The art of landscaping has existed ever since the first person settled in the first hut and thought about planting something pretty outside its doorway. Not something edible; not something useful; something that looked nice, or smelled good, or made them feel safe or happy or warm. Something, in short, that through landscaping turned a dwelling into a home.
Landscaping is basically the art of using design to shape an exterior space. The term “landscaping” applies to both planted and introduced features: with plants, landscaping refers to anything that has been deliberately grown, allowed to grow, or has had its natural form influenced in some way (“landscaping” can be grass, marsh plants, flowers, trees – anything at all that grows); with non-organic objects, landscaping is the considered introduction of solid features to a natural environment in order to make it “feel” a certain way. All of which is a rather technical way of saying that landscaping is the practice of extending one’s house beyond the borders of its four walls.
Think of it this way: in a house, a person introduces elements of personality – ornaments, colours, decorations and styles. We’re all familiar with the idea that a person’s domestic surroundings reflect their hobbies, their preoccupations, their jobs and their incomes – expensive materials and up-to-the-minute styles tell us that we are in the home of a well-to-do person, whilst books, clutter, old things and warm colours may point out that here dwells an educated person, or someone who likes to feel “homely”. Landscaping performs the same function outside the house – a garden groomed in the latest fashion speaks volumes about wealth and desired social status while a pleasing tumble of shrubs and colours suggests amiable lunches and an afternoon read.
People like to feel as though they have personalised their environment: severely trendy landscaping allows the person for whom the landscaping has been done to feel that they are living their aspiration, cosy landscaping ensures that the owner of that landscaping can amble around their garden with as much satisfaction as they do their house. The external nature of landscaping, though, adds a social-stamp element to the process – because landscaping is outside, people who don’t live in the house can see it. Which means that landscaping starts to act not only as a kind of external “room”, which can be enjoyed by the occupants of the house, but as a showroom. The landscaping, visible to all, becomes a note to the passing world that a certain kind of personality lives here. Like the shell of the car parked in the driveway, the driveway itself; the gates; the shrubs and lawn; the presence or absence of kids’ toys; all point to the person who lives in the house.
Which means – what? It means that the first person to put the first flower outside the first door was expressing something about themselves. That first piece of landscaping said “I like flowers”. I like colour. That first piece of landscaping said, I want to show everyone else that I like colour. Landscaping today is no different. Landscaping is still an opportunity and an urge to show the rest of the world what we are. Landscaping is the difference between a vegetable patch and a home.
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