your new landscape design, you don’t have to worry about breaking your family of any bad habits of walking through your flower beds since there will now be a walkway where they are used to walking.
Keep in mind that any curves or steps you have installed in your walkway will probably add to the landscape design and installation costs. If you really have your heart set on some steps or a fancy curve, make sure you budget for that and recognize that this could drive up how much you end up paying. If you are working within a tight budget, keep the walkway as straight as possible.
However, if the walkway needs to slope more than 10% or so, then a curve or some steps will probably be a necessary part of your landscape design. And sometimes steps or curves in a walkway can look a little boring, so you can enhance the look of the walkway by adding flowers or other landscaping elements to the curve or steps. This will make it more pleasant for you and your guests to look at and walk past.
In this day and age, decorative and stamped concrete are more popular than ever. Thanks to advances in technology and methods of installing concrete, you can get pretty creative with decorative concrete these days. You can make your walkways quite interesting and eye-catching if you have them made out of decorative or stamped concrete. But the more intricate the concrete, the more it will cost, so be sure to budget accordingly for that in your landscape design as well.
After your new walkways have been installed, you might want to look into having small shrubs or flowers planted along the edge of the walkways. Just keep in mind that you do not want to plant anything that will grow too tall. Try to keep those plants to around two feet high or shorter so they do not overwhelm the walkway or cause people to feel too crowded. Plus, smaller and less imposing plants will make it easier for you to carry groceries and other items into your home. You won’t have to worry about knocking into the plants and damaging them.
Finally, try to plant a variety of plants and flowers along your walkway, and try to find ones that bloom throughout the year. That way, you and your loved ones always have something pretty to look at when walking in and out of your home.
