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.

Landscaping and gardening are also ideal outlets for your creativity. Nature gives you an expansive palette of colors, textures, scents, and structural compositions to choose from. In a home garden, you can take these gifts from nature and combine them in any style you desire. But with so many landscaping options at your disposal, where do you begin?

Whether you want to create a sanctuary, a retreat, an entertainment area or any other environment, you'll get ideas here on how to do it. The photographs, expert insights, and troubleshooting advice in this section can help you create a landscape that suits your unique tastes and appeals to all your senses.

Get these tipsIn this section, you'll find tips from landscaping professionals on:

• How to plan the perfect backyard, including ideas for layouts, design styles, outdoor rooms, patios, water features and hardscaping.
• Ways to boost the curb appeal of your front yard, including design ideas for driveways, sidewalks, front porches and courtyard gardens.
• Designing the perfect patio, with advice on sizing and placement, materials, patio styles, and patio layouts.
• Design ideas, planning tips and appliance options for outdoor kitchens.
• The most popular garden styles and themes, including modern, traditional, country, Mediterranean, tropical and desert.
• A look at award-winning projects from landscaping professionals across the country.
• Ideas for regional landscape designs suitable to the climates, available materials and plant types characteristic of different areas of the country, from San Diego to New York.
• Solutions for solving typical yard and landscape challenges.
• Advice on planting bountiful vegetable and container gardens.
• Ways to simplify your landscaping plan by choosing hardy low-maintenance plants, sticking with basic materials, minimizing complex details, and choosing straightforward uncomplicated layouts.
• The latest landscaping trends, including meadow gardens with native plantings, growing your own food, going lawn-free, landscaping as an art form, and planting gardens that attract butterflies, birds and bees.

Mother Nature gives you a bounty of beauty to work with to create the landscape of your dreams. A landscape designer can help you make the most of this bounty by steering you to the best plants, materials and garden layouts for achieving your goals.