Considerations for Using Trees and Outside Plants in Your Landscaping Plans

The impact upon your house when you use trees and other outdoor plants is varied and expansive enough to bring sweet aromas or create an artwork right on the exterior wall. Choose trees carefully when you are using them while integrating a landscape with the exterior of your home. Effective use of trees and plants that are naturally incorporated into your overall landscape can transform a house that is duller than a Lord of the Rings movie into something with a significantly greater degree of style.

When choosing any tree or other type of plant to use either decoratively or functionally on the outside of your house, you must take into consideration the plant's hardiness and its ability to adapt to the specific content of your soil. This means conducting a soil test to determine just how acidic or alkalinic it is. Plants that cannot thrive under your particular soil and climate conditions should be crossed off your list regardless of how well you may think they fit into your landscaping plans.

Choosing the right size for your tree or plant is an important issue. You don't want a large tree that overpowers a small home any more than you want to try to give a little garden style to an expansive home with a series of low growing flowers or spindly trees.

Maintenance issues should come into play when selecting greenery to help adorn the yard and exterior of the house. It is possible to choose trees, shrubs, vines and flowers that will require little in the way of daily caretaking while at the same time presenting an attractive front. Part of the charm of raising plants for some people is the continuing attention to detail and the ability to change the look at will so you should avoid low maintenance plants that don't suit your caretaking style.

One of the primary considerations in choosing trees for many people is the shady protection from the warmth of the sun that they will provide. Other homeowners may require the ability to protect their patio or deck area from strong winds. A key element to making the most efficient use of outdoor plants for protecting your house is looking for appropriate shape, fullness and reach of high limbs.

Creating an outside border to offer an added degree of security or privacy to your home is another common use for trees and plants. A grove of evergreen trees is an assurance of privacy that also provides aesthetic qualities and requires little maintenance. Integrating trees and shrubs can accomplish the same effect by planting taller trees along the back side of the border as a backdrop to shorter shrubs.

Adding color, fragrance and other decorative attributes to the house so that the plant seems to become organically intertwined with the building can be accomplished with vines. Ivy can be trained to climb right up the side of your house while bougainvillea can create a canopy of red and green that both hangs down off the roof and rises higher as it gets fuller. Dwarf fruit trees are especially well suited to being trained as espalier situated on an exterior wall. Espalier is an artistic trimming and training of a tree's limbs to create a particular shape such as a T or X.

These and other considerations should be taken under your wing when looking to include trees and other outside plants as part of the overall aesthetic appeal of your home.