Holiday Gifts: Surprise the Family with a New Landscaping Plan
Your spouse has been begging for a hot tub. The kids have been relentless in asking for a pool. And for some time, you’ve felt your patio or deck are in great need of an upgrade.
Computerized Landscaping Plan as a Gift
While you probably couldn’t get a full backyard upgrade wish list constructed in time for the holidays (unless all you want is, say, a portable hot tub), you do have time to surprise the family with a computerized Deck and Patio landscaping plan that you can wrap
With today’s software, the drafting and collaboration landscape design process is surprisingly quick and will provide an accurate representation of how your outdoor spaces will look.
Working with Google Earth
“The anticipated weather for this December seems very promising in our neck of the woods. It should be easy to walk around your property to measure it, etc.,” says our own Dave Stockwell. “And while it’s very helpful to see close up any existing patio or pool that’s being upgraded or replaced, etc., much of our planning can be done through surveys and Google Earth should weather require that.
Letting the Design Be the Gift
Since most property upgrades begin with a landscape design, the plan itself can be a gift. And you could go all out in this stage of the process — planning a beautiful pond, or other water feature, for example, or a pool with swim-up bar and wild ride slide, a custom spa or portable one integrated into the overall design, pool waterfalls, perhaps tiered patios, and, of course, lush landscaping, — all of which could be phased in over several years.
You can even get landscaping plans for a full upgrade that is done in phases — over, say, a few years — and have printouts out how it will look after each phase.
The whole project can also be planned out financially, so the different phases can be worked into your yearly budgets. In addition, since landscape plans are computerized, it is no problem if the gift receiver has ideas of their own to add later or changes they want made.
Landscape Plan as a Gift
The gift of a landscaping plan is definitely something memorable. And what a joy it will be seeing the plans come to life.
We’re sharing the following video as inspiration. It begins with one of Deck and Patio’s computerized plans and ends with the finished project showing the wonderful experience of having such a pond. This vanishing edge pond project was built by us in Eatons Neck, NY.
Another Example
Backyard 3-D Animation Plan
Completed Backyard Upgrade
Sometimes a backyard 3-D animation (left above) not only helps show what the yard will look like in advance — including from different perspectives. Such a gift also allows for tweaking and changes as the project goes along, as well as changes from the gift receiver.
In the case of the immediately above Long Island, NY, project, the property had existing patios and a pool. The key was to decide what to keep and what to remove.
One part of the design expanded the original confining upper and lower patios into both shady and sunny expansive areas. This also helped open up the space to allow unobstructed views of Long Island Sound.
In addition, Deck and Patio upgraded their pool and spa and added colorful plants and flowers to enhance these vistas.
Insert E Great Easy Gift
And you’ve got to admit that a computer plan downloaded on a small drive (or even printed out) is easy to wrap!
In every way, a landscaping plan makes a great gift!
