I see beautiful landscape designs all around me. And the grass is truly greener on the other side! My neighbor has a pool with a beautiful surround completely landscaped with shrubs, bushes, and trees. My other neighbor has an outside patio surrounded by shrubs with beautiful trees towering overhead. Me, I have a couple of trees in a flat yard. My problem is that I can see a good landscape design, I just don’t know how to create a nice-looking landscaping design.

So, I have begun looking through landscape books and have started sketching some ideas. I know one thing I would like to have in my landscape design is a water feature and some rocks and landscaping stone. I saw some pictures where someone created a “stream” of rocks and built a beautiful wooden bridge over this stream. Even though no water was flowing, the rocks created the look of a dry streambed and the bridge added to the realism of this dry water feature.

Another thing I like are flowering trees. So I am planning on adding some decorative flowering cherry trees, a couple of dogwoods, and perhaps a flowering crabapple or two. These trees come in different colors including white, pinks, and reds which will add a lot of visual interest to my new landscape.

Once I have my plan finished, I will be heading off to my local nursery to buy my plants. I like my local nursery because they have a one-year warranty on all of their plants. If the plant doesn’t survive the first year, they will replace the plant free of charge. This is added security when designing and building your own landscape. The other reason I am using my local nursery is that they offer free delivery. With the amount of stone and rock that I need, free delivery is an added bonus.