Create-a-Yard-You’ll-Love

Create a Yard You’ll Love

Bring beauty to the area’s surrounding your home with this trio of landscaping tips.

Once you’ve built a beautiful Ward Cedar log home, cabin or timber hybrid, it’s only natural to begin filling your new home with treasures you love, new and old. Decorating the interiors of your home with furnishings, accessories and artwork will bring your interiors to life — and the same goes for the areas outside around your home, too.

Adding personality to your yard with special landscaping and hardscaping will add both value and beauty to your log or timber home’s surroundings. Follow these ideas to enhance your yard.

 1. Size Matters. Good design is all about the right proportions. When deciding what plants to incorporate into your yard, take a step back to give yourself perspective and envision what shapes, heights and sizes of trees shrubs would look right against the backdrop of your home. Then, rather than marching into your local nursery armed with a specific plant list, share the plant sizes you’re searching for and allow them to match you up with native plantings that will suit your yard best.

2. Throw Shade. No matter where your log cabin or timber hybrid is located, you’ll benefit from incorporating shaded areas into your yard. With the right placement, trees can help bring relief from the sun’s rays inside and outside your home. To benefit from the solar protection trees can offer (think: less UV-exposure to your logs and timbers, plus lower energy bills), situate tall trees on the west side of your property to shield your home. Be sure to pay attention to the the types of trees you place in different locations in your yard. For example, planting deciduous trees — those which put out in the spring and shed their leaves in fall — on the southern side of your property will allow you to benefit from shade in the hot summer months and the sun’s warming rays in the winter.

3. Go Natural. Adding the right types of hardscaping elements to your landscape can provide places to gather, as well as bring a natural look to your yard. A paver patio can be a great place to enjoy coffee in the morning or al fresco dining; an area smoothed over with pea gravel is the ideal spot for a fire pit. (Bring on the s’mores!) To avoid bringing in a stiff, city-feel with the stone elements in your yard, skip rigidly lined retaining walls and pathways of uniformly sized materials in favor of more organic, free-form sizes and shapes. If it’s not-too-perfect, it’s just right.

Start discussing your ideas for your log home or cabin, and reach out to our team today. We are ready to help you live your best life in a log or timber home today … and long into the future.

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