You can rest assured that when it comes to building an Asheville custom home, we’ll put in the effort to make sure you have exactly what you’re looking for! Along with that comes decisions about how you want the surrounding areas to look. Asheville boasts a unique naturescape which can make your custom home truly shine if you take advantage of all this area has to offer! But where do you start? If you’ve never done any landscape design before, we’ve gathered some advice to help prepare you for the process of visualizing what you want for your property. Let’s dive in!
PLAN IT OUT
Maybe you’ve never designed landscaping before, but it’s likely that over the course of your life, you’ve noticed landscaping that you either liked or disliked. Think back to different places you’ve lived and visited and try to remember aspects of outdoor areas that stand out to you. This is a helpful exercise in getting you prepared to start mapping it out. Before a single shovel enters the dirt, you have to start with a plan! Get out some paper or a digital program you like and start drawing. When you’re mapping out a landscaping plan, it’s fine to be really loose and general with your drawing and ideas. Simple lines can be used to represent your home, any pathways, and aspects of your landscaping that would be hard to change, such as the placement of various trees in your yard. You’ll also want to include details such as hills or areas that are flooded in sunlight or covered in shade. This will help you determine which kinds of greenery you can plant in the various areas of your property. Once you’ve mapped this out, make a few copies or use tracing paper to draw your ideas over top so you don’t have to re-draw your original plan multiple times.
FOCUS ON YOUR NEEDS
Before you start drawing and deciding, it’s helpful to make a list of needs for your property. Once again, it’s useful to think back to previous homes or places you visited and think of what you’ve particularly enjoyed about those places. Do you like hosting gatherings? It might be a good idea to plan for an outdoor bar, kitchen space, or firepit. Do you enjoy planning game nights? You may want to design a section of your landscape specifically for an outdoor chess set, croquet, or cornhole. Do you have pets you want to set loose in the great outdoors? You’ll want to plan a fenced in area for them to run wild! Or what about gardening? If you’d like to grow herbs, vegetables, flowers, or any combination therein, you’ll need to think about how you’d like to work that into the space you have. Remember that when you plan these ideas out, you’ll want to think not only about what you need now but also what you may want in the future and plan to grow into that space.
PLAY WITH DESIGN
Once you’ve settled on your list of needs, it’s time to start playing with placement. If you feel overwhelmed thinking about where you should place any one of the areas you’ve identified as a need, start with the bigger things first. Want to incorporate a deck in your backyard? Add that to begin. Or maybe you know you’ll want a play area for your kids that isn’t located on one of the hills on your property. That’s a great place to start! Once you’ve added one to three bigger needs to the design, start filling in around those with other things you’d like to incorporate like garden areas, bushes, fencing, etc.
Want to find out more details about designing around your property? We’re always here to help! Brock Builders can help make suggestions about the landscaping around your Asheville custom home to optimize your outdoor areas and help create your dream oasis. Reach out anytime to begin a conversation!
