Say Goodbye to All That Grass in Dutchess County, NY!

Traditional Landscape by Sydney Landscape Architects & Landscape Designers Arthur Lathouris Garden Designer

Do you find yourself singing that old song every summer..."I fought the lawn and the lawn won..." How many hours do we spend fertilizing, mowing, raking, watering and killing weeds only to go away for vacation and come home to yellow patches. How many hours do you spend every Spring, carefully fine-tuning the irrigation, monitoring it like a Ninja outside to ensure every blade gets a drink, only to have the kids or you hit a sprinkler head unknowingly with the lawn mower and throw all your perfection out the window?! 

There has GOT to be a better way...

Plant Your Own Food Forest

Many websites are showcasing how to transform your traditional lawn into a luscious garden space. Many pear and apple varieties survive well in colder climates. Taking out the lawn or building raised beds on top is another option. Having some organized garden boxes situated where your big lawn used to be will provide you with practical and visual interest. Trading in your dead or expensive to maintain lawn for a plethora of organic groceries is a smart idea.

Pond and Water Feature

Perhaps you love the sound of waterfalls and wish to recreate some relaxing space in your yard. This can potentially become an outdoor office, an outdoor dining space or simply your Zen retreat. If you are thinking of having Koi or goldfish in your pond, ensure that you have a deeper area for them to hibernate in during the winter months. Consider planting some aquatic plants such as blooming lily pads and cattails in the pond to attract butterflies, dragonflies and the local bird population.

Outdoor Kitchen Space

Laying a stone patio and matching BBQ area, bar, couches, or a complete outdoor kitchen with granite countertops and pergola overhead is a fun way to transform your previous lawn. Expanding your Dutchess County living space by building an outdoor kitchen is excellent for entertaining. You will keep your house cooler while cooking in the summer too. Have some fun selecting suitable concrete pavers for your patios and walkways and incorporate a matching fire pit. Create an outdoor living space at your Hudson Valley home that is less maintenance than grass and far more enjoyable!

Ground Covers

Of course, if doing a major backyard renovation is not in the budget or your timeframe, or you prefer the look of vegetation, consider planting ground cover plants instead of grass. There are numerous varieties of different heights and colors. Take a trip to the local garden center or nursery or reach out to us here at Harmony Hill Landscaping to discuss what thrives here in Dutchess County, NY.

Create an outdoor living space that's fit for your home

Every home has a sense of being—a personality much deeper than the wood, stone, and earth from which it's comprised.. And no matter that personality, it's important for designers—both interior and exterior—to uncover the best features, style, function, and form for the home they are working on. 

Building cohesiveness from the very inside of the home to the outdoor spaces is paramount. Some homes will call for a simple, clean, and beautifully humble gathering space just outside the double sliders. Others will demand much more intricate spaces that wind and bend, pulling from the established style found inside the home.

In today's world, outdoor living spaces in the Hudson Valley and Westchester areas of NY are more exciting than ever. The time is now to develop comfortable and elegant outdoor gathering spaces for your friends and family. And while the professional landscape designers at Harmony Hill Landscaping can design and build you an amazing space, sometimes the best place to find inspiration is with a simple listen to your home's voice and personality.

Check out a few more of these 50 amazing outdoor spaces here. 

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!