Driveway Landscaping

| Tuesday, April 29, 2014
By Darren Hartley


Driveway landscaping consists of both hardscape and softscape. Hardscape options include walls and fences while softscape options include flower beds, ground covers, ornamental trees and shrubs.

By including walls in the plan, the great enhancement of colorful driveway landscaping possibilities is achieved. One option is having the driveway paralleled by the walls along its whole length. A second option, which opens up a number of additional driveway landscaping possibilities, is having the walls meeting the driveway at the entrance perpendicularly.

Other driveway landscaping ideas include attachment of driveway gates to the wall and spanning the opening in the wall with an arch. As far as the softscape side of driveway landscaping, the variations appear to be practically endless.

Accenting the driveway entrance is certainly a cheaper way of driveway landscaping, especially if the budget is small while the driveway is large. However, it all boils down to what the purpose for the landscaping is, whether it is for the creation of a grand driveway entrance, the running of the length of the driveway or both.

Should budget not be a primary concern, the primary considerations for a driveway landscaping project would be where the gaze of the viewer is wanted to be drawn and what features of the property are wished to be emphasized. The hardscape and softscape options are equally affected by these considerations.

The dictate of driveway landscaping is to plant colourful annual beds along the sides of the driveway to draw the gaze of the viewer where it is wanted. Travelling from the driveway to its final destination would be the gaze. The final destination of the driveway is, of course, the property itself.

However, attention may not be wanted to be drawn if the destination of the driveway is an ordinary-looking garage, in plain view from the street. Likewise, driveway landscaping suggests not emphasizing the straightness of the driveway should the property be already dominated by straight lines, i.e., straight house walls, straight decking and the like. For such purpose, planting the edges of the driveway with straight flower beds will not do.




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