Landscaping Ideas for your New Loveland Home

Moving to a new home in Loveland opens the opportunity to create a landscape design that perfectly suits your lifestyle. The Lakes at Centerra new homes community is surrounded by beautiful Colorado scenery, and with just a few simple landscaping ideas it is possible to easily design the front and backyard of your new home to blend with the natural surroundings of the neighborhood.

As you get started with your plan, here are some basic landscape design ideas to consider:

Work with What You’ve Got

• Retain the natural grades that already exist in the yard to add character to the design.
• Visit the W. D. Holley Plant Environmental Research Center (PERC) on the Colorado State University campus in Ft. Collins to get a great idea about what plants thrive in our Northern Colorado climate and what they look like at maturity.
• Located at 630 West Lake Street on the west side of campus, the PERC facility is home to several greenhouses, an arboretum, trial and display gardens, and extensive trial plots.
• Find inspiration by looking at examples of landscape design online to see how other people have chosen to work with unique or challenging natural features.

Keep it Local

The Colorado climate offers up many plant options when designing your lot, so make things simpler by growing plants that are native to the area. Growing indigenous plants ensure that you won’t have to work as hard to keep them alive, visit the High Plains Environmental Center in Centerra to access resources to help you find the perfect native plants for your landscape vision.

Use Your Space Wisely

Once you’ve chosen the plants you want to use, it’s time to get creative and decide how they should be arranged to highlight your space. Especially when planning your backyard landscape ideas, engage in family conversation to discover how members wish to utilize your outdoor space and start making a list of must-haves and wish lists. Use this checklist to help facilitate those conversations:

• Are there certain activities you like to do outside, like dining, entertaining or gardening? These activities will determine whether you should plan your backyard landscape ideas around space for a table, garden plots, a spa or patio.
• Are you an accomplished home chef? Have you always wanted a vegetable garden? Consider incorporating an outdoor oven, built in barbecue or decide in advance how much room you’d like to delegate to growing vegetables.
• Are there certain views you want to take advantage of? When considering landscaping ideas for the front yard, walk along your patio and determine if there is a focal point in the distance that you want to frame with your new landscape.

Ask A Pro

Hiring a professional landscaper is a great idea for busy families who don’t have the desire to landscape their yard. During your initial meetings, review their portfolio, show them the plant lists and other ideas you’ve already collected, and visit the site where you’re future landscape will live. The best resource for finding the right landscaper for you is the website for the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, which has an easy “Find a Designer” tool.