Planning Your Outdoor Spaces Before Your Home Is Built

Landscape Design

Best for homeowners designing a new home or planning a major renovation.

If you have the opportunity to plan your landscape while you're planning your home, take it.

I often get brought into projects once the house has been designed and the Development Application approved, only to have to break the news that another approval may be required for the landscape, or that a better outcome could have been achieved if we'd had the opportunity to consider the two together.

That's not to say we can't create something beautiful when we're brought into a project later. We absolutely can. But there will inevitably be decisions that have already been made, and sometimes those decisions place constraints on what we can achieve outside.

The best outcomes happen when we're not designing a landscape around a house.

We're designing the home and landscape to work together.

Think About How You'll Actually Use the Space

I was recently walking through a property with a client where the swimming pool had been positioned directly across the backyard.

I completely understand why this happens.

Pools are a significant investment and naturally homeowners want to see and appreciate them from inside the house. Looking through beautiful glass doors to sparkling water beyond can be a wonderful feature. The problem was that the pool effectively divided this particular backyard into three separate spaces.

There was a relatively small patio between the house and pool, enclosed by pool fencing. Then the pool itself. And finally, beyond the pool, the largest section of the backyard.

To reach that lawn, you had to enter the pool enclosure through one gate, walk through the pool area and exit through another. Now imagine the kids wanting to kick a soccer ball around. Or carrying food out for a family barbecue. Or simply walking into the garden with a glass of wine in one hand. Suddenly, that beautiful pool has become a barrier between the house and a large portion of the garden.

Could we still improve that landscape? Absolutely.

Would we have positioned everything the same way if the home, pool and garden had been considered together from the beginning? Probably not.

That's the difference early planning can make.

Creating Unity From Inside to Out

Good landscape design should work cohesively with the architecture of your home rather than feeling like something that was added afterwards.

That includes how spaces connect physically, but also how they look and feel.

The flooring you see through your doors. The materials used on external walls. The colour of the stone. The timber. The views from your kitchen, living room or bedroom. When the internal and external spaces are planned together, we can make deliberate decisions about how those materials continue through the home and into the landscape. It also means those materials can be selected and secured at the same time.

If you've found the perfect stone or tile for your home, planning early gives us the opportunity to consider whether that material, or something complementary to it, should continue outside. It's a relatively simple idea, but it can be the difference between a landscape that sits alongside the house and one that genuinely feels like part of it.

Make the Construction Work Harder

There's another benefit to early planning that's often forgotten: you're already building.

There can be significant economies of scale in coordinating landscape works with the construction of the home.

Have a concrete truck arriving to pour part of the house? Could that same pour include footings required in the backyard?

Have tilers on site? Could the same contractor continue a selected finish from inside to out?

Have a crane arriving for the house? Could we use that opportunity to lift a feature tree, bulk bags of soil or other landscape materials into the backyard while access is still available?

These aren't glamorous design decisions, but they can make an enormous difference to the cost and complexity of building a landscape. Once the house is complete, access to the backyard is often significantly reduced. Materials that could once have been driven, craned or carried directly into position may suddenly need to travel down a narrow side passage or over the completed house.

Planning early gives everyone the opportunity to work smarter.

It doesn't mean your entire landscape needs to be constructed alongside your home. You can still stage the work and the investment.

It simply means we know where we're heading.

Bre's Insight

When I'm looking at architectural plans for a new home, I'm rarely looking only at what's happening outside.

I'm looking through the windows from the kitchen. I'm thinking about what you'll see from the dining table. I'm looking at where the doors open, how people will naturally move outside and what happens when they get there.

I'm thinking about where the kids will play, where people will gather when you're entertaining and whether the beautiful part of the garden is actually somewhere you'll easily use.

Those conversations are much easier to have while we're still looking at lines on a page.

Moving a line is easy.

Moving a pool, wall or completed part of a house is considerably harder.

That's why, whenever you have the opportunity, I believe the home and landscape should be part of the same conversation from the very beginning.

Thinking About Your Landscape Project?

If you're designing a new home or planning a major renovation, you don't need to know exactly what every corner of your future garden will look like.

You simply need to start thinking about it.

Bringing your architect, landscape architect or designer and other consultants into the conversation early gives everyone the opportunity to look at the property as a whole and make decisions that work together.

If you're at the beginning of that process, I'd love to hear what you're planning and help you think about how your home and landscape can work together from the outset.

If you're wondering when the right time is to bring a landscape professional into your project, you might also enjoy reading When to Get a Landscape Architect or Designer Involved in Your Project.