Good Read: ‘Landscaping Ideas That Work’

Good landscape design doesn’t have to be complicated. Simple moves, like adding a sandbox that invites kids to explore outside, creating an alluring outdoor room with foliage or turning an eyesore of a driveway into a visual delight with planting, can transform outdoor spaces to meet your needs and give your property stylish good looks.

In her new book, Landscaping Ideas That Work (Taunton Press), landscape architect Julie Moir Messervy highlights the elements designers use to create enjoyable landscapes, profiling porches, backyards, side yards and other outdoor spaces that simply work. Here are several key concepts from the book.

Get outdoors as much as possible. Open-air rooms offer a graceful way to entertain surrounded by plantings. This project in Ottawa, Canada, by John Szczepaniak, includes materials like pea gravel and square-cut limestone paving stones arranged in an orderly geometric pattern. An artful privacy fence creates a feeling of intimacy around the table, which sits on a raised dining area near a crabapple tree.


Create spaces where kids can run around, hide or explore. Entertaining areas are high on most people’s landscape wish lists, but areas where kids can play are also popular, Messervy says. “These days, more than ever before, our backyard landscapes need to draw children outside to play, so they can get away from computer and television screens and out into nature,” she says.

For this DIY backyard, a young couple engaged their kids in the design process; they laid out the lawn with a garden hose and built play spaces along with vegetable beds to transform a narrow lot, following a master plan done by Messervy’s design studio, JMMDS.


“Play spaces don’t necessarily have to be elaborate — a tire swing, simple sandbox, crawlspace under a forsythia bush or even a muddy spot behind the garage can all stimulate imaginative play,” she notes.

This backyard, designed by Distinctive Landscaping, has a table and chairs, but it also has a circular lawn that looks just about right for tea parties or cartwheels.


Make garages and driveways beautiful. Garage an eyesore? Asphalt driveway cracked and full of weeds? If you’re thinking big picture, think about integrating a new or renovated garage and driveway into a master plan, and tie these elements into the plantings, as landscape architect Szczepaniak did here.


Also by Szczepaniak, this small porch on the side of a garage is one of my favorite projects in the book. Softly lit at night, it’s a little hideaway on a small lot in the center of Ottawa, Canada’s capital.

“This garden uses every square inch to wonderful effect,” notes Messervy. “The designer integrated the garage into the garden by using an attached arbor and seating area, which reduces its size so that it feels like a charming garden structure.” Lush plantings, ornamental grasses and ground covers blanket the area.


Terrace slopes to make living rooms. Plans for this waterfront property in New York are shown in the book as a case study, and it’s interesting to see how steps and retaining walls were used by landscape architect Mariane Wheatley-Miller to link a series of seven terraces leading down to a boathouse and lakeshore.

Local stone was used to build the walls and stair facings, and bluestone pavers form the surface areas. Note how the vertical surfaces are softened with climbing vines.


Use rain gardens in the right context. In a Bethesda, Maryland, neighborhood, a wet yard was redesigned by Melissa Clark to channel overflow water. She formed a shallow channel using river stones, and plants like dogwood shrub and fothergilla fill in the borders, along with hostas and alliums.

“Directing rainwater from roofs and impervious surfaces to a planted filtration basin helps water the plants, filter harmful contaminants, and augment the aquifer deep within the earth,” Messervy says.


Add a water element for relaxation and tranquility. There are several great examples of how water can be used — a small basin, a fountain on a bed of large stones, this spitting frog fountain — all an extension of the owner’s personality and in keeping with the style of the garden and home.


On this Vermont property, which includes the previous space, a swimming pond is set away from the house. Swimming ponds are becoming increasingly popular, as they can be integrated into the surroundings and allow for more naturalistic designs.

Designed by Broadleaf Landscape Architecture, the master plan integrates a formal reflecting pool near the rear of the house with a curvilinear pond that’s a focal point of the backyard.


Remember that details matter. Lights can create ambiance as well as create a safe environment for you and your guests. The right materials and design can allow lighting fixtures to enhance built elements, as this garden by AJ Miller Landscape Architecture shows.


Choose a light that matches the style of your home or one that fits your personality, the author advises, and look for solar fixtures or low-energy LEDs that cut down on energy usage.


Info: Landscaping Ideas That Work, by Julie Moir Messervy, is available online and in stores.

In addition to this book, Messervy has collaborated with the architect Sarah Susanka on Outside the Not So Big House: Creating the Landscape of Home (2008), and then wrote Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love, followed by the creation of an online design process called home outside.

See more great landscaping and garden design ideas

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