Landscaping Around Pool

I love the subtle elegance of the landscaping around pool of this (what I presume to be) Cape Cod or New England estate.  So many people are super in to those resort-style inground pool designs that have rocks, tiki huts, waterfalls and palms everywhere, but that just isn't my style.  I prefer more understated designs (both inside and outside) that a lot of people would probably consider to be "classic" or "traditional" in style.  If I had to choose any landscaping ideas around pool decks that I wanted regardless of price or time restraints, I would probably do something just like this.  The hedges that surround the flagstone deck portion off the pool from the rest of the yard and make it look like a tucked away hiding spot.

We have just begun landscaping around pool but I am already so pleased with how it is looking.  After reading so many comments and posts on here before having our new backyard area installed, I knew the importance of pool landscaping and tying everything together with similar materials and color palettes.  As you can see we started breaking up the very large cement patios and pool decks with beds of shrubs and neutral flowers that basically boarder the pool and individual patio areas.  Although it does not provide a ton of greenery, the small bursts of color are a really nice touch against all of the grey.  As we live with the space for a little white longer, we will begin incorporating more trendy pool ideas 2020, but for now we think that the design is beautiful.

Landscaping around pool decks is definitely the single greatest factor to making your backyard design look cohesive and well done.  So many of the backyard pool ideas that I see fall flat because they do not take into account the entire yard.  Of course it is important to make sure that the pool itself looks good, but without proper landscaping, decking materials, and attention to detail without decor, all you have is an oversized outdoor bath tub on your property. I really like how this homeowner maximized pool landscape designs by creating a garden around two sides of the stamped concrete pool deck.  This makes it feel like the pool was always a central piece of the property, rather than an afterthought added later.

When we were planning out the landscaping around pool, we weren't really sure if we wanted to go bold or to keep things subtle.  As you can probably tell from these photos of our swimming pool design, we decided to keep things pretty a little bit more on the understated side so that we would not take away from the beautiful patio paver deck or our really cool fence that acts as a nice backdrop to the whole thing. I thought that some low lying plants and shrubs would give a nice contrast against the pretty much all grey hardscaping elements in the yard, but wouldn't be "too much" if you know what I mean.  If we want to add some more color, I think I would do so through pool decorating ideas that are more temporary and that could be added or taken away as we saw fit. 

I am so proud of the landscaping around pool that our company did at this residential property.  In my experience, typically you don't see extremely high end pool designs like this at your average home, we mostly get requests for this kind of thing to be added in more commercial contexts like at a hotel or maybe even a public park or miniature golf course etc.  But this homeowner really wanted to do it big and make their backyard something absolutely incredible that no neighbor, family member, or friend that visited would soon forget.  If you are wanting to make a splash, pool landscaping with rocks is actually one of the more affordable options if you are doing something on a large scale.

So many people forget about landscaping around pool installations, which is such a dire mistake in my eyes.  In my opinion, there is nothing worse than random rectangular backyard pool designs seemingly plopped in the middle of the lawn without any thought to how to make it look like a natural (or intentional) part of the space.  This homeowner blended their pool in with the rest of their landscaping absolutely perfectly so that it felt like a seamless part of their outdoor design.  The flagstone deck mimics the stone on the home and small cabana perfectly, and the pool landscaping ideas that they used seem to flow from their natural gardens onto the deck.