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It’s good when you have a favorite dacha where you can take a break from the monotonous everyday life, breathe fresh air, and sometimes live for a while. Country landscape largely determines the nature of the owner.
In order to competently design and bring landscape design to life, you can call in specialists with many years of experience. But it is much more pleasant (and cheaper) to create a dacha landscape with your own hands.
Of course, this requires considerable effort, some knowledge and skills, but the result will please any owner, because doing something with your own hands, you put a piece of your soul.
How to create a landscape design with your own hands, where to start, what accents to place – everything in this article, with numerous photos and useful recommendations.
Determination of the type of landscape of the cottage
Before proceeding with the design, you need to figure out which area you will have to work with. To do this, you need to come to the country and carefully look around. This stage is especially important for new sites, the owners of which are still unfamiliar with the features and properties of the country landscape.
So, the determining factors in choosing a summer cottage landscape will be:
- the location of the suburban area, its orientation to the cardinal points;
- the nature and style of the buildings available in the country (both the main house and small outbuildings);
- illumination of the suburban area;
- type of soil on the site;
- terrain (plain, slope, proximity to a natural reservoir, forests, and so on);
- the presence of a fence between neighboring cottages.
Having decided on the type of landscape in the summer cottage, you can proceed to the next step.
Design
Like any construction, creating a landscape in a country house requires preliminary preparation – drawing up a plan.
To make a plan, you can use one of the many computer programs. Modern technologies allow, only by driving in the parameters of a summer cottage, to get the most optimal landscape design. In this case, you can get a three-dimensional image of the future dacha landscape and finally decide whether you like this project or need to look for another one.
If there is no desire or opportunity to work with robot programs, you can sketch out a diagram of a summer cottage landscape with your own hands. To do this, you need a plan of the cottage site itself and the buildings on it.
The existing dacha plan is transferred to graph paper, observing the scale, and then, they begin to draw individual elements of the landscape.
Landscaping details
To date, many elements have been invented to decorate the landscape of the dacha and the adjacent territory, to make them as functional and expressive as possible.
Among other things, such details of the country landscape stand out most of all, such as:
- Small architectural structures. These are garages, sheds, summer showers, saunas and much more. The main requirement for such dacha buildings is that they must be made in the same style as a residential building, consistent with the landscape design. Today, a combination of incongruous and a mixture of styles is in fashion, but it is better to entrust such work to professionals, since it is very easy to “overdo it”. Maintaining the uniform style of the dacha landscape, it is easy to achieve naturalness and naturalness. So, if the house is built of wood, brick outbuildings will look ridiculous against its background. But a bathhouse from a log house is quite suitable for a stone dacha. Another rule is that buildings should have interesting architecture, because the garden is beautiful only in summer, in winter the eyes of all the guests of the cottage will be riveted precisely to the buildings.
- Landscape zoning should be done based on its original configuration. So, a breakdown into identical square zones is more suitable for square summer cottages, it is better to divide an elongated area into rectangles of different sizes with a certain landscape.
- Guardrails and fences also play a fairly large role in the design of the landscape design of the cottage. At the same time, as a rule, fences between neighboring dachas are not included in the definition of landscape. This takes into account decorative fences that help divide the cottage into thematic areas, such as a garden, a vegetable garden, a recreation area, a playground, a car parking lot and others. These fences do not perform the function of protecting the cottage from prying eyes or strong winds, their purpose is to complement the landscape design, to act as an additional decorative element.
- Tracks. Garden paths in the country can be of two types: geometric and arbitrary. The first option is more suitable for spacious country cottages, the territory of which has the correct shape of a square or rectangle. In the vast majority of cases, suburban dachas have a polygonal complex shape and a small area. In such landscapes, curvilinear, winding paths look more profitable. So, there should be two types of paths: the main one, which connects the gate to the entrance to the house, and secondary paths that connect the house with all areas of the summer cottage.
- Artificial constructions perform a decorative function in landscape design. These include alpine slides, rockeries, patios, the area around the pool. A person creates all this with his own hands, before building each of these elements, it is necessary to draw up an individual plan with all sizes and small details.
- Reservoirs also often become a decoration of the cottage. Today in the landscape there are artificial ponds, rivers, streams, fountains, waterfalls. A combination of several of these structures in one landscape is often used. When designing a reservoir in the country, one should not forget about bringing water to this place, electricity for pumps and filters, as well as a drainage system.
- Vegetation occupies perhaps the most important part in creating a summer cottage landscape. Well-chosen trees, shrubs, flowers and herbs can change any landscape beyond recognition. Planting and caring for plants take up most of the summer resident’s free time, therefore, when choosing plants, you need to correctly calculate your strength and time. It is better for a busy person to plant perennial crops, shrubs and dwarf trees, unpretentious flowers adapted to the local climate in the country.
Completion of the task
You can also bring your plan to life on your own. Creating a landscape design for a summer residence, as mentioned above, must begin with the preparation of a project. You can choose a landscape project from numerous photos and videos of already implemented landscapes, but it’s much more interesting to come up with it yourself.
When the landscape project is selected and the plan is outlined, you can begin to implement your plan. First of all, summer cottages are built: a terrace, a gazebo, a tandoor or a barbecue. Without these structures, it is difficult to imagine a cottage as a place to relax.
During the period of digging the foundation, excess earth may form, sometimes large stones come across – you should not prematurely get rid of them. All this can become a building material for rockeries or alpine slides.
The next step will be garden paving. The easiest option is to mark the perimeter of the path, remove the soil to a depth of about 10 cm and fill the resulting void with large stones or paving slabs.
Country paths can become a real decoration of the landscape, they are made from saw cuts of wood, covered with pebbles or rubble, using modern materials, such as mosaics or ceramics. The most successful examples of paths in the landscape are shown in the photo.
After that you can do garden landscape decor. At this stage, stone gardens are laid out, fountains and ponds are made, pools are built. It is not customary to decorate a modern summer cottage landscape with animal figures and gnomes – this is already a passed stage. Today, various flowerpots, statues, installations made of interesting materials (as in the photo), original lamps are in fashion.
Stage of landscape gardening, by right, is considered the most interesting. But it is also the most important, because green spaces can transform any cottage. For those who visit their summer cottage only on weekends, perennials, unpretentious flowers, trees and shrubs are more suitable.
Exotic bright flower stalks, as a rule, require more careful care – they need regular watering, feeding, transplanting.
It is difficult to imagine the landscape of a summer residence without hedge. As this element, you can choose evergreens, conifers and shrubs. The fence should be beautiful not only in summer, but also in autumn and winter. The condition of the hedge must be carefully monitored: water, cut, remove dead wood.
You can choose a lawn as an intermediate landscaping of the dacha landscape. Smooth grass looks spectacular in any area, the lawn can be “diluted” with interesting shrubs or bright flowers.
On both sides of the path leading to the house can be broken flower beds. It is better not to make them symmetrical, flower beds of different shapes and fillings look more original.
On the terrace, in the gazebo, by the pool, flowerpots and flower pots look great. The gazebo will be decorated with weaving vines and planters with ampelous plants.
Arranging a summer cottage with your own hands is not only a way to save money, but also an excellent option for relaxation and rest from city everyday life.
