If you like to have friends over for cookouts in the summer, or simply like to spend a lot of time outdoors, then a plain, humdrum backyard just won’t do. You need an outdoor space designed to impress, something just as polished and put-together as the inside of your home.
Fortunately, you don’t need a lot of money or skill to completely revamp your backyard. A few inexpensive, simple improvements can really makeover your backyard, and win the envy of your friends and neighbors. Some slate tiles in the right place, a beautiful trellis covered in roses, mulch in the flower beds, a firepit, and maybe a new footpath can all conspire to make your backyard an inviting haven from the world.
1) Spruce Up Your Concrete
A patio makes a great venue for eating outside on summer evenings, but a plain concrete patio is all utility and no style. So is a concrete walkway.
If you’re lucky enough to already have a concrete patio and walkway in your backyard, you can easily spruce them up with one of several kinds of stone. Use slate tiles, pavers, flagstone, brick, or cobblestone to give your concrete patio and walkway a stylish upgrade. With dozens of colors, patterns, styles, and materials to choose from, you can create an updated patio that will both boost your home’s resale value and give you the perfect spot to cookout on that new Weber charcoal grill.
2) Add a Trellis
A trellis can add vertical movement and charm to your garden, and you can build one yourself with wood or rebar. Add an arching arbor at the entrance to your backyard or to delineate the passage into a new space, such as at the entrance to a sitting area. Plant roses or other vining plants so they can climb the trellis.
Not up for a huge project? Smaller trellises can add vertical movement to your flower beds, and give vining flowers like sweet pea, moon flower, and morning glory a place to climb.
3) Install Mulched Beds
Flowerbeds can add color and life to your backyard with their beautiful blooms, as well as attracting butterflies and hummingbirds, and providing a friendly environment for bees. But they can easily grow out of control with weeds.
Few things can improve the look of your flowerbeds as quickly and cheaply as two or three inches of mulch. In addition to making your flower beds look neat and well-cared-for, mulch can trap moisture in the soil, so you don’t have to water as often, and it impedes the growth of weeds. For extra weed control, look for a mulch treated with pre-emergent herbicides, and keep your beds extra neat by installing borders around them.
4) Add a Gravel Footpath
Garden footpaths can give you a means of navigating beds and getting around the yard without trampling down plantings and carefully clipped turf grass. But who wants to spend multiple weekends cutting stone, digging, leveling, and pouring sand and gravel?
You can skip a bunch of those steps and still get an attractive garden path for a minimal investment – just put in a gravel path! Gravel paths only need to be dug a couple inches deep, and doesn’t need to be leveled. Invest in a nice-looking gravel for the surface. You can use a manual tamper to compact the crushed stone base, or rent a power tamper if you’re installing an especially long path.
5) Build a Fire Pit
Nothing says summer like sitting around a bonfire with your nearest and dearest, roasting marshmallows and hotdogs, drinking tasty cold beverages, and trading stories. A fire pit creates a welcoming focal point for your backyard, and it’s not that hard to build your own – you can even buy DIY fire pit kits now, completed with stones and a metal insert to contain the fire. If you don’t have a patio or don’t want to put your fire pit on the patio, you can create a safe space for a fire in your yard by digging out a base below the pit and filling it with tamped gravel and sand.
You don’t need to refinance your house in order to afford a backyard makeover that will awe your family and friends while transforming your blasé backyard into a welcoming oasis. With just one of these backyard makeover ideas, you can have a backyard perfect for relaxing – or showing off.
