Author: Sallie Jackson

We, landscape designers, are constantly trying to provide better solutions to the home owners who hire us. And many people in my hometown Sydney rely on professionals whenever they want to upgrade their front garden or the backyard. Deeper understanding of design basics is a must for the flawless outcome. And the number one rule is that all landscape features should be “wrapped” around the so-called focal point – the main focus that grabs viewer’s attention. And because the term ‘focal point’ appears to be not really clear to the majority of customers, I decided I could give some basic insights in my first blog post here.

Focal points often occur naturally within a given landscape. It could be a large tree or a massive cluster of flowers and shrubs. Skilled landscapers know how to employ different sizes, colours and textures of greenery to make that spot stand out more. Usually these are already existing plants that are difficult or sometimes impossible to move. There are no more than two options in such cases: to leave the plants as they are and turn them into focal points (placing other items around them) or to completely get rid of them. In the latter scenario, one would have to create a new focus themselves. For instance, that could be a water feature, such as a fountain or a pool, or any other hardscape element – benches, compositions of rocks, etc.

The number of focus points is essential to the curb appeal of a landscaped garden. A small or medium-sized yard probably won’t need more than one single point, while larger green areas may have two or three attention-grabbing spots and still look stylish. As fellow providers of landscaping services in Sydney area share, one of the most common mistakes is to arrange an excessive number of points or to have one that is overdone and makes everything else around appear too boring. Just try to keep a more natural look and you’ll be on the safe side.

Water features are really the winners when it comes to creating central focal point for a landscape design from scratch. That’s why those do deserve their own paragraph right here. While fountains come in all sizes and shapes (yes, colours too), they are far from being the only type of water-related design elements. Pools are next in the list sorted by popularity: small pools, large ones and, of course, the big trend in contemporary landscaping – the infinity pools. They truly make any home look exquisite. Anyway, such pools are a quite expensive thing and you need a large green space to build one. Ornamental waterfalls and small-scale ponds are other convenient implementations of water features.