Outdoor Structures and You
With all the wonderful choices in outdoor structures, it can be hard to decide which ones will enhance your yard and garden. With this in mind, let’s explore the different types of outdoor garden structures, where they might be placed and for what purpose. This way you can look at your families activity and decide what will work best for all of you.
Let’s start with the trellis. You will find trellises in both the front and back yards in gardens of all kinds and against large and small walls and buildings to help tame the mass of climbing vines. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and you can use them virtually any and everywhere.
Another very versatile outdoor structure is an arbor. In fact, many people have multiple arbors to create entrances to their garden from every side and also into their yards. They are fantastic to create an archway especially if combined with lovely climbing vines and blooms that can fill in the sides and tops creating a canopy of flowers. For outside weddings, you can’t beat this. However, arbors can be used sparingly to create wonderful sitting areas or vestibule.
A larger structure that can be a stand alone or combined with your porch or patio is a pergola. Pergolas are unique in that they have the same canopy capabilities as arbors with the right plant choices but they also provide shade in the mornings and evenings due to the slatted nature of the roof. Creating a sitting area under a pergola is a great way to enjoy one of these fine structures and some pergolas came with optional chairs and/or tables built in.
If you are a family that parties, a gazebo may just be the right outdoor structure for you. It can be used all by itself out in your yard or to support other activities such as a backyard swimming pool. Having a gazebo for dinner parties or for that midnight dance with that special someone are all great reasons to choose this particular structure for your yard.
You won’t hear much about raised beds and bridges because, even though you will see both all the time, they blend in with the landscape more than stick out as an overpowering structure. Raised beds are great to place in your yard and allow you to create a flowerbed without digging up anything, anywhere. For areas that have low lying spots or water features you would like to enhance, bridges work very well. As stated before, these get lost in the landscape but if you look, you will see them everywhere.
December 28 2008 | Gardening | No Comments »