What is soft landscaping?

Landscape gardeners can be divided broadly into two categories - hard landscaping and soft landscaping. This applies whether you are looking for a landscape gardener in Glasgow or elsewhere. Hard landscaping deals with the non-living elements of your garden, and soft landscaping the living elements. 

Hard landscaping is the laying of the slabs and flags, the construction of decking and fences, the installation of patios and pergolas. There is a high degree of skill required in this work, but horticultural knowledge is not key. Builders, fencers and many landscape gardeners are specialists in respective elements of hard landscape construction. Specialists in soft landscaping are few and far between but are critical in ensuring that you have knowledgable landscape gardeners dealing with the most fragile parts of your garden - the plants. It is arguable that the best projects engage hard landscape professionals for one part of the job, and then bring in soft landscape professionals to deal with the plants.

Unlike bricks and mortar, plants are living things that require to be planted in just the right way. The lifelong performance of plants in your garden can be attributed in large part to best practice during planting and in the aftercare in the months afterwards. That is not to say that any contractor can’t plant plants, but having the horticultural knowledge can increase the successful establishment of your plants Very significantly - and if you’re looking at a lot of plants, this might mean a lot of money. 

A proficient soft landscaper will know why to plant trees in square holes, why you must be strict about the planting depth of all trees and most plants, yet plant Clematis deep. The critical knowledge around watering in the hours, days and months after a new planting scheme has gone in is knowledge that makes the greatest difference in their successful establishment. The different fertilisers required during the year, the order they go down in, and knowledge around when plants are too young to be fed strong fertilisers is important too.

Whether you are looking for a landscape gardener in Glasgow or elsewhere, it is worth thinking about the different disciplines required in the construction of your new garden. Equally if you are searching for garden designers in Glasgow, you will want to think about the same things.

Tom Angel is an award-winning garden designer and landscape gardener specialising in soft landscaping in Glasgow.

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