When you get down to work on your home’s landscaping, you have any number of options at your disposal. Just a quick search of the web will reveal more landscaping ideas than you could possibly imagine. Are all of these ideas right for your needs? Of course not. Some of them will be perfect, however, and one of the options that is attractive to many homeowners is hardscaping. Simply put, hardscaping is the non-living portions of your landscape.
Off the top of your head, you should be able to think of a number of different examples of hardscaping options. Patios, of course, are at the top of the list. Walkways qualify as well, as do outdoor kitchen areas, retaining walls, and much more. It is hard to picture a beautiful landscaping job that does not employ at least some type of hardscape element.
Why are these features so popular? Let’s take a look at a few of the benefits.
Outdoor Living Space
One of the main reasons to use hardscaping is to expand the overall living space of your home. When the weather is good, your patio area may see just as much traffic as your living room, if not more. Most people enjoy spending time outside, and a patio is the perfect place to do just that. This is especially true when the patio area has been designed with function in mind, including things like built-in seating or an outdoor table.
Define the Space
Hardscape is perfect for providing your outdoor space with definition and purpose. For example, you can carve out a space for the outdoor kitchen area, while using transitional features to move on to the yard and gardens. Basically, it is easier for your landscaping to ‘make sense’ when you use hardscape features.
Keep Out
Something like a walkway is a great opportunity to keep people off of areas that you would rather not have them travel. In other words, if you use a walkway to carve through a planting bed, you will be directing traffic onto the walkway and out of your bed.
Reduced Overall Maintenance
This is a big selling point for hardscaping. When you use plenty of hardscape as part of your overall design, you will be installing areas that don’t require ongoing maintenance. Things like patios and walkways can usually stay in place for years with very little attention. You may need to occasionally power wash them, or pull a few weeds from between the cracks, but that should be about it. Even if you like caring for your yard, reducing the overall maintenance load you face will be a welcome change.
It is easy to understand the appeal of hardscape. The list above only scratches the surface in terms of the many reasons homeowners have for using this landscaping option. Take a look at the current state of your property and you’ll surely find at least a couple areas that could benefit from hardscaping.