Landscaping Driveways - Design Considerations

Components of a Beautiful Yard - Driveways

What are some of the components that make a landscape "pop?"
The driveway entrance is the logical area of the yard for us to begin with. Why? Because the entrance to your driveway is also the entrance to your yard, as a whole. How your driveway entrance is landscaped, especially when a property is bordered by a fence or wall (thereby focusing attention on the entrance) sets the tone for the viewer's perception of the whole yard.

Consequently, the landscaping for your driveway shouldn't be a mere afterthought.
Nor should you underestimate the visual impact of the driveway itself. In terms of square feet (relative to the rest of the yard) and visual prominence, a driveway can be a major component of a landscape.

Landscaping Driveways: An Introduction to Design Considerations By David Beaulieu, About.com

Landscaping driveways can consist of both hardscape and softscape. Hardscape options consist mainly of walls and fences, while your softscape options for landscaping driveways include the following:

• Flower beds
• Ground covers
• Ornamental trees
• Shrubs

The possibilities for landscaping driveways are greatly enhanced if you plan on including walls. Walls (for instance, stone walls) can either parallel the driveway along its whole length, or meet it perpendicularly, at the entrance. The latter scenario, in particular, opens up a number of possibilities for landscaping driveways. For example, some people attach driveway gates to the wall, while others span the opening in the wall with an arch.

Meanwhile, variations on the softscape side of landscaping driveways are practically endless. Again, it often comes down to whether the purpose in landscaping your driveway is to create a grand driveway entrance or run the length of the driveway (of course, some people choose both). Accenting the entrance can certainly be cheaper, which is important if your budget is small and your driveway large!

If budget isn't the primary consideration in narrowing down your choices for landscaping a driveway, then what you need to think about is where you want the viewer's gaze to be drawn, and what features of your property you wish to emphasize. This rationale applies equally to hardscape and softscape.

Planting beds of colorful annuals along the sides of your driveway, for instance, will draw the viewer's gaze into your property, to the final destination of your driveway. If that destination is a rather ordinary-looking garage that is in plain view from the street, then you may not wish to draw attention to it. Likewise, if you find your property is already dominated by straight lines (straight house walls, straight driveway, straight decking, etc.), then you may not wish to emphasize the straightness of the driveway by planting its edges with straight flower beds.

By contrast, if your driveway curves around a focal point and gracefully disappears out in back of your house, then flower beds paralleling the driveway will draw the viewer's gaze conveniently to the water feature. Examples of such focal points are the following:

• Water gardens
• Landscape bridges
• Garden arbors
• Wishing wells

From an aesthetic standpoint, there's little reason not to draw the viewer's gaze to the driveway's entrance either with hardscape, softscape or both. However, practical considerations may dissuade you from employing softscape in the way that you'd like to, ideally. Theft and vandalism are two liabilities for landscaping driveways at the entrance, close to the street. Depending on your neighborhood, children passing by may traipse carelessly through a roadside flower bed in which you take a lot of pride, a bed built with your labor and your dollars. Worse yet, shrubs planted too close to the side of the road have been known to disappear overnight, a gaping hole left behind in their absence.

In the North, the challenge presented by the severity of the winters is also a consideration in landscaping driveways at the entrance to a property. Not all shrubs and perennial flowers stand up well to the menace of road salt. Shrubs can also be damaged by plow drivers who stray just a bit either to the left or right when entering your driveway. Consequently, landscaping driveways with plants so as to accent the entrance is best left to annual flowers. Annuals are inexpensive, a fact that offers some solace, should they be damaged or stolen; and they have to be replanted every spring, anyhow, so winter damage is not an issue.

Why Bother Landscaping Driveways?

The entrance to your driveway is also the entrance to your yard, as a whole. How your driveway entrance is landscaped, especially when a property is bordered by a fence or wall (thereby focusing attention on the entrance) sets the tone for the viewer's perception of the whole yard.

Moreover, in terms of square feet (relative to the rest of the yard) and visual prominence, a driveway can be a major component of a yard. Under the right circumstances (see above), that's a good reason for landscaping a driveway along its entire length. Passing up the opportunity to do so relegates the driveway to the status of a long scar running up and down your yard, a scar you're just trying to forget about.

Landscaping driveways with attention and creativity is a cornerstone of successful curb appeal.