Designing a new garden can be tricky, but by incorporating hard and soft landscaping elements, you can create an outdoor space that functions as a place to entertain friends and family, is easy to navigate, and is aesthetically pleasing.
In this guide, we explore soft and hard landscaping elements, their benefits, and how to incorporate them into your garden to bring it to life.
What is hard landscaping?
Hard landscaping refers to designing outdoor spaces using hard materials. These materials are typically man-made or manufactured, but they can also be natural.
Examples of hard landscaping elements
Hard landscaping materials are commonly used to provide structure, functionality and visual interest to outdoor spaces. This includes the following elements:
What are the benefits of hard landscaping?
There are several key benefits to adding hard landscaping and structural elements to your garden, including:
- Durability and low maintenance: Hard landscaping can withstand weather conditions better than soft landscaping and generally requires less maintenance than plants or grass
- Functionality: Elements like patios and walls serve a purpose and create space for activities and entertaining guests
- Accessibility: Pathways help people navigate your outdoor space, especially those with mobility issues
- Visual appeal: Aesthetically pleasing elements, like sculptures and fire pits, add interest to your garden
- Increasing property value: Well-designed, functional and appealing hard landscaping elements, like driveways, can boost kerb appeal and the value of your home
- Landscape management: Retaining walls and other elements can help prevent soil erosion and improve water drainage
- Extends living spaces: Hard landscaping can create room for entertaining and relaxing in your outdoor area
- Defines space: Walls and other hard landscaping features can be used to create distinct areas within your garden
What is soft landscaping?
Soft landscaping refers to the living elements of garden landscaping design projects. These add colour, texture and life to outdoor spaces and work with hard landscaping elements to create a dynamic space. Soft landscaping also changes with the seasons by growing and blooming.
Examples of soft landscaping elements
Some key elements of soft landscaping include:
- Plants
- Flower beds
- Lawns
- Vegetable and herb patches
- Soil
- Natural water features, like ponds and streams
- Living walls
- Hedges
- Climbing plants
- Meadows and wildflower areas
What are the benefits of soft landscaping
The benefits of planting and encouraging soft landscaping elements to grow are:
- Improves air quality: Plants and grass absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen
- Supports biodiversity: Soft landscaping elements provide a habitat for wildlife, supporting biodiversity
- Contrasts hard landscaping elements: Soft landscape materials help to create a natural atmosphere that breaks up hard landscaping elements and offers different textures
- Climate control: Trees can help keep us cool by providing shade during the summer months and breaking the wind during cooler periods
- Good for wellbeing: Contact with plants and living things can reduce stress and improve mental health. Likewise, green spaces encourage creativity and social interaction
- Natural drainage: lawns and flowerbeds are good for soaking water into the ground from rainfall
What's the difference between hard and soft landscaping?
The main difference between hard and soft landscaping is their purpose. Hard landscaping consists of predominantly man-made, functional elements that provide structure, define space, and help create usable areas.
Meanwhile, soft landscaping adds beauty and improves the environment, whether this is by providing shade or encouraging biodiversity.
Another key difference is that hard landscaping elements are more permanent. By contrast, soft landscaping evolves and changes with the seasons.
When it comes to installation, hard landscaping projects are typically more intensive and time-consuming, while a soft landscaping element, like planting flowers, can take less time.
Combining hard and soft landscaping elements
Incorporating both hard and soft landscaping elements is necessary to create a balanced, functional, and appealing outdoor space.
Here are ten ways to effectively combine hard and soft elements in your landscape design.
Create contrast
To do this, you should use hard elements to frame soft ones, e.g. by laying a stone pathway or building a raised flower bed.
Likewise, plants can soften hard landscaping. You can add hanging baskets to the front of your home, plant hedges along your driveway, or use cascading plants on pergolas and arches.
Balance proportions
You should work out a hard-to-soft landscaping ratio to ensure a cohesive space. What's right for your garden will depend on your space, but a suitable ratio could be 70% soft landscaping to 30% hard landscaping. This way, you can be sure neither element overwhelms the other.
Consider functionality
In addition to looking nice, your garden needs to function properly so you can fully enjoy it. To do this, you should make sure hard landscaping serves a purpose, e.g., helping people move around your space or providing you with somewhere to sit and relax.
Meanwhile, soft landscaping should have a purpose, too, like providing shade or privacy, encouraging biodiversity or simply taking up a hobby in gardening.
Allow room to grow
When planting soft landscaping elements, leave room for them to grow and mature without taking over hard elements.
If you want to plant a tree near hardscaping, consider its roots, as they can be invasive and cause damage over time.
Create outdoor 'rooms'
If you have a large area to work with, you can use hard elements to define spaces, like patios. You could add a gazebo to provide shade or build a firepit to relax on long summer nights.
Once you've decided on your rooms, you can embellish these areas with soft landscaping to increase their visual appeal and comfort.
Pick a colour palette
Choosing natural and man-made elements that complement each other will make your outdoor space more visually appealing.
You could extend this thinking to textures, e.g., by combining smooth, natural stone paving with feathery plants like ferns.
Have a focal point
Creating a centrepiece for your garden gives you something to build off. This could be a sculpture or water fountain that you surround with flowers.
Combining hard landscaping and soft elements in this way draws the eye and enables you to introduce a theme.
Plan for the natural landscape
Hard landscaping can be used to manage drainage. To do this, use permeable hard landscaping materials and direct water runoff from hard surfaces to planted areas.
Similarly, you can use hardscaping to control soil erosion, e.g. by building retaining walls to stabilise slopes and control the soft landscape.
Consider maintenance
When designing your outdoor space, choose hard and soft materials that are easy to maintain. This will save you money and time in the long term, as your garden will need less TLC, so you can spend more time doing things you enjoy. Low-maintenance paving like porcelain is easy to clean and has a high resistance to stains and scratches.
Use layers
Incorporating soft and hard landscaping elements at varying heights draws the eye to different places and helps to create depth and interest.
You can do this by adding climbing plants to walls and fences or installing pergolas and gazebos.
Build the outdoor space of your dreams with Marshalls
For more garden design tips, look at the Marshalls inspiration hub. Whether you need inspirational driveway ideas, budget patio ideas, or you want to look at the latest garden trends, we have everything you need.
If you're ready to choose new paving slabs or outdoor tiles, don't leave anything to chance. Use our Outdoor Reality app to see what our paving products will look like in your garden.
The app uses augmented reality to bring your vision to life on your phone. Once you've found something you like, the app calculates how many paving stones or tiles you need, helping you save money and avoid waste.
