Landscape design in the Hudson Valley just got a lot better.

Embarking on the process of creating an outdoor living space for your Hudson Valley home—or perhaps developing it’s overall landscape design—comes with the challenge of making difficult design decisions. After all, expanding your home’s livable space outside the backdoor is a major purchase and their are a ton of choices to make regarding colors, layouts, features, and styles. The team at Harmony Hill understands this and is making significant investments to ensure that this process is as easy as possible for our clients. 

Most times here in Dutchess County and the surrounding areas across the Hudson Valley, homeowners working with landscape companies to build a new outdoor space are presented with a regular 2D plan drawing on a regular flat piece of paper to show their newly proposed outdoor space. The problem is that, you guessed it, the world is not 2 dimensional. 

Enter 3D landscape design presentations from Harmony Hill Landscaping. 

See, we believe that homeowners shouldn’t need to read complicated design plans, grading plans, and planting schedules. We think it should be as easy as looking at a picture. That’s why we have implemented professional 3D software into our design process. Uvision 3D Landscape Creator by Unilock enables us to communicate our vision for our client’s property through images that include realistic textures and colors, borders, and project elements. 

We think you will really enjoy seeing what we have created for you…even before a shovel hits the ground. It’s just one more way we strive to offer our customers the very best in outdoor living design and installation services—right here in the Hudson Valley. 

The patio is the center of your outdoor Dutchess County home

Here at Harmony Hill Landscaping, we create outdoor living spaces for homeowners across the greater Hudson Valley area. We design and build comprehensive landscapes that help extend the homes of the families we work for, inviting impromptu gatherings outside on the back patio. 

We think differently about the planning of these outdoor spaces than most landscape companies. We quite simply treat your outdoor home with the same respect and attention as you would expect for the interior rooms that you live in—you know, the ones you make so many memories in with close friends and family. See, we believe that the best way to start bringing some of those amazing memories outside is to install a patio. After all, the classic backyard patio is the center of your NY outdoor home. 

Depending on your needs and the way you use your home, you can easily branch out and expand—including special features like fire pits and outdoor fireplaces, outdoor kitchens, pools, spas, and even hidden garden rooms that invite you to use your entire property for entertaining. Your landscape will grow with you and your family over the years, but chances are pretty good that your back patio will provide great inspiration for your backyard oasis. Just remember to pull up a free seat for a designer at Harmony Hill Landscaping—we will help bring these outdoor spaces to life so you can create more amazing outdoor memories. 

Trending for the 2015 outdoor living season: Foodscaping

Photo Courtesy of www.rosalindcreasy.com

Edible gardening—aka foodscaping—is becoming a big hit in outdoor living design as we look to the 2015 outdoor season here in the Hudson Valley.  Edible gardening—the idea of mixing edibles into the traditional landscape plantings of a home—is gaining steam as a younger, more health conscious generation begins to purchase homes of their own.

It’s really a beautiful thing to see a traditional landscape plantings of Hudson Valley go-to’s like Lavender, Spirea, and Boxwood right alongside lettuces, herbs, and berries. And why not, right? The best placement for edibles is in full sun, often found in the front of the house. Mixing edibles with ornamentals helps homeowners to get more value from their landscape investment by providing better use of this prime, sunny space.

Edible gardening’s rise in popularity can be attributed to the growing awareness of the nutritional pitfalls of mass farming. Folks in their early 30’s are striving to provide more local and organic food for themselves and for their children. But at the same time, there are simply not enough hours in the day for these homeowners to tend to the traditional vegetable gardens of the past.  Foodscaping becomes a very attractive solution, offering fresh herbs, berries, lettuces, and vegetables with little additional effort.

So choose a few of your family’s favorite veggies and plant them along side those existing boxwoods. Enjoy the simple pleasure of going right into your own backyard with your children and picking a fresh salad for Sunday’s family dinner. Sounds like the perfect mix of traditional and modern day worlds!

Pennsylvania Bluestone is a Timeless Choice

When deciding what material to use for your new patio, walkway, or pool deck, all of the options available can be quite daunting to say the least. For a classic and timeless look, selecting natural stone products like Pennsylvania bluestone for your outdoor living space is a solid choice. There are a few options to consider when using bluestone at your Hudson Valley home. 

You can choose from two main finishes for the top surface with bluestone—natural cleft or thermal-finished. Finish can be a huge factor in the overall look and feel of an outdoor space. Natural cleft is more rustic with differences in height and a bit of surface relief. This finish lends itself very well to casual, flowing designs and is a solid choice for a country setting. In often stark contrast, thermal-finished bluestone is torched, leaving the surface very smooth to the touch. Perfect for an outdoor living space with clean lines and a modern feel. 

The second option with bluestone is pattern. Bluestone is traditionally offered in pattern  and irregular cuts. A pattern cut bluestone patio is quite simply squares and rectangles of varying sizes, ranging from 12"x12" to 24"x36". An Irregular bluestone patio is made of stone in triangular shapes, fitted together through chiseling and shaping. Oddly enough, both cuts work in both modern and traditional design settings and overall, bluestone is a great, native choice when building your landscape and outdoor living area here in the Hudson Valley. 

Don't cut costs when it comes to landscape lighting

Low voltage landscape lighting is an often overlooked element of a properly designed landscape. For homes in Dutchess County and the surrounding counties in the Hudson Valley region, outdoor lighting is crucial as larger land lots means darker outdoor spaces on the property. Offering both safety and beauty, outdoor lighting systems should be integrated into the landscaping & hardscaping plan from the design stage. 

For the proper lighting of outdoor steps and walls, manufacturers such as Kichler Lighting, Integral Lighting, and Cast Lighting offer great products. These thin landscape lighting fixtures slide discretely under the cap of a garden seat wall and are often used under stair treads for illuminating steps like the photo shown here provided by the folks at Cast Lighting. 

You can read more about the landscape lighting products that Harmony Hill Landscaping installs for our Hudson Valley clients every season here.