30+ Genius Summer Backyard Landscaping Design Ideas To Inspire Everyone

Designers will delineate backyard zones next year with pathways. Creating an enchanting path is a perfect off-season project for your garden, before you get busy with spring planting. A garden path can become a work of art when you think beyond concrete sidewalks and stepping-stones. Use bricks or concrete pavers to create an interesting chevron pattern, or use gravel bordered by mosses of varying heights. Sink large concrete squares or flagstone slabs at grade level, assuring that you can mow over them easily. Create a negative space path by using turf grass with stacked stone growing beds along each edge.

The third design trend you will see lots more of next year is the incorporation of fauna, either domesticated or wild. The urban chicken movement is growing exponentially, as urbanites add creative coops to their back yards. Themed chicken shelters range from Victorian mansions (in chicken-sized scale, of course) to traditional red barns. Beehives are another popular backyard addition, providing a safe haven for the threatened bee population.

If keeping birds or bees isn’t your style, you can create a wildlife haven to encourage visiting birds, bugs and animals to stop by and stay for a while. Provide food, water and shelter for migrating birds and native species of all types. Rabbits, frogs, butterflies and songbirds are just some of the beautiful visitors you may see.

Your perfect spring and summer backyard design starts now. Winter is the ideal time to peruse books and websites for ideas, to buy materials and start projects that will help make the cold months fly by. When spring arrives, you and your family will be ready to hit the local garden center for the flowers, fruit trees and other growing plants that complete your design. When you add some of these backyard design trends to your home, you’re sure to be delighted by the results.