Best Landscape Design for Miami, South Florida?

Let’s talk about the best landscape design options for you. 

Choosing the best landscape design for your Miami, South Florida home sometimes can be tricky. There are many design elements and variables to sort through, it’s easy to see why a person can be confused when trying to decide what the best landscape design is. You want a landscape that’s not only beautiful, but fits your personal needs as well, for example having a tree that provides great shade and fruit, like a mango or avocado tree. You can’t decide whether to go with a Mediterranean look or Tropical Design? You have many design choices with numerous landscape elements to consider.  You’re design should flow with the architecture of your home, inside and out.

Landscape Designer Brent Knoll of Knoll Landscape Design is here to help. Brent has over 20 years of designing gardens in South Florida and has put together his top ten landscape designs for beautifying your outdoor space. In this article he’ll discuss the best landscape design for Miami and the elemental factors that make them work. So what is the best landscape design for your Miami, South Florida home? Here’s Brent’s top ten landscape designs for Miami:

1. Mediterranean Landscape Design– Mediterranean gardens are best known for their casual elegance. The inspiration for these gardens comes from the coastal areas of Spain, Italy and France, this landscape style combines relaxed materials and plants with formal accents and designs. Imagine spiral topiaries, lavender, cypress trees and ornamentals combined with terra cotta pots, tiered fountains, roman columns and greek statues. That’s a pretty picture! 

2. Tropical Landscape Design– Tropical Landscapes in Miami are a slam dunk as South Florida is…Tropical. Imagaine a Tropical Landscape full of hummingbirds and butterflies, exotic flowering bat plants whose whiskery flowers are 20″ long, fragrant trumpet flowers perfuming the night air and the creaking sound of bamboo as it sways in the wind. Small waterfalls flowing in to ponds filled with papyrus, lotus flowers and koi fish. The icing on the cake is lying in a hammock between two coconuts as you sip cold ginger tea and listen to the birds sing. That’s paradise….Tropical is the best landscape design in Miami and South Florida when it comes to lushness, rapid growth, and plant variety. 

3. Edible Landscape Design– Edible landscaping is an infusion of herbs, fruits and vegetable plants combined with hummingbird and butterfly flora, ornamentals, nectar plants to attract pollinators, fruit trees and shrubs. The object of an edible landscape design is to create a beautiful, yet practical organic garden, one that provides for your basic needs of aesthetics, privacy and shade, but can be eaten from as well. This is a great way to say good by to all that lawn grass and expensive upkeep by planting lot’s of crisp lettuce, fresh herbs and vegetables. Your shade tree becomes a delcious mango tree. Privacy hedge a passion flowering vine on fence giving you fruit all year long. In my opinion, Edible Landscapes are great way to become empowered about growing your own food and setting an example for the community. Are Edible Landscapes the best landscape design for being sustainable, growing food and making the most of your taxable property…Yes! For more information on edible landscaping in Miami, visit our friends Easy Edible Landscapes at http://www.easyediblelandscapes.com

4. Certified Wildlife Habitat– These gardens hold a special place in my heart as they’re all about connecting with Nature. With the continued development of Metropolitan properties, more of the natural environment is removed including the soil, to be replaced with huge homes, concrete and small lawns. In my line of work as Landscape Designer, I’m digging all day long in construction fill, bottles, concrete and whatever is left over from the site. The first step for creating balance is to take care of the soil by rejuvenating it with organic material. Then we plant the prettiest of native trees, shrubs, flowering vines, butterfly and bird attracting plants, grasses and ground covers. The result is a outdoor space full of song birds, butterflies fluttering about, frogs singing at night and a place for all to find solace, a natural sanctuary. This is the best landscape design hands down for attracting wildlife to your Miami home. 

5. Butterfly and Hummingbird Haven– the name says it all! The one consistant element in all my gardens are the butterflies. I can’t help it, they’re so much fun to be around. Always fluttering, chasing and nectaring, so tranquil and elegant. It’s easy to attract butterflies in our temperate climate. In one Miami garden alone, I attracted over 30 of native species. It was butterflies gone wild!!! Great thing about butterfly plants, they also bring in the hummingbirds. Plants like ruby red penta, firebush and firespike are great for nectaring, while corkystem passion vine, milkweed and cassia serve as the larval plants. Combine those elements and you’ve got buffet line for our little friends and entertainment for hours. For attracting butterflies, the butterfly and hummingbird haven is the best landscape design for this purpose. 

6. Healing Garden Design– If there’s a garden I’d prefer to install the most, it would be the Healing Garden. In our fast-pacing, chaotic world, it’s easy to feel the effects of stress and become unbalanced or even ill. If you’re looking for an incredible way to bring healing and meditative calm to your space, then you’ve met your future garden. With restoration of the body, mind, and spirit at its heart, it is infused with many divine and delightful elements. We use things like sacred geometry, scent, color, sound therapy, water features, herbal and medicinal plants, meditation and prayer niches, edibles, and various wildlife attractants among others. Imagine being greeted with the fragrance of a joy perfume tree each time you come home from work or relaxing on a bench near a fountain listening to song birds. Butterflies always in chase, hummingbirds nectaring on native flowers. If you want a Sanctuary, a place of solace, Healing Gardens are the best landscape design in Miami for finding balance and peace of mind. 

7. Sacred Sanctuary Design and Labryths– With our days typically filled with work, home life, social life, hobbies, etc., we can lose sight of the sacred. And yet this part of our life is (for many of us) the most crucial and central need we have. Imagine having a garden truly set apart as a holy place for meditation, prayer, and worship, and as a reminder of all that is divine in your life. We encourage the use of things like sacred geometry, crystals, prayer flags, meditation benches and other sacred symbols as templates for these designs. Wildlife attracting plants like firebush for the butterflies and surnam cherry for the birds will bring balance to any space, ecouraging sanctuary and peace for all. 

8. Raised Bed Gardening– Imagine having an organic marketplace in your own back yard! The Raised Bed Garden is a classic approach to growing herbs and vegetables. Raised Bed Gardens are neatly contained and easy to work, this simple design offers everything you need to begin growing the healthy herbs, fruits and vegetables you and your family deserve. Raised bed garden frames can be made with wood, metal, stone or plastic. The wood raised bed frames are build with 2″ pine, cedar, cypress or teak, are normally 2′ to 4′ wide, 4′ to 10′ long, and are 10″ deep, filled with organic soil, seasonally planted with seeds and starter plants and fertilized organically. These little raised garden beds are the best landscape design approach for beginners to grow their own food. 

9. Bamboo Retreat– Adding bamboo to your landscape can be perfect for many situations. Let’s say you’ve got a building next to your property that you don’t want to see anymore or don’t want your neighbor to see you skinny dipping in your pool, bamboo as a privacy hedge is ideal due to it’s fast growing nature and non invasiveness. (we only install clumping, non running bamboo at Knoll Landscape Design)  The Bamboo Retreat Designs we create are lush, tropical, exotic and elegant, each unique in presentation and impact. Imagine a small bamboo forest surrounding a clear water limestone pool with koi fish, water lillies, orchids and flowering bromeliads, a true vacation getaway in your back yard! 

10. Edible Forest Design– If your tired of throwing money away for costly yard upkeep and want to make the most of your property by growing your own food, then the Edible Forest is the landscape design for you. This sustainable “green” design combines concepts like permaculture and companion planting. This self-sustaining microclimate involves the layering of plants and fruit trees according to height, sun tolerance, and growth habits, creating tiny forests that mimic nature and work in beautiful harmony to produce a constant yield of fresh organic deliciousness! Replace your lawn grass with crisp lettuce, fresh herbs, nutritious vegetables and fruits. Tear out that whitefly destroyed ficus hedge and grow a super sweet surnam cherry hedge. Remove that invasive schefflera tree and plant a mango tree, surrounded by papayas and sweet potatoes. With this new style of landscaping you’ll grow enough food for your family and have enough to give to friends. Edible Forests are the best landscape design for making the most of your organic gardening space. 

Need a consulation or design?

Whether it’s a mediterranean style landscape with tiered Italian fountains, a Tropical Paradise with exotic orchids and waterfalls, or just showing off your prize lemon tree in your Edible Forest, you have many choices for landscaping your South Florida property. Need direction for where to start first? Maybe a consulation will shed light on what style of landscape best suits your architecture? Have the ideas and just need a landscape design? Knoll Landscape Design is ready to help you get started. With over 20 year designing and installing gorgeous landscapes, Landscape Designer Brent Knoll knows the best landscape design for your property and is just a phone call away at 3054965155. Call today and get your property looking great!