A well-designed landscape can be inspiring. It can provide a sense of calm, a sense of awe, and a sense of balance. It can boost your spirits and give you solace. A beautiful landscape can also improve the curb appeal of your home and inspire other people in your neighborhood to turn their own yards into inspiring landscapes.

Adding a deck is one of the top five home improvement projects when it comes to getting the most bang for your buck and recovering the costs when you sell your home (according to the 2009-2010 Remodeling magazine's Cost vs. Value Report). Homeowners who add a deck to their property recoup nearly 81 percent of the project's cost when they sell the home.

The old expression "Good fences make good neighbors" is true, but it's only half the story. This refers strictly to perimeter fences that surround a homesite. But fences play a more diverse role in landscaping where they help solve problems and create opportunities within a homesite. These interior fences may be called "partitions", because they work just like walls indoors to enclose a space such as a swimming pool vegetable garden. But partition fences also help to define space in a more open way, improve homesite safety, and control views.

Pergolas and other shade structures are the perfect way of enjoying the outdoors even when the conditions outside are less than appealing. In the heat of summer, you can relax and entertain outdoors without being overwhelmed by the beating sun. Shade structures also extend the season through fall and winter. If your structure is built with a solid roof or even insulated sides, you can enjoy a peaceful winter morning sipping tea, untouched by rain or snow.

A retaining wall is a specially designed structure that holds soil on one side and is free standing on the other. They help to accommodate changes in grade in a landscape with uneven topography. These walls often allow steeper cuts to a slope to yield more usable space on a cut-and-fill hillside lot. Hard working retaining walls can be key to creating a level sports lawn or driveway too.

Concrete is one of the most widely used building materials worldwide because of its strength and durability. For professional landscapers, it offers the added benefit of being one of the most versatile materials available for enhancing outdoor spaces because it offers unlimited design flexibility in terms of shape, color and texture. Concrete is also very cost-effective when compared with other paving materials. Here is an overview of the advantages, as well as the limitations, of using concrete to enhance your outdoor space.

The property lines of rural properties and even some suburban lots can be murky. It is important to know exactly where the property line runs during the design process and particularly before you finish with the cost estimates. In many cases it is worth the additional expense of a legal survey before construction of a fence. It may be just setting the corners of the property, or you may need a full property line survey if the parcel is irregular. Insist on a licensed land surveyor for this job to avoid future boundary disputes. To save money, neighbors will sometimes work together to share the cost of the surveyor for mutual property lines, which also ensures both are satisfied with the proposed fence.