From landscape design to hardscapes, softscapes and outdoor lighting, allow us to create your own personal paradise.
This discussion details how to get the best in Atlanta Landscaping to give you a landscape with great curb appeal, the best in outdoor living that is easily maintained with a little professional help from Artistic Landscapes.
Atlanta’s gently rolling hills, temperate climate and spacious home sites provide the opportunity to have some of the World’s best residential landscapes. Artistic Landscapes is a landscape contractor offering landscape design, installation and maintenance services. Here we offer a discussion of the many elements that make up a great landscape. Our Landscaping Resources section discusses each area in great detail. If you want to invest your money wisely, chose someone with award winning experience that has the passion, artistic vision, knowledge and experience to make your custom landscape the best it can be.
Landscape Design
The starting point for providing a great Atlanta Landscape is a great landscape design. This design should maximize the curb appeal of your front yard. The landscape should enhance the beauty of the home both day and night. An outdoor lighting system installed on a home where the landscape was designed with lighting in mind can really make a beautiful statement in the early evening hours. The back yard can be as nice as Disneyland and provide a great getaway vacation place on a year round basis. A brilliantly designed and installed Outdoor living space will return much of its investment but more importantly improve the quality of your everyday life. People will spend money on a vacation and not think twice about it. A great backyard improves your life every day, not just for a week or weekend trip.
Today’s landscape can have great outdoor living spaces and beautiful plants that weren’t available twenty years ago. Today there are many flowering shrubs that don’t require the excessive pruning that landscapes of the 70’s and 80’s possess. We call these hollies green meatballs. They are fine in the landscape but there have been numerous new plant developments in the last 25 years to make a landscape much more attractive with a little less maintenance. These new plants include Encore Azaleas that bloom twice a year. Knockout roses are very hardy unlike tea roses and they bloom from May thru November. Obsession Nandinas are new and colorful. Endless Summer Hydrangeas have a much longer bloom time than their traditional counterparts. Lime Light Hydrangeas can take full sun and they have beautiful white flowers for much of the summer. Purple Diamond Loropetalum’s are colorful and only get four feet tall. There is a wide variety of Japanese Maples that offer spectacular spring and fall color and their size is more appropriate for the Residential landscape. Seasonal color adds a tremendous amount of color and interest to the landscape. With state of the art irrigation systems with automatic rain shutoffs you can water the exact amount needed at the right times.
The best landscapes require a company who is an expert in all areas. These include landscape design, seasonal color, outdoor lighting, irrigation, sod, trees and shrubs, retaining walls and patios, decks, outdoor living spaces, outdoor kitchens, fireplaces and fire pits. Artistic Landscapes in Atlanta is one of the few companies that excel in all of these areas.
Lawn
Your lawn is the unifier that ties your landscape together. Atlanta’s long and warm growing season tends to lend itself to warm season grasses. These are Bermuda and Zoysia, both of which come in several varieties. They are green in the summer and golden brown in the winter. Fescue, a cool season grass that stays green all year, tends to have patches that die off each summer and requires core aeration and seeding each fall.
Our favorite grass is Zeon Zoysia. It requires a minimum of 5 to 6 hours of sun and is the most shade tolerant of the warm season grasses. Fescue is the most shade tolerant grass. It does best with morning sun and afternoon shade. The morning sun evaporates the morning dew which can cause fungus if the grass is wet longer than twelve hours. For a detailed discussion of each kind of grass, check out the lawn section of the Landscaping Resources portion of our website.
Lawn Maintenance
Artistic Landscapes is a full service landscape company. We offer a complete maintenance program including mowing, edging, blowing, weed control, bush trimming, and irrigation and lighting maintenance. Our knowledge and expertise makes us much more valuable to you than a company that only cuts the grass. There are about three thousand companies in Atlanta that can cut your grass. Only a handful of companies can handle all of your outdoor environmental needs.
Seasonal Color
Annual beds provide beautiful flowers on a year round basis. Summer flowers grow from April thru October and winter flowers grow from October thru April. For maximum growth and flowers, all flowers are planted in raised organic planting soil beds and are watered by a sprinkler system to provide consistent watering. Too much or too little water or the wrong frequency will provide less than optimum flowers. Fertilization and mulching are also very important. We fertilize with a granular time release fertilizer on installation. Periodic liquid fertilizer such as Miracle Grow can be very beneficial. Different flowers require different kinds of fertilizer. Artistic Landscapes designs, installs and maintains seasonal color beds so you don’t have to do the work. Just enjoy the beauty. The photo shown is of award winning flowers Artistic Landscapes installed. They won MALTA’s award of distinction. For more information see the seasonal color section of our website in Landscaping Resources.
Trees
Trees are an important part of your landscape and often tree removal is necessary to have a great landscape. We believe that trees should frame the house and not obstruct its view. They can provide shade from the hot afternoon sun and tree placement should take that into account in the Landscape design. Trees of course provide the oxygen we breathe and help keep the climate cooler. Trees that shade concrete and asphalt surfaces have a great cooling affect. A city permit or Homeowner’s Association approval may be required to remove a tree.
A more detailed discussion of trees is included in the landscaping resources section of this website.
Outdoor Living
The possibilities for a great outdoor living space in your backyard are endless Waterfalls, fireplaces, outdoor kitchens, sound systems, decks and pavilions, arbors, patios, swimming pools, Koi ponds and more.
A good landscape should include a place to spend time outside. If you have a beautiful landscape, you will want to enjoy it. Outdoors is a great place for a barbecue, swimming, enjoying your pet Koi and enjoying the tranquil sounds of your waterfall. Watch Television or work from home in an outdoor environment. There are just some beautiful days that are not meant to be spent indoors. Enjoy a romantic evening with your loved one in front of the fireplace after having a great meal from your outdoor kitchen. We offer a detailed discussion of the possibilities and costs of outdoor living spaces in our Landscaping 101 section.
Steps and Walkways
Getting from your driveway to your backyard getaway landscape is easy with paver or stone walkways and steps. They can also provide access to garden rooms. Walkways can be done in stepping stones, Pavers, concrete or stone, mulch or gravel such as Crimson stone. We strongly prefer paver walkways for their eye appeal and functionality. Paver walkways are clean and easy to navigate and have eye appeal. Mulch and gravel can be washed away by heavy rains. Concrete is not that attractive and if it cracks you can’t fix it. Stone walkways are nice but the mortared joints crack and break in time (10 to 15 years.) Stepping stones with gravel are messy. The gravel washes up on the stepping stones. Stepping stones in grass are okay but will need to be edged occasionally with a weed eater.
Retaining Walls
Multi terraced yards can be very stunning. Stack stone walls provide elegance and opportunities for elevated specimen plantings. Curved walls are generally more attractive than straight walls. Less expensive modular block walls or pressure treated wood walls can have plants planted in front of them to improve eye appeal. Railroad tie walls rot easily and will need to be replaced. Retaining walls over four feet tall need to be permitted in most jurisdictions. In Cobb County, that height is 30” including the footings. A more detailed discussion of retaining walls is included in this Landscaping Resources section.
Sprinkler Systems
An automated sprinkler system with a rain sensor can deliver the right amount of water on a timely basis. A well designed system delivers more water to dry sunny areas than wet shady areas. Many irrigation systems are installed to deliver equal amounts of water to each area. That is a waste of water and counterproductive to the ideal landscape. Annual beds can be set up on their own zone. Shady areas may need limited or no irrigation. The sprinkler system should be designed by an experienced landscaper. 95 % of our award winning landscapes have sprinkler systems. All of our Seasonal color beds have sprinkler systems.
Atlanta’s 30 year average rainfall is 50 inches. Rainfall totals vary from 31.85 inches in the drought of 2007 to a high of 69.43 inches in 2009 when large amounts of rain fell in September and the fall. 2013 has seen above average rainfall of 53.78 inches through September. Some months get almost no rain, while during other months it seems to rain almost every day. A good sprinkler system adds water only when needed. A detailed discussion of Sprinkler Systems is found in our irrigation systems resources section.
Outdoor Lighting
The technology of outdoor lighting continues to improve. New LED lights are much more energy efficient with LED lights that can last 50,000 hours compared to 2,000 hours for halogen lights. Many homeowners’ light the front of their homes to increase its curb appeal and security. Outdoor lighting is great for outdoor living areas. Many of us work during the day and can only enjoy our landscape in the evening. In the summer, it is cooler in the evening and may be a more desirable time to be outside. New Mosquito abatement systems are very effective and safe to allow you to enjoy your landscape in the evening.
