Maintaining and renewing your landscape are two key strategies for ensuring your outdoor space remains beautiful and functional. While maintenance focuses on preserving the existing features, renewal breathes new life into your landscape by adapting it to your evolving needs and preferences.
Understanding the difference between these approaches can help you make informed decisions about your property. Every landscape requires maintenance, care, and upkeep, and most homeowners want to minimize it.
Stone patios and walls require periodic cleaning, and from time to time, minor repairs. Of course, they require far less maintenance than wood decks and ornamental planting beds. Most Oklahoma homeowners don’t realize that their highest maintenance landscape element requires weekly mowing, trimming, and water. Our lush and manicured green spaces consume considerable resources.
Even ponds and water features require less care, depending on the aquatics and relevant environmental factors. Keep this in mind when as you consider future improvements. Landscape renewals are an ideal opportunity to make upgrades that minimize maintenance.
The Distinct Goals of Landscape Maintenance and Renewal
Landscape maintenance involves regular care and upkeep to preserve the existing look and functionality of an outdoor space. This includes tasks such as mowing the lawn, trimming hedges, weeding, fertilizing, and seasonal clean-ups. The primary goal is to monitor the landscape and provide horticultural care that allows it to fulfill its design aesthetic.
Maintenance keeps your landscape neat and orderly, but it may not address the evolving needs of the property owner. Over time, even a well-maintained landscape can start to feel unstructured or outdated. Sometimes it needs additional maintenance, but more often it experiences growing pains that require a landscape design reset to achieve greater alignment with new lifestyle and preferences.
Landscape Renewal Motivations
Landscape renewal goes beyond maintenance. It’s about reimagining and revitalizing your outdoor space to better suit your current tastes, needs, and lifestyle. Renewal involves changes and updates, such as redesigning garden beds, introducing new plantings, hardscaping elements, or modern technology updates.
Renewal is often driven by one of three factors:
#1. Functional Updates or Additions: As families grow or change, so do their needs. Young children may require a safe play area that accommodates the needs of supervising adults. Teenagers may appreciate more substantial updates like sports courts.
Empty nesters might choose to scale back these play areas for relaxing, such as a private garden with a water feature. Complementary options include more elegant entertainment spaces to support future needs and resale value.
#2. Technological Advancements: The landscape industry has seen significant technological innovations in the past couple of decades. Smart irrigation systems and energy-efficient LED outdoor lighting are now considered essential upgrades.
Lighting is more than an accent nowadays. Now that working at home has become commonplace, the utility of outdoor spaces is greatly enhanced with lighting and related technologies.
#3. Tastes and Style Evolution: Landscaping and outdoor living trends tend to change as they do for interior spaces. Formal designs that were out are coming back, especially for smaller spaces to which they are especially suited.
There’s almost no right or wrong when it comes to landscape design trends. Sometimes a new design is motivated by a desire to minimize maintenance. Other times there’s no reason at all besides evolving with the owners’ lifestyle.
Landscape Renewal Strategies
There is a proven process for deciding if landscape renewal is the right strategy for you.
Simply ask yourself what you want to be seeing, thinking, feeling, and doing — in that space. Your gut will always give you the most honest and accurate assessment of what stays, goes, or gets changed out or upgraded.
Go through this process for everything. This includes plantings, garden beds, lawns, hardscape spaces, features, irrigation systems, outdoor lighting, and so on. Here are some thoughts that have helped our local, Tulsa-areas clients.
- Assess Current Needs: Consider how well your current landscape meets your needs. Is it functional, or do you find certain aspects lacking? For example, if you’re an avid gardener, you might want larger garden beds or an area for composting.
- Evaluate Aesthetic Appeal: Does your landscape still excite and inspire you? If not, it might be time for a refresh. Small changes like adding new plants or big projects like redesigning the layout can significantly impact its value for your family.
- Consider Budget and Time: While maintenance is generally more cost-effective, renewal can be a worthwhile if it enhances your quality of life and property value. It’s essential to balance your vision with your budget and time constraints.
Proactive Landscaping: Helping Oklahoma Homeowners Enjoy Outdoor Living
Our top priority is creating living spaces that are right for you. We pride ourselves on working with you from concept to construction to create the right landscape for your needs. Contact us today for a free consultation to explore your next landscaping project.
