It’s easy to feel like you need to travel to a far-off destination in order to enjoy the feeling of being on vacation. Wouldn’t it be better if you knew how to make your backyard look like a resort instead?
How To Make Your Backyard Look Like A Resort
There is something unique about the appearance of a resort. Many homeowners struggle to create the same ambience in their own backyard. A well manicured landscape for you and your family doesn’t quite cut it. Luckily, by following this guide and putting in a little effort, you can turn your backyard into a space that you’ll never want to leave.
Prepare For Maintenance
First of all let’s talk about the boring part. Maintenance. The best resorts will always have constant maintenance. The lawns are perfectly edged against the walkways, the trees are perfectly pruned. Shrubs and perennials are quickly stripped of any dead plant material. There are no weeds growing anywhere. Taking care of the landscape you construct is the most important part of making your property look like a resort and without it you’ll never quite reach your goal.
Secure Proper Lighting
Next, we need to remember that resorts operate 24 hours a day. This means your landscape needs lighting. I’m not talking about random lighting either. Look at the various landscaped portions of your yard, and imagine them at night as scenes. Each scene needs to be lit in such a way you never see the glare of the light fixtures. This is done with uplighting and if you have tall trees, some downlighting as well. Pathways can be lit with bollards, just make sure you don’t buy the ones where you’ll see the glare. Often, lighting consultants can draw the lighting for you if you don’t want to tackle it yourself.
How To Make Your Backyard Look Like A Resort With Landscaping
Now, let’s talk about the landscape itself. You might think that you should start here, but really there’s a lot that can be done for existing landscapes by just maintaining them properly and lighting them well. However, you may find you want to add some trees, shrubs, perennials, and groundcovers to your property.
When placing these into the landscape don’t forget to allow room for the trees to grow. The last thing you want to do is create a cluster of trees which are too close together and a walkway through them where your head is getting scraped by a stray limb. After all, this would never happen in a resort. In fact, resorts often keep their trees trimmed bare to 6’ height at the trunk. This allows view lines to continue through the tree, and give you an overall feeling of safety, as there’s nowhere for someone to hide in the dark.
Plan A Walkway
Generally, resorts often have walkways which serve no other purpose than creating a beautiful path for a walk. Think about how you can integrate a winding pathway into your backyard and where you might want to end up on a walk. Is there something to look at on the walk? Is there a tree you’d like to showcase, a view?
If so, let the walkway straighten out and get a little wider when you want people to take their eyes off the walkway. Straightening out the walkway gives them the feeling of safety and calm, encouraging them to look around and focus on the landscape surrounding them.
How To Make Your Backyard Look Like A Resort With A Water Feature
You may want to add a fountain or water feature to the landscape. Resorts often engineer their landscapes to have numerous places where you will hear the trickling water of a stream or the bubbling of a fountain.
Consider where you might want this in relation to where you plan on spending the most time. Often the placement of a fountain is close to where you might dine outdoors. Alternatively, maybe it’s a feature on one of your winding pathways.
Consider A Sculpture
Lastly, if you are an art fan, you may wish to incorporate a large sculpture into your landscape. Get out into your community and find some artists working with welded steel, or some other medium that would work well outdoors. Commissioning a sculpture can be fun and rewarding.
Furthermore, a great resort will always have a decent art collection. Additionally, showcasing it in the landscape is one of the best ways to gain that resort feel. Consider placing the sculpture at the edge of a grass and stone patio space. Or, maybe you could add it as something to be discovered on your winding pathway.
How To Make Your Backyard Look Like A Resort Bottom Line
Evidently, here are many other ways you can make your yard feel like a resort. A few examples are adding a swimming pool, spa, or massage area under a pergola.. However, there is no use having a resort like backyard without having entertaining space. You need to accommodate your friends and family. Make sure you take care of the basics of a patio and outdoor living space and then consider adding some of the features discussed above.
Being able to enjoy the outdoors while being comfortable in your natural surroundings is one of those luxuries found in resort living. You can create that in your own home by modifying what you have and by maintaining it with pride.