How many times have you gotten excited about a project and rushed into it only to find you forgot something? Landscaping takes considerable time, effort, and money … so you want to do it right the first time. There are a few, crucial steps you need to take before starting your landscaping.

You must first take the time to consider what purpose your front and/or back yard will have in your family's lives. Do you want to sit on your patio and enjoy the birds and butterflies flitting around your flowers? Do you want to have a place where your children or grandchildren can play? Do you want a serene hideaway where you can read and enjoy the sounds from a water feature? Do you want all these things? Until you know how you will be using your yard, you won't be able to decide how to landscape it to best suit these purposes.

Next (or throughout that thought process), clip pictures from magazines or the newspaper of outdoor spaces you find attractive, make you smile, or give you a good feeling. While not all these designs may be practical for your own yard, most of them can give you a target for what you'd like to achieve with your landscaping.

Measure your yard and draw it on graph paper. Play with ideas of how much space you would like for the kids to play or your hideaway spot. The graph paper will help you better understand the dimensions of your yard and how much is possible within that space. Allow plenty of space for the bushes or flowerbeds you want to use to separate various aspects of your yard.

Decide if you will be doing your landscaping yourself or hiring out some or all of it. If you will be using a landscaper, now is the time to present your ideas and let them design a realistic plan based on what you have drawn or collected. 

If you plan to landscape yourself, collect catalogs from nurseries and visit a few of your local nurseries. You will want to start learning which plants, grasses, bushes, and trees do well in your area. Nurseries are great for seeing the actual plants, but they will usually only carry what is commonly sold in your area. If you would like a few unusual plants or variations, reviewing your catalogs will yield some delightful surprises.

The last step? Add your comments to this post and let me know if you have followed similar steps and whether or not it helped. Or let me know if you wish you had given your landscaping just a little more thought!

In case you don't know anything about rain chains, let me introduce you. A rain chain is usually installed on a choice corner of your house as a decorative (and useful) replacement for your gutter downspout. The rain chain connects to your gutter at any corner. Rain chains and rain cup chains are basically the same thing. Rain cups are the cup-like decorations down the chain, such as flowers or teacups.

If you're thinking a rain chain is a chunk of chain you find at a hardware store, you'd be very wrong. Rain chains are typically made from pure copper so they start out attractive and the verdigris patina that copper attains over the years keeps it attractive. In addition, copper needs no maintenance so you can enjoy your rain chain without effort!

Imagine how soothing it is to hear the rain chain's tinkling sounds (similar to a water fountain) each time it rains. Rain chains allow the water to flow down them and then disperse the water over a wider ground area. No more water gushing through the gutter downspout!

Not only do rain chains add an upscale cfeature to your home, they become part of your decorating theme. At the base of your rain chain, you can decide whether to let the water run into a water fountain, a large flower planter that likes water, or you can design a feature that will encourage the water to flow into another part of your yard. Rain chains are available in a variety of link designs and decorative rain cup designs so it's easy to match your outdoor decor.

The secret of rain chains is that they are an amazing combination of gutter downspout, garden sculpture, and water feature. You must experience the wonder and beauty of this particular decorating addition to your home.

I just ran across a unique way to expand your living space … put your home office outside! There's a company in England, I-Scape, that builds modular garden offices, called iscapes. According to their press release, "An iscape comes complete with integral electrics, a host of optional extras and a wide range of exterior finishes including natural western cedar, low maintenance plastic coated steel, or multi colour scheme plywood." This takes the yard shed to a whole new level! If you've been wishing you had a spare bedroom for a home office or if your home office is a small table squished to the side of your bed, you might explore the possibilities available for expanding your rooms outside.

They have designs intended specifically for an office space and another for what they call a "lifestyle building." Now that term brings up interesting things, doesn't it? But think about it. Are you into exercising and need a nice space to do your yoga or set up your weights? What about a play room for the kids? As you can see, with a little thought it's easy to think of great ways to use this concept. Check them out at www.i-scape.co.uk/.