As you browse the Internet or the landscaping catalogs you will come up with plenty of walkway landscaping ideas. As guests walk towards your home they get their first impression of your home from the finely laid out paths. It’s essential to lay out the pathways in skid-proof materials that are safe both for the elderly and the kids.
If you live in areas that are prone to fires due to the dry landscape or being close to forests and mountainsides then use fire-resistant bricks or flagstones or stone slabs. Keep the walkways clear of grass. This acts as the fire barrier preventing any fire from spreading. Though wood is popular for floorings, decks and patios better not to use it for garden paths.
Another idea is to color coordinate your front walkways with your color scheme of your home. Today, there are hundreds of options in materials, colors and textures for paving walkways. Choose designs and patterns that merge with your home. Else, you can have edging of the pathways color-coordinated with your homes or you can grow flowerbeds along the pathways that match the color scheme of your home. You could grow shrubs and bushes by the side of your pathways. But this needs to be pruned and cut regularly to prevent them from creeping onto your walking paths. Plant them well away from the paths since they will grow and expand in all directions. You could have continuous hedging or hedges with gaps in between to offer views of your gardens or other landscaping features.
If you have stream or small pond on your property as part of your garden landscaping you can have small wooden bridge or raised path to get a good view of your water feature. You can have other design elements like adding archways and arbors on to your walkways. By planting flowering creepers and vines over these you can have shaded, green corridors that lead you to different areas of your home and garden.
Lighting up your pathways creatively is one of several walkway-landscaping ideas that can add a touch of mystery and glamour to your home. Buried lights, spotlights, lanterns hanging from posts, submersible lights, low-voltage lights, draping string lights over trees, highlighting trees and bushes, fairy lights are some of the ways you can brighten up your home. By using these lights creatively you can add just a bit mystery to your surroundings. Keep the lights low and not too bright. It should be to enough to illuminate the paths but not too bright to take away the beauty of the night.
You could play with the design of your walkway. Instead of a straight path from the main gate to your door add a curving path. Lay out different elements of the garden along this curved path. Visitors as they walk up the path will come upon the each element like a flowerbed or swing or fountains and be impressed by it. This also, gives the impression of a long walkway. This is one of the several interesting walkway landscaping ideas that can make designing your exteriors fun and stimulating.
