Designing your ideal home environment involves a whole lot more than just deciding what color to paint the walls or what furniture to buy, and the exterior of the house is every bit as important as the interior! Imagine your perfectly designed home sitting on a half-dirt lot surrounded by dying trees and an overgrown garden. Curb appeal is not to be neglected and even more now than ever people are expanding the way they approach their outdoor spaces to consider functionality and practicality.
In pursuit of expert advice for exterior design we turned to Josh Yeater at All Terrain Landscaping. Their family business has been designing beautiful landscapes in the front range for nearly 20 years.
“If you can dream it, we can figure out a way to build it,” Yeater says of their educated and confident approach to new challenges. Figuring out how to make things work is the fun part of the job for him.
In terms of functionality the latest craze in exterior design is the outdoor kitchen. Outdoor cooking is no longer restricted to barbecuing and the like and for those who love to enjoy the fresh air when it’s warm outside this is the next logical step in hosting outdoor gatherings with friends and family. We’ve all been at the events where the party is split between in and out, often as a symptom of one or more people preparing food. From built-in grills and smokers, all the way to sinks, flat-tops, and refrigerators, there really is no limit to what you can do to elevate your outdoor gatherings and cooking experiences. You can even go so far as to add a covered patio or shade structure with smart lights and outdoor speakers added for extra ambiance and heaters to extend the season.
“They lend themselves to a lot of possibilities,” Yeater said about the outdoor structures.
Another growing trend in Colorado landscape is water-conscious design. Low flow water features, native plant and rock design, drought tolerant grasses and perfectly optimized, smart sprinkler systems are here to stay while immense green fields of grass and artificial ponds are going by the wayside. Simply put, it’s bad economics. In an arid environment such as ours the cost of watering big lawns or poorly selected, ornamental plants can become absurd quickly. What’s more is a water conserving design helps to ease the strain on local water resources. Rock features and appropriate plants can offer a beautiful and mindful solution to mitigating the issue.
“There are ways to incorporate it into the landscape to make it flow,” Yeater told us of the growing trend towards some less traditionally selected plants.
No matter what your perfect outdoor space looks like there's no better time than now to start considering your next outdoor project. Planning makes perfect in this arena and even if you’re calling in the professionals to get it done you’ll wanna get started early to avoid losing too many perfect summer days to a less than perfect back-yard retreat.