Nobody ever said that achieving a picture-perfect yard would be easy– at least nobody who has ever tried! Learn about the five most common mistakes that homeowners make with their landscape, and how you can avoid them.

Not Doing Your Research

One of the biggest mistakes homeowners make when planning their lawn’s look is not researching properly. After all, not all plants are created equal, and not all landscaping efforts are either! While some trees may look gorgeous framing a multi-storied home, they’d look garish planted next to a smaller, garden house. If all else fails, be sure to at least read the tags on each plant you purchase. This way, you’ll know all the necessary details and won’t be surprised once it’s too late. This allows you to pick out exactly the right plants to do what you want them to do (like bloom more than once before they die for instance). As a bonus tip: be wary of buying into the bamboo trend. Unless you have a giant panda nearby, you’ll likely find your yard overrun before you know it.

Making Things Asymmetrical

When it comes to landscape design, there’s a fine line between “blah” and “beautiful.” Symmetrically arranged flowers or shrubs can bring a sense of elegance to your home, but overdoing your yard’s use of straight lines and perfectly-mirrored plants can make your property look less like a home and more like a hospital. Try to copy the look of nature with swoops and slightly uneven borders, and keep in mind that creating matched-up plants will require extra work on your part.

Getting Too Intricate

Part of planning a perfect landscape is considering who will be maintaining it. If you’d prefer to do it yourself, be sure to not make your landscape bigger than your efforts to take care of it. Sometimes this results in a slightly more scaled-back version of your dream yard, or maybe it means setting aside funds each month for someone who has more time and know-how to give your landscape the attention it deserves.

Not Thinking “Big Picture”

Imagine that you have a perfectly-designed, all-white interior design. From floor to ceiling, curtains to countertops; everything in your house is white and you love it– except a single neon green couch that you keep in your living room. What’s the problem? You love that too! And while that individual couch may be fine in the right room, it looks out of place when you consider its surroundings. Why? Because when you walk into a room, you are’t looking at each individual item comprising the room– you’re looking at it as a whole. That’s the same way people look at your landscaping. So when you’re picking out plants, shrubs and hardscape design; take a step back and create a good balance of size, color and texture. Look at your yard in its entirety.

Neglecting Your Grass

In the same way that a big green couch would look out of place in an all-white room, an immaculately-kept landscape would look out of place without the same attention being applied to its backdrop. While Fairway Lawns may not be able to help you much with your planting (though we do offer a tree and shrub treatment), we can help you love your time in your yard even more with gorgeous grass. With leading products and unmatched expertise, we’ve been growing greater expectations for 40 years.