The Difference Between Hardscaping And Softscaping

The Difference Between Hardscaping And Softscaping

When exploring your options in landscape gardening, there are two words you’ll encounter all the time: hardscaping and softscaping. These two pieces of commonplace jargon are vital to understanding landscape gardening as they functionally define most of the wide plethora of design options at your disposal.

In this piece, we’ll be taking a look at the difference between these two styles of landscape gardening and how you can combine them to have the best of both worlds.

What Do These Words Mean?

Hardscaping is the word used to describe solid elements in a landscaped garden. The term hardscaping usually refers to more man-made-looking elements using materials such as stone, wood, and metal.

Softscaping, on the other hand, refers to the natural elements that can make up a landscaped garden. These are things like hedges, plants, and flower beds. While these things can absolutely be ‘designed’ in the sense of their arrangement and positioning, the key to softscaping elements is that they are all things that could appear in nature.

Furthermore, softscaping tends to be adding colour and texture to your more permanent elements. Softscaping uses living materials while hardscaping does not.

Combining The Two

While softscaping and hardscaping are the two broad categories of landscape design, they are anything but mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, most gardens rely on a combination of these elements though many tend to skew in one direction. That being said, how you incorporate softscaping and hardscaping can define a lot about the look and feel of your garden.

For example, you might think that a garden that minimised hardscaping elements would have a very natural, almost anarchic look to it however that’s not always the case. When elements in a strongly softscape garden have rigid order imposed upon them this can create a unique and interesting effect.

Similarly, some gardens tend to lean towards hardscaping elements but with a strongly rustic influence in order to accentuate that the garden is only a few steps from nature. Good examples of this would be dry stone walls or tile paths running through grass.

Perhaps the most interesting way to combine softscaping and hardscaping is by directly contrasting the two. An overgrown flower bed of wildflowers in the middle of a neat and tidy stone bed, or a path of close-cropped grass running through an otherwise chaotic lawn can create a fascinating visual juxtaposition.

All in all, when you get right down to it, creating a visual style is all about how you play these elements against each other. After all, a garden is your own little piece of nature and how you impose man-made order on it reflects a lot about your own visual tastes.

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