When working on your landscaping, it’s natural to want to focus on plants, trees and mulch to improve your home’s curb appeal. Hardscaping is an aspect of landscaping that may be overlooked in your exterior plans—but it shouldn’t be!
What is hardscaping? This term refers to the “hard” elements of your landscaping, such as patios, retaining walls, fire pits, walkways and rocks. Hardscaping adds to your home’s aesthetics and can also create some additional functionality.
Here are just a few of the benefits associated with hardscaping:
- Expanded living spaces: Using hardscaping, you can create outdoor kitchens, patios, seating and fire pits that all serve as an extension of your home. Give yourself more space to entertain or to relax when the weather is nice, and add to the functionality of your yard!
- Supplement your landscaping: In many cases, gardens and other landscaping elements can have their attractiveness enhanced by the addition of some hard features. Hardscaping helps you to introduce some diverse textures that contrast with your plants and create some focal points that draw the eye. These features last all year long, even after your plants have died or been removed for the winter months.
- Increase privacy: Want to add a little bit of privacy to your back yard? You can use a stone wall or fence to add an attractive barrier that encloses your space. If you’d rather not close off your property, you can get privacy elsewhere, such as in the form of a gazebo or pergola, which can easily be made into a secluded space without having to fully block off your property from the rest of the neighborhood.
- Resolve issues with grading: Uneven lawns or grading can cause a wide range of issues, such as erosion or inaccessibility. By putting in retaining walls or other hardscaping features, you can reduce or prevent erosion, and create flat spaces that are easier to manage for gardening and maintenance. Pathways and stairs help make steep slopes easier to navigate, and patios can provide an even surface where there once may have been a bumpy or unattractive area on your lawn.
- Control foot traffic: If you want to control where people do and do not walk on your property, you can use hardscaping to develop walkways that give clear directions as to where people should go. This is especially important if you have a lawn or garden of which you are extremely proud—walkways are natural routes for people to take so they do not trample the plants you have worked so hard to cultivate and manicure.
- Less maintenance: The more hardscaping elements you have, the less grass you need to maintain. After all, you don’t have to cut or water a patio or stones. This gives you back more of your time to sit outside and enjoy your property and landscaping so you don’t have to spend all your free time on maintenance.
For more information about why you should pick hardscaping for your yard, contact us today at Beavertown Block Co., Inc.