With summer half over, you may be realizing what you love and don’t love about your backyard space. Homes today generally have smaller yards than in the past, which leaves less room for seating areas, landscaping and general play areas. There are ways to design a relaxing backyard space, even with very little room to move and very little money.
Create a living fence
If you don’t have the money to put towards new landscaping or trees, create a living fence. You can essentially plant what you want on your living fence and it gives you privacy, plus beauty and if you plant fruit trees, you’ll also get fruit! This DIY is incredibly easy and the cost will be just the shrub, the wood and the posthole digger rental.
Create a meditation space
While this could be a separate room, composed of a gazebo, some linens on basically a wood deck, your mediation space could also be just a bench or a seating area beside a healing garden. Healing gardens are typically composed of:
- Organic fruits, vegetables and herbs
- Beautiful blooms
- Water features
- Highly-scented flowers
- Plants that attract birds and butterflies
You’ll also want some shade in your meditation space so that you don’t get too hot or burnt by the sun while you are focusing on getting zen. If your yard tends to be buggy, a screened-in space might be a necessity.
Get rid of weeds
While weeds are usually uncontrollable (you pull them and they just come back), you can create a space that is as weed-free as possible. Having a relaxing space means doing less work and while some find weed-pulling cathartic, so is reading a book or having a glass of wine and not pulling weeds. Grass almost inevitably gets weeds, so get rid of the grass. Some great alternatives to a lawn are:
- Ornamental grasses
- Moss
- Ground covers
You could also add mulch, crushed stone or rocks around your gardens to try and prevent weeds from sprouting. These types of covers also look much better than the look of top soil, while preventing weeds.
New lighting
Harsh lighting in your yard does not induce a relaxation state. There are some great ideas out there for backyard mood lighting that aren’t expensive. What about hanging an old chandelier from a tree, but instead of light bulbs, it has inexpensive solar lights? If you have some ugly older planters, you could paint them with glow-in-the-dark paint for a very inexpensive night light.
You can have a zen-feeling backyard space in your Collingwood home, even if you are on a budget.
Sources:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/51-budget-backyard-diys-that-are-borderline-genius?utm_term=.sflkRN2Wv#.xq2kW89YG