DIY Network

Landscaping: Introduction From "Be Your Own Contractor" episode DBYC-112

Do-it-yourselfer Fred Samuels' landscaped his own home in Rockwood, Tennessee.

In this episode of DIY's Be Your Own Contractor, our do-it-yourselfers share with us the experience of landscaping their homes while acting as their own contractors. They give us advice about landscape design, planning and materials. Also covered are specific topics related to landscaping such as decks, driveways, sidewalks, and retaining walls.

In this first segment, we get an overview of some of the requirements, decisions and preferences from some of our do-it-yourself contractors when it came to landscaping -- as well as some of the concerns and obstacles they faced.

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Landscaping Introduction

Landscaping is an area of home building that comes with a large number of interconnected decisions.

• According to Jody Cukier Siegler, you must first decide on the atmosphere you want to establish and convey through your landscaping -- formal, casual, playful, elaborate, simple, etc. Other considerations include such things whether you want to include spaces for outdoor dining in your landscape plane. All of these are decisions that Jody discussed with here landscape designer and architect as she planned her home. She professes that you can think of planning your landscaping as if you were planning a series of additional "rooms" outside your house.

  On the other hand, Jody doesn't consider herself a weekend gardener by any means. When planning her plantation-style home and garden (figures A and B), one of her goals was to have a low-maintenance yard. In fact, one of her stated objectives was to have a yard wherein she could simply "mow it, water it and look at it."

  Figure A

  Figure B

  
  

• Alan Sain's considerations were relatively uncomplicated complicated. His main stipulation was that he didn't want it to take more than one hour to mow his lawn at his home in Butler, Pennsylvania. For that reason, the grass areas were limited to a small area of his wooded property. The remaining areas had to be landscaped with trees, shrubs, rock, etc (figures C and D).

  Though Alan's wife Sharon was previously more accustomed to the asphalt and concrete of city life, she and Alan have both grown to enjoy the wooded surroundings of their home.

  Figure C

  Figure D

  
  For his 4000-square-foot home and 70-acre tract of land in Hillside, Colorado (figure E), Andy Beasley also stuck with a fairly simple, straightforward landscaping plan. To be environmentally responsible, he decided to keep lawns and plantings that would require a lot of water to a minimum. For the most part, locally native species of trees and plants were selected to blend visually with the natural terrain.

  Animals -- both wild and domestic -- can be a big consideration for landscaping. Large dogs can create havoc with delicate and ornate landscaping. Wild animals can be a concern too, as Andy Beasley found out. The ash tree saplings that he planted on his property had to be surrounded with high, sturdy fencing (figure F) to protect them from grazing deer and elk in the area of his mountainside home.

  Figure E

  Figure F

  
  Water was certainly also a consideration for Lynn Underwood at his home in the arid climate of Vail, Arizona (figure G). He stuck with the natural species of vegetation that came with the land where his property is situated, and made sure that many of the desert-plant specimens were dug up and transferred to other parts of the property when the land was cleared for his house (figure H).

  Figure G

  Figure H

  
  When building his rustic home in Rockwood, Tennessee (figure I), Fred Samuels had difficulty locating nurseries with the range of selection he had become accustomed to when living in the Northeast. He also found challenges with the soil quality in the area where he lives.

  Fred created a form for his planting beds through a series of walls that surrounds his patio area (figure J). Unlike some of the other contractors who meticulously planned their landscaping in advance, Fred did his own landscaping and did it "a step at a time" as he let his overall plane evolve.

  Figure I

  Figure J

  
  

In the segment that follows, the do-it-yourself contractors talk about decks and hardscapes as well as landscape planning.