Landscape design comes with big challenges. Perhaps your property is next to a 30 foot high wall of a neighbor's townhouse or office building. Maybe the space is narrow with straight lines and right angles. Or you've remodeled your residence, changed the elevation, added a new room and reduced the size of your backyard, all of which affect the relationship to the existing landscape.

You must break through the dissatisfaction of your existing landscape design and just decide what you want. Your program elements are an outline or list of desired wants/needs and functions for the site. For example, you might want a swimming pool, outdoor kitchen or an outdoor room with an outdoor fireplace to entertainment from. Or you might want your landscape design to reflect the beauty of the Italian villa.

Once the landscape contractors or landscape designers meet on site with the client, they get the landscape program and challenges of the site. The designers will study the relationship of the architecture to the site and begin to work out a skeleton or backbone of the landscape design. A professional landscape designer or landscape architect will have intuitive, imaginative and analytical abilities to resolve the difficult landscaping space.

How to turn negatives into positives:
The purpose is to create spaces that relate to the home and elements that also have a connection with the yard and surrounding area. First, look at the big factors that will literally decide whether or not you can have all the things on your wish list or not. "We really need to screen the neighbor's windows, or we will have to conceal the generator or swimming pool equipment." In looking at positives and negatives we first test the big picture against the viability/capacity of the site.

Define you Spaces and Transitions
Once the larger positives and negatives are resolved you can move on to the particulars.

Now is the time to address the more difficult spaces such as transitions between the home, were maybe the foundation is unsightly and needs to be hidden. This is were you put consideration on how to hide 18" of concrete foundation or moving a 3 foot path away from the foundation to accommodate for greater landscape layering.

The landscape design is a hierarchy of problem/solution/problem/solution down to each detail and back out in relation to the whole. The overall objective of any great landscape design is a space that breathes with the home and has a connection to its surroundings-reflecting the client's visual desires and functionally working together in every aspect.

Jeff Halper has a passion for landscaping and landscape design, for more information visit Exterior Worlds you can read more about Difficult Landscaping Space Design or Landscaping Design

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