Landscape Design for Dummies

[Anonymous]

Can anyone recommend an app, website, or service offering landscape design and planning for low cost of free. We have tried Meadows Farms with limited success. We want to totally re-do the front of our house and one side. We can move dirt, plant, and mulch, but are hopeless at design. We live in a nice, middle class neighborhood, but I’m having trouble finding inspiration.

[Anonymous]

Check out Garden Answer on YouTube. There are also a lot of web sites with landscape design ideas. I’m not sure of a specific app but there may be one. Also, you could visit your local garden center and talk to people there and get ideas.

[Anonymous]

What are you trying to do? Improve drainage? Hardscape? Create new beds? Or just add different plants?

I would point out that landscape design is a profession - you may not mean to be insulting but this is kind of like saying, I want to build a house - is there an “architecture for dummies?”

If you just want to plant new plants, you still need someone with knowledge of soil types, drainage and what plants do well with what exposure.

I love gardening and the process of experimenting and learning, but if you just want to fully transform your yard in one year you should hire a professional. That’s why it’s a profession!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are you trying to do? Improve drainage? Hardscape? Create new beds? Or just add different plants?

I would point out that landscape design is a profession - you may not mean to be insulting but this is kind of like saying, I want to build a house - is there an “architecture for dummies?”

If you just want to plant new plants, you still need someone with knowledge of soil types, drainage and what plants do well with what exposure.

I love gardening and the process of experimenting and learning, but if you just want to fully transform your yard in one year you should hire a professional. That’s why it’s a profession!

Hit to soon - if you are into native plants and wildlife, there are nonprofits like Audubon that will provide guidance for free. But native and wildlife gardens tend to look, well, wild. You have to be down for a lot of relatively messy periods in order to make the garden useful for creatures. If that is your jam, there are more free resources.

[Anonymous]

We also had terrible luck with meadows farms (the plan they designed for us took months and did not reflect what we wanted/had discussed at all, and seemed lazy in a lot of respects), and after doing a bunch of research just decided to hire an independent landscape designer. So, no answer for you, but commiseration. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

I have had work done by landscape designers in the past, and that’s the way to go to fully transform your space right now, but if you just want it to look nice and are willing to learn by trial and error and online research, and are willing to design your garden gradually over time, that’s definitely the less expensive way to go. We are re-doing things in the garden now and it’s been a months-long process involving trial and error and moving things around, but it’s been rewarding!

[Anonymous]

Not to pile on, but I had a bad experience with Meadows Farms as well for landscape design. Ended up just googling and looking at images to see what I liked.

You could try one of these:
https://www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/garden-design-apps