Swimming Pools

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Landscaping Design Elements

Swimming Pool, Selection of plants

Landscaping Design Elements

The cope of landscaping elements available to you is as broad as your imagination. Here we've presented those most crucial to the success of your swimming pool landscape – plantings, fences, masonry walls, vertical and horizontal screens, decks and pavement, poolside structures, and finishing touches such as lights.

You'll discover that these can be used in many different ways – some will work for you, others won't. Let your needs, your budget, and your personal taste determine your final choices. And be sure not to ignore code requirements and professional advice.

How you combine the elements is just as important as the ones you chose. They should not only complement each other, but also harmonize with the swimming pool, the lot, and the house itself.

Planting Around the Swimming Pool

Plants around the swimming pool add color, texture, shape, and interest to the swimming pool landscape, besides creating a beautiful, natural setting for the swimming pool.

Moreover, plants provide privacy and security. Trees, dense hedges, or vines, when grown over a support, hide unwanted views. Tough plant borders or barriers can prevent pets and people from walking across lawns or plant beds. Prickly or thorny planting can discourage trespassers from climbing the walls or fences, but you won't want them near the swimming pool or lounging areas.

Plants are thermal tools that insulate the swimming pool area: grass and ground covers cool; trees, plant screens, and hedges cool and shade; deciduous trees provide summer sun and wind protection and allow cold season sunlight to filter through their branches; evergreen trees provide year-round shade and wind protection.

Plants are even good cover-ups. Use them to soften architectural lines, hide construction flaws, camouflage swimming pool equipment, and fill in odd angles on your lot.

Planting Considerations

If you're ever had to pluck plant debris out of a swimming pool, you'll understand the reluctance of many swimming pool owners to plant anything next to the swimming pool. But plants play a vital role in the swimming pool environment. Choosing plant materials and the location of planting beds very carefully will produce the attractive pool landscape you want and ensure minimum maintenance.

Successful plantings require adequate drainage. Water from the swimming pool, from rain, and from the hose you use to clean off paved areas must go somewhere, and since most pool decking is graded away from the pool itself, that water will run off into your plantings.

Lawns, ground covers, and other plants can absorb quantities of water, but the first meter or two of space adjacent to paved areas often receives more than its share. To protect this area from becoming saturated and boggy, channel the water before it reaches the plant materials by using gutters.