Waterfront Landscaping Can Be Challenging and Beautiful

There are a lot of waterfront properties around Fort Myers, Florida, as homes are often located on bays, canals, harbors, lakes, rivers, islands and, of course, the ocean itself. Here at Landscape Pros, we fully understand that this leads to some challenges when it comes to custom landscape design in Fort Myers, FL, but it also leads to a lot of beautiful opportunities. With the right team on your side, you can develop an outdoor living space beyond your wildest expectations.

Whether you already live in Florida or you’re moving there from a northern state, you need to know exactly what challenges you’re going to face and how to get the most out of making a tropical oasis on your property.

Maintaining water access and privacy

One tricky thing to consider is the balance between privacy on your personal property and easy access to the water. You may want to have a boat house, a dock or a beach. You may want something as simple as a walking path leading across the yard and down to the water’s edge. But you also want to have a little personal space on what can be a packed shoreline. We can help you consider how to use plants, shrubs and other native flora to create the level of privacy you want without compromising on the beautiful view.

Enhancing that view

Speaking of the view, one of the goals we have when we do landscape design is to try to enhance that view. You don’t want trees that are going to block the view of the ocean and make it impossible for you to enjoy your yard in the way you do today. What you want are plants that are going to accent that view and make the whole space into a stunning oasis that is focused around the water. We have decades of experience doing this, so we can make your view even more beautiful and engaging than it is right now.

Another thing to consider, which we always take into account, is that outdoor landscaping grows and changes over time. We will work with you to find the right species of plants and other features to make sure that your landscaping is always perfect, even if it changes.

The impact of the elements and the seasons

Florida does not have the four distinct seasons that you will find in some other states, but typically has both summer and winter. The spring and the fall are very short, and the winter can be relatively mild. We have to keep in mind that landscaping needs to be able to exist in the dry and cool winter weather, but that it also needs to thrive in the humid and sometimes very hot summer weather. This is a balance that we know how to find well, and it means that your outdoor space can function perfectly all through the year.

At the start of June, we also enter into hurricane season. This runs until December, when hurricanes are a constant risk. Even if you are not in an area where you would be directly impacted, this can still lead to heavy rainfall, barometric changes, high winds and many other challenges for your outdoor space. The salty air from the ocean can also play a role, as can all sorts of plant and animal life. We consider everything, from the type of plants we use to whether or not you have a beach-facing or intracoastal-facing property. We can help you find the right plants and other materials to make a landscape that works for you.

Choosing the perfect plants

Plant selection is massively important when we’re doing custom landscape design in Fort Myers, FL, so we work hard to find plants that fit aesthetically and that are also well suited to the environment. For instance, we sometimes focus on salt-tolerant plants near the ocean. Waterfront properties must have the right type of flora in order to thrive. Some of the trees that we consider include the following:

• Oak
• Clusia
• Red Cedar
• Sea Grape
• Pandanus
• Buttonwood palms
• Sable
• Coconut royal
• European fan
• Bismarkia
• Paurotis

Likewise, we carefully consider what ornamental grasses are going to work the best on the waterfront property. A few examples are listed below:

• Palmetto
• Geranium
• Indian hawthorn
• Agave
• Bulbine
• Green Island ficusflowers
• Beach sunflower
• Lantana
• Crown of thorns
• Carissa

Finally, we consider the other wildlife that lives in the area and how the landscaping may impact them. Ideally, you want to choose plants that help wildlife stay safe, controlled and healthy. We’re interested in the entire scope of your property, and will work closely with you to determine what types of wildlife live on your property and how we can get the results that you want without negatively impacting that life.

Essential steps that we take

We see landscaping as an opportunity, and there are a lot of different steps that we take to make sure things go smoothly. For example, we can create a buffer zone between your plants and the shoreline. We can use environmentally-friendly fertilizers and focus on native trees and shrubs. We can help you find plants that are going to eliminate or at least reduce erosion or sedimentation. We will set things up to ensure you don’t have to over-irrigate or overwater a certain area. These are just a few of the things we do to get premium results.

At the end of the day, you can see that waterfront landscape design is about so much more than just the aesthetic appeal. You need a team that can put all these pieces together and create a complex design that works for your property and your family. If you’d like to know more about custom landscape design in Fort Myers, FL, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today.