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Pathway

Residential Landscape Design Basics

Use rooms, routes, edges, and focal points to make a yard easier to use and read.

A calm residential garden with a terrace, lawn edge, planted border, path, and clear zones for sitting and movement
Every project has its own conditions. This pathway organizes the questions before it suggests a choice.

Use these guides in the order that matches your unknowns. Each one ends with the next useful question, not a one-size-fits-all prescription.

02A composed garden border with repeated grasses, a focal tree, layered texture, and a path creating visual rhythm

guide

Landscape Design Principles

Balance, unity, scale, rhythm, and focal points are tools for reading tradeoffs, not decoration rules.

05A table with concept sketches, material samples, a measuring tape, and a garden view suggesting a collaborative design process

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Landscape Design Process

A design process turns site information into a sequence of choices, drawings, and handoffs.

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What supports this guide

  • NC State Extension informs the planning questions here. Local authorities control site-specific rules.
  • University of Missouri Extension informs the planning questions here. Local authorities control site-specific rules.
  • ASLA informs the planning questions here. Local authorities control site-specific rules.