This can include paved areas driveways retaining walls sleeper walls stairs walkways and any other landscaping made up of hard wearing materials such as wood stone and concrete as opposed to softscape the horticultural elements of a landscape.
Hard and soft landscape materials.
There are soft landscaping options that can help.
These might include flowers trees shrubs ground covers etc.
Hardscape refers to hard landscape materials in the built environment structures that are incorporated into a landscape.
Without the combination of the soft and hard materials a landscape design will surely look incomplete and will surely be not up to the mark.
Think about touching the leaves of a tree or perennial or blades.
A landscape can appear incomplete and it can t perform many of the functions that good landscaping can without both hard and soft materials present.
The range of soft landscape materials includes each layer of the ecological sequence.
The corresponding term hard landscape is used to describe construction materials.
Change and evolve constantly as they grow and adapt to climate and other conditions.
Balance between the hard and soft is needed for the whole.
Pea gravel mexican river rock small stones gravel recycled rubber mulch and recycled glass are all considered loose material hardscaping.
Are softer to the touch quite literally.
If a material is used as a landscaping surface and is not green living growing landscaping then it probably would be considered hardscaping.
Therefore much like the mutual coordination between hardware and software of a computer for smooth functioning there is also the requirement of a good mixture of soft as well as hard landscape materials.
The term soft landscape is used by gardeners and practitioners of landscape design landscape architecture and garden design to describe the vegetative materials which are used to improve a landscape by design.
Consider these the soft horticultural living growing components of the landscape.