Every household wishes to have a yard that brings character to its residence. This is achievable by incorporating “hardscaping” to your next house project. So what is “hardscaping?”
“Hardscaping” is the usage of hard materials such as concrete, rocks, stones, and pavers to create a beautiful yard that will drastically increase the value of your home. In this article, we will gander at a few of the key benefits of incorporating the practice of “hardscaping” into your next landscaping project.
1. Improved Functionality
Hardscaping allows you to add paved patio sections into your yard that is a sure-fire way to add an additional living section to your household. The different paved patios also make your backyard usable all year round. Additionally, these spaces will allow you to arrange activities in your backyard, such as entertaining your guests, inviting your neighbors for a barbecue, or just relaxing by yourself.
2. Enhanced Accessibility
Hardscaping allows you to install pathways and walkways that make your home more accessible to differently-abled and older individuals while creating a welcoming entry for all of your guests. Establishing a pathway also allows you to protect your plants from foot traffic and will also reduce the chances of having dirt, grass, and dirty foot tracks indoors.
3. Decreased Maintenance Need
Replacing your lawn with a patio is an excellent way to reduce the maintenance expenses of your backyard. A paved patio does away with the periodic watering, mowing, fertilizing, and weeding and replaces these frequent actions with an occasional sweeping accompanied by a pressure cleaning at least once every few years. Hardscaping allows you to have a neat-looking backyard while exerting the least amount of effort.
4. Better Aesthetic Appeal
Hardscaping gives you the option to add retaining walls, paved walkways, and patios, even garden edging and water features to transform your yard and make it look alluring. These features, if added, can be used to create a unique statement in your backyard and gives it an unparalleled personality while enhancing the existing elements in your yard.
5. Reduced Chances of Erosion
The additional pathways, retaining walls, garden edging, and paved patios are effective approaches in diminishing the effects of soil erosion and retaining the soil quality of your yard. This is achievable because hardscaping allows you to add exceptional drainage while reducing soil runoff.
6. Cost-Effective
A large number of homeowners are hesitant to spend the capital outlay of hardscaping, but if you calculate the upkeep costs of grass maintenance and compare it to investing in hardscaping, you will find that it is actually cheaper to invest in hardscaping than paying for water consumption, fertilizers, lawn seeds, and landscaping services in the long run. Additionally, hardscaping features can increase the value of your residence because having a well-designed yard that has low upkeep is important for property buyers.
Selecting The Decorative Concrete Finish That Best Fits Your Yard
Decorative concrete finishes are excellent ways to brighten up your yard and add character to your household. There are three main types of decorative concrete that can be added to your driveways, patios, and paths around your home: textured concrete, exposed aggregate concrete, and colored concrete. In this article, we will help you decide on which concrete finish to add to your next landscaping project.
Exposed Aggregate Concrete
Exposed aggregate concrete is a famous choice for Australian natives and drought-tolerant gardens or yards. The warm organic tinges of exposed aggregate make it an attractive pair with the suppressed colors of Australian native plants, or to highlight the shapes of a cactus or a succulent garden. Additionally, exposed aggregate is long-lasting and provides a finish similar to a beach or a river bed. Exposed aggregate concrete is available in multiple colors and sizes that will surely accentuate your yard.
Coloured Concrete
Colored concrete is one of the more unconventional choices as a decorative concrete finish. This concrete finish is simply a concrete mix that has been pigmented with color. This finish allows you to choose from a variety of colors that stretch from vibrant reds to vivid shamrock greens. A colored concrete finish is excellent in yards that have a long driveway or in yards that have Classic European or tropical style gardens.
Textured Concrete
Textured concrete, or also known as stamped concrete, is a great way to imitate a wide range of textures such as stone, slate, brick, tile, flagstones, and wood. Textured concrete is the cheaper alternative to having actual stones or bricks in your yard. So if you are one of the individuals that love the brick aesthetic but do not have the budget for it, then this concrete finish is a fantastic choice for you. Generally speaking, textured concrete works best in yards that have a large, flat lawn or in yards with lots of greenery because the textured finish gives an astonishing contrast to the vast greenery.
4 Practices That Will Inevitably Wreck Your Driveway
It is a given that the suburban driveway is one of the most abused elements in almost all of the Melbourne residences. The damage being done daily from cars and human traffic gives all the more reason to be attentive about your own driveway. In this article, we will recognize four of the most common practices we do that will ultimately damage our concrete driveways and how to avoid them.
- Allowing nature to take its course.
Tree roots and weeds are well-known in the hardscaping industry for their capacity to ruin even the best-laid concrete. Tree roots tend to apply pressure on the concrete structure and cause it to rise and crack. When cracks develop, weeds will then eventually become a problem as their root system widens the crack and make it difficult to repair. It is complicated to manage tree root problems once a concrete driveway has been established, which is why it is detrimental to relocate trees before you decide on installing a concrete driveway or pathway to ensure their durability. Moreover, weed management is a far simpler procedure that involves removing weeds as soon as they develop in cracks and then sealing them up as quickly as possible.
- Leaving stains.
It is essential to remove spills like oil and gasoline as soon as they happen to prevent the discoloration of your concrete driveway or pathway. Additionally, concrete sealers are available to help protect the concrete surface from stains, but it is still crucial to remove spills as soon as possible. If a discoloration cannot be prevented, there are a number of commercially available chemicals that you can use to remove the discoloration. You must, however, use these chemicals cautiously as they can weaken the concrete finish.
- Failing to fill in cracks.
Small cracks are imperative with concrete structures, and it’s crucial to fill them up as soon as they develop. Cracks allow water to permeate to the surface and lead to the deterioration process of the concrete structure. Preventing irreversible damage is easy and only involves patching cracks as soon as possible. Additionally, resealing can also help avert cracking. We recommend that you reseal your driveway once every two years to increase its longevity.
- Cutting installation costs
Cutting costs on installation is possibly the biggest mistake that you can make with your driveway. It is very crucial to go to a contractor that knows and does their job well. When investing in a driveway, paying extra and hiring your local driveway professionals who know their job well could make the difference between a driveway that causes problems once every year and one that rarely ever gets problems.