Why should you invest in your garden?

We all enjoy the outdoors for widely different reasons, but all agree that spending time outside helps us escape the stress and demands of our daily lives.

Benefits of an alluring garden.

If you were to close your eyes and picture the serenity of a lovely garden, filled with vibrant flowers, green lawns, a striking water feature, and birds singing in the trees, what does that do to your heart rate and muscle tension? Being out in your garden helps lower blood pressure and heart rate, relaxes your tense muscles, reduces the production of stress hormones, and triggers some feel-good hormones.

Investing in your garden can significantly benefit your mental and physical health, family life, and property value, and if you wish, even provide a means of growing your own vegetables, fruit, and herbs.

A house with an appealing garden is not only easier to sell, it is estimated that a well-designed and maintained garden can increase your property value by up to 16%, while a well-landscaped garden adds a lot more value to your selling price.

Let ClearSpell help you choose the garden furniture, barbeque, firepit, pergolas, and gazebos best suited to your taste and garden design and décor. Contact us today online for specialist advice on buying the best wood, wicker, aluminium and cast iron outdoor furniture.

How do you create an appealing garden?

Important elements of any garden include functionality, first impressions, expanding your living areas, and enhanced spaces for relaxation and entertainment.

Sometimes we have to start the garden from scratch, while at other times we have to transform an existing garden into the magical space we want. Big or small, we have some ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

Start by visualising a completed garden with a cohesive theme that will draw you outdoors and enjoy nature without having to leave home. Remember to design your garden from the inside out, except if it is a space that is seldom entered. You always want the best view from the point where you spend the most time.

Walking into your garden should be a multi-sensorial experience. In an aesthetically pleasing garden, you will see, hear, smell, touch, and even taste different things that make you feel relaxed, excited, calm, happy, satisfied, and even proud of what you have achieved. This means you have to stimulate all the senses and create interest by using focal points, comfortable spaces, diverse heights, textures, colours, smells, flavours, and sounds. Adding other landscaping elements like pathways, water features, garden art, firepits, and gazebos, work together to create an appealing and harmonious outdoor living space.

The final touch to the perfect garden is to establish an outdoor living room, dining room, kitchen, or creative seating spaces for solitary meditation. ClearSpell has a vast range of Alexander Rose, Norfolk Leisure, and 4Seasons garden furniture, parasols, gazebos, and pergolas, with a comprehensive range of outdoor accessories like pizza ovens, firepits, barbeques, and protective covers for all of them.

Do you have a tiny or odd-shaped garden?

There are several techniques to turn the “tunnel-like” access to your house, awkwardly shaped garden in a back corner, or small front garden into a showpiece by tricking the eye into seeing something different.

Diagonal designs

Diagonal designs and diamond-shaped block patterns create an optical illusion to make small spaces appear larger. You can fashion interesting shapes, textures, and colours by using pebbles, cacti, colourful flowers, or gravel in trapezium-shaped blocks to draw the eye and camouflage the awkward shape.

Place a small two-seater garden set in a semicircle, triangle, or straight line to allow a bypass.

Midway focal point

The railway-platform appearance of elongated gardens can be effectively divided with a focal point, such as a water feature, statuette, or flower bed framed with low hedges. You immediately change the shape of the garden, without losing the visual impact of depth.

Instead of putting your garden furniture at the end of the tunnel, create a seating area in the middle so that guests look at opposite views. Depending on the width, you can create a beautiful seating area with two to four chairs and a table, or a garden bench or sofa.

Create different perspectives

Curved or winding paths that meander through your garden will make it look much bigger because you can look at it from different angles, particularly if your pathway curves around shrubs or other features and gives you a view from opposite sides.

If there is an existing (straight) path that would be expensive to redo, create false entrances or forked pathways leading off it, with some feature, like a potplant, shrub, statuette, garden art, or edged borders, to draw attention to the forks in the path.

Put garden benches, cocoons, or hang mats in the nooks and crannies you’ve created.

If you have children, create a “treasure hunt” pathway with play areas deeper in.

Draw the eye to the foreground.

By installing an intriguing focal point at the entrance or foreground of a small or awkwardly shaped space, it visually acts the way a painting does, by drawing the eye to the feature and the rest becomes the background that frames your focal point.

A statement piece like a bistro set, large unique armchair, or bench can fit perfectly into this space.

If you can’t hide it, accentuate it

Sometimes there is an unsightly object in your garden that cannot be removed or hidden, such as walls, fences, storage shed, drain covers, etc.

The best way to hide them in plain sight is to turn them into a “hey, look at me” feature. Walls, fences, or sheds can be spiced up with trellises, shelving for pot plants, wall decorations, potted plants, climbers or vines, or by creating a secluded seating spot against the wall, surrounded by shrubs or trellises.

Create a bright and bold raised border around any unsightly items in your garden. For ugly things on the floor, especially if you occasionally need access to it, put a statuette, table, or some other piece of garden furniture over it that can easily be moved, with a lounge or dining seating area around it.

How do you increase your living space?

Patios, decks, and balconies

Even in smaller properties, a patio or deck will provide an additional area for relaxation, entertainment, exercise, and socialising in the open air.

A well-designed and decorated patio, deck, or balcony enhances the overall look of your home. It makes it stand out from its neighbours and creates a welcoming atmosphere.

Patios seamlessly connect the indoors and outdoors and depending on your needs and lifestyle, you can use yours as an outdoor lounge, living, room, and kitchen or barbeque area for cooking out and entertaining.

Patios provide privacy and protection against the sun, cold weather, muddy and wet soil or grass, and slipping or falling in uneven parts of the yard.

Pergolas

Our lightweight sleek Norfolk aluminium pergolas are incredibly versatile and can easily be built on your patio or as a freestanding feature in the garden, to suit almost any design preference. It expands your indoor living space to the fresh air outside, protects you from the elements, creates an eye-catching entertainment area for your house, and adds value to your resale price.

It is the perfect area for an outdoor lounge or dining room, or casual living room.

Outdoor fire features

Outdoor pizza ovens, firepits and outdoor fireplaces create a unique ambience and allow you to take advantage of your garden even in cooler weather, particularly in the evenings after work.

Our Gino gas-fired pizza ovens will transform your backyard, patio, deck, or balcony into a gourmet pizzeria where you can have a quick snack, or treat your family and friends to a feast. The pizza oven is portable enough to carry out into the garden to be placed on a table, next to your BBQ or firepit, or it can be permanently installed in your outdoor kitchen.

A firepit can be as simple as a paved floor with brick or concrete walls surrounding it, or as elaborate and ornamental as you choose it to be.

Outdoor fireplaces are usually large, permanent features in your garden entertainment area, with a firebox and chimney for proper ventilation.

Smokeless outdoor fires with cosy seating areas create a welcoming environment for having social gatherings and garden parties, encouraging you to spend more time out in the garden paradise you have spent so much time designing and planting.