Transform Your Backyard: The Ultimate Guide to Designing Your Dream Outdoor Destination

Learn more: 7 Benefits of Adding Hardscape to Your Outdoor Space

For example, you can train wisteria or clematis to grow on your pergola to provide added shade, bright color, and a cozy place to enjoy wine with friends.

Here are several pergola ideas to consider

• Add walls with plants or outdoor curtains to add privacy.
• Incorporate a canopy to provide added shade.
• Define outdoor rooms with a pergola.
• Consider building a galvanized metal pergola.
• Go for a white pergola, adding wicker furniture with white cushions and a white patio rug to complete the look.
• Celebrate your home’s architecture by adding a pergola extending from the back exterior wall of your home.
• Need shade from the bright afternoon sun? Enhance your pergola with thick drapes to keep the sun at bay while dividing outdoor rooms. 
• Use wood to create a naturalistic pergola, adding reed mats on top of the pergola for additional shade.
• Incorporate a patio with a fire pit and a pergola for ambiance.
• Build a pergola for your home’s front entrance that provides porch definition.
• Don’t forget outdoor lighting for enjoying your patio with a pergola late into the evening.

How Walkway Landscaping Connects Your Outdoor Living Spaces in a Cohesive Design

Walkway landscaping creates cohesion in your outdoor living spaces, connecting patios, gardens, the swimming pool, and flowerbeds. Add outdoor lighting along the pathways, which provides safety and a clear direction for your backyard or front porch. 

Walkway landscaping also allows your friends and family to enjoy your gardens without trampling on your plants and reducing soil compaction in your lawn.

Plus, you can create meditation spaces along your walkways. Add a bench, wind chimes, a bridge, and a water feature for calmness and reflection.

Read more: Updating Your Walkways and Front Steps

Your designer will incorporate walkway landscaping to harmonize with your entire landscape architecture. 

At Tomlinson Bomberger, we create beautiful walkways using pavers or natural stone. Your designer will create custom walkways that improve your overall landscape and functionality.

Our walkway landscaping includes natural stone, such as flagstone, or concrete pavers, which are popular choices for paths that create interest, cohesiveness, and safety.

How Seatwall Construction Fits Into Your Outdoor Living Spaces

Seatwall construction adds functionality and a focal point for your outdoor living spaces with extra seating, decorating using throws and colorful pillows, and adding function to a retaining wall or low wall.

You can add a semi-circle seatwall with a firepit or create seatwalls in the dining areas or under your patio with a pergola.

If you want more seating that fits naturally into your backyard design, ask our designers where they suggest seatwall construction to incorporate into your dream outdoor destination.

How to Add Privacy in Outdoor Design

While you can add a fence for privacy, go for natural privacy with color, height, and interest. For example, you can layer your landscapes to include trees, hedges, and flowerbeds. Choose evergreen trees and hedges, so you have privacy throughout the year. 

For your privacy while in your pergola, include climbing vines such as 

• Climbing hydrangeas
• Climbing roses
• Devil’s darning needles (also known as virgin bower or old man’s beard)
• Moonflowers
• Morning glories
• Trumpet creeper
• Virginia creeper.

You can also opt for hardscaping for privacy in outdoor design, such as tiered retaining walls with layers of flowerbeds, trees, and shrubs. Use hedges at the top to keep prying eyes away from your outdoor living spaces.

Ask our landscape designers what they recommend for privacy in outdoor rooms and how they would incorporate those ideas into your outdoor living spaces.

Summing Up

This summer, consider transforming your backyard into a dream outdoor destination with a pergola, seatwalls, meditation spaces, and landscaping.

Your backyard will be your retreat after a hard work day—a place to unwind and enjoy the outdoors.