The Indoor Priority---What About Outside?

We live our lives from the inside out. Most of our time is spent inside our homes. We eat inside. We bathe inside. And for the most part, socialize with our family and friends, inside. How we interact with the outside space is often limited to the time we spend walking to and from the car. Even on a nice sunny day, we might peer through a window to appreciate the blooms on a tree. Summer nights next to the fire pit are great!

The time spent indoors creates a priority. The furniture we choose and the way we decorate our interior space draws upon financial resources and emotional investment. We choose the best furniture and household goods relative to disposable income. Because of the financial and emotional investments, we become highly invested in the decision making process. From the colors of the walls to the texture of a rug, we want to make our homes our own. If an interior designer is contracted, the homeowner often forms a partnership with the designer. The creative expertise of the designer guides decision making, but most often the homeowner is shaping how their interior space ultimately looks.

When it comes to decorating the exterior of a residential property, homeowners are not nearly as invested. Understandably, financial resources for the maintenance and adornment of the interior space leaves landscaping as a second priority.

This secondary priority is even evident in popular culture. HGTV once broadcast numerous shows relating the exterior of a home and landscaping. Those shows no longer garner air time. "Curb Appeal," where have you gone?

The diminished attention directed toward landscape is evident in the statistics provided by GardenResearch.com. Those households engaged in lawn and garden activities spent just $401.00 in 2015. A very small percentage of overall income. Understanding these demographics provides a landscape service company a clear definition of the market driven by pragmatism. There's only so much money.

I think there is a second practical component associated with landscape design that creates hesitancy. Picking out a favorite-colored flower is just as easy as picking the right shade of curtains. However, the mundane details of how big a plant will get, how much sun it requires, and how often it needs watered often leads to non-participation by the customer. The contracted landscaper or designer is left to his/her own devices to not only layout the landscape but choose all the plants. The emotional connection for household residents is now lost. "Oh that's the plant that the landscaper put in," a person might say to him- or herself when walking from the driveway to the front door.

It doesn't have to be this way. Homeowners should be involved in the landscape designer's decisions. Now the designer should be clearly laying out the form and function of the landscape, but there is a lot of room for homeowner input.

I encourage homeowners to peruse through plant and flower catalogs and to go on shopping trips with me to nurseries. They often will have an emotional response to a plant they see. When their eyes get big or they say "I love that flower," I gain an understanding of the plants they like. After I inventory the plants they like, it is my responsibility as a designer to integrate those plants along with ones I recommended into the design. There's always room in the design for the homeowner's choice and I can design around their preferences. The homeowner will have an emotional investment with the plants that they choose and will have a real emotional connection to their outdoor space. There's always room to make the homeowner a part of the process.

Designing a landscape is a two-way street. The landscape professional should be confident in his/her abilities to develop a strong design but also trusting enough to rely on customer's input to build the homeowner's dream landscape. The property owner will have a more powerful connection with an outdoor space when they see that flower that they love in their own backyard.

Sources:

National Gardening Survey 2016, GardenResearch.com.