Arbors Baffles And Canopies

Most back yards I have been to have been boring. I hate to say it, but most of them haven't even come close in comparison to mine.

Even though I do not have a very big yard (probably only a little more than a quarter of an acre) I know the importance of style and design. That is what I am going to share with your today.

You have to know first the three aspects of yard work: Balance, flow and accents. Most yards are not going to be tromped on from all angles we are going to have our patio, maybe a grass area, and if we are really fancy some sort of walk way.

We want to make sure that from these areas our yard looks balanced. I have a lot going on in my yard, right to the right of my patio, I have a baffle to block the side of the canopy but to still allow the top of the foliage to sort of cascade over the patio.

Yes it looks as amazing as it sounds, if I didn't have the baffle there then my patio would look rather unbalanced and everyone would feel as if they should stand by all the shrubbery. In fact, I didn't have the baffle there for a while, and I noticed people would naturally wonder away from that area.

To realize balance look from a selected vantage point and draw an imaginary line down the center of your vision. Now determine whether or not there is more on either side, or if you vision feels comfortable then you probably have good balance already.

The next thing is flow. Of course we don't want to just have our patio, we want to impress people with our whole back yard.

I have a grass area, so the kids can play, but surrounding that, around the borders, I keep a few different plants growing. I have strawberries, spinach and some annuals growing as well.

This makes the children realize that anything beyond the grass should not be tromped about in. But then I also have a small walk way leading to an arbor.

The walk way is made of slate sand stone, and there is a break in the garden area to allow this. Now this is arbor would be nothing special if I didn't accent it the way I did.

Most people don't even sit in it. But the sand stone path and the break in the garden immediately pull your eyes toward it; this flow.

Then I accented it with passion flowers growing all through the latticework. It looks like the passion flower naturally grew into the shape of an arbor in which I placed a small bench for sitting.

This is definitely the focal point of my yard, and if you can't already tell I am very proud. But I don't want to be taken as conceited, so I implore you to make your yard nice like mine... even if you can't get it as nice.