Tulsa Hardscapes - Creating Elegant Outdoor Environments

Often we hear the words “hardscape” and “hardscaping” used by Tulsa landscaping companies, but what are hardscapes and how can they be used in your outdoor environment?

Hardscape materials become the basis of a great Tulsa landscape. They are the inanimate, permanent features in your landscape – those made with pavers, stone, stone, wood, or brick. Used to build permanent structures, they help to stabilize your landscape and frequently provide the foundation for an outdoor environment like an outdoor kitchen or fireplace. In a small outdoor living space, hardscaping can provide the extra seating, dining, and cooking prep space you need to stylishly entertain guests.

With an almost infinite variety of shapes, textures, and colors, Tulsa hardscape materials can really set the tone for your Tulsa outdoor environment – from romantically elegant to modern urban designs. These materials can enhance and change the look of you property.

Tulsa Hardscapes such as pavers can easily expand your outdoor space creating a paver patio. These patios can become an addition of the home itself. That’s why it’s vital to consider the architecture and feel of your home when installing hardscapes so that the feel and tone of the hardscape complements that of the home and the rest of the landscape.

Hardscape materials help you visually divide a landscape. A pergola or other outdoor structure can aid in separating an outdoor kitchen or dining area from the rest of the outdoor living space while providing some much-needed shade. Permanent outdoor seating can be built to encircle an outdoor fireplace. Retaining walls can divide various sections of a property, even creating different levels for a landscape. Stone walls add charm and character while providing privacy.


Water features help to create a beautiful focal point for your landscape. Built using a variety of textured hardscape materials, water features bring color and interest to your Tulsa outdoor environment.

And, of course, a walkway or path of hardscape materials like stone or concrete pads kindly welcomes guests to your home or guides them to your backyard.

The Tulsa hardscape experts at Oklahoma Landscape are adept at designing and building the right hardscapes for your landscape to perfectly complement your home, the topography of your land, and how you want to use your outdoor environment.

Add Privacy to Your Outdoor Space with Expert Tulsa Landscape Design

While enjoying your Tulsa outdoor living space, would like to have more privacy? Although we love people and our neighbors, there are times when we just like to be alone and want to block out noise pollution, especially when we’re relaxing in an outdoor environment.  How can landscape design help to create a more secluded luxury retreat? How can the Tulsa landscape designers at Oklahoma Landscape help in creating that longed-for privacy? 

There are many ways to add privacy to your outdoor living space. For those who would like more natural privacy, countless types of hedges like evergreen arborvitaes and deciduous privet shrubs can make a living privacy screen that can also protect your home against harsh Oklahoma winds and reduce noise. Many Tulsa homeowners are now mingling their privacy plantings together to produce a layered effect with numerous trees, shrubs, annuals, and ornamental grasses planted in a staggered height pattern. This creates not only a mixture of heights but also a mixture of colors and textures that can stylishly hide your backyard. Thus, much can be done to add privacy to a Tulsa home simply by effectively using landscape design to provide a natural screen to your outdoor living space. 

Retaining walls and freestanding walls can also add privacy as well as character to your Tulsa landscape. These can be built using a diversity of materials from stone to concrete, wood, or other materials. These walls can be designed to match the style of your outdoor environment and home. Wall materials can be aged and textured to resemble Old English cottages, or they can be more symmetrical and smooth to give the landscape a modern feel. Not only do these stone and concrete walls add privacy, but retaining walls can also be used to elegantly divide areas of your outdoor living space, creating more definition for the landscape, and help to prevent erosion. 

A trellis can also be used to support growing vines or flowers and will help to create privacy for an outdoor space. These may not provide thorough privacy, and they allow more sunlight, but they also provide the visual separation many homeowners need to feel that they have a more isolated space. Adding a fountain or other water feature can help to lessen noise pollution and create a soothing effect in your outdoor environment. 

The landscape architects at Tulsa’s Oklahoma Landscape can design and build the ideal privacy elements to complement the style and purpose of your outdoor living space. So find solitude in your outdoor environment with effective Tulsa landscape design that has privacy in mind.

Landscape Design Plans A Must For Your Tulsa Outdoor Environment

When developing their Tulsa outdoor environment, many homeowners may start by buying a grill for the patio or a porch swing. They may add items to their outdoor living space as they find them at gardening stores or change things about their landscape as they see new ideas.

Of course, starting small and finding new things as you go to add to a garden is fine, but without a particular theme or design in mind for the landscape, a yard could become a jumble of mixed-matched styles and items. This could leave the homeowner feeling a little disheveled, like there was always something missing in their outdoor living space, and then they’re on a never-ending search for what will complete their landscape design. 

Having a definite design style in mind when creating an outdoor environment will help to keep your landscaping projects focused and make your outdoor space a work of art. You can have a theme for your outdoor environment such as Mediterranean, Tuscan, or Asian-inspired. Choosing one of these themes not only will help you to have a more unified look, but will give you direction and purpose in your landscaping. 

It’s good to put your landscape design ideas down on paper. This will help you carefully plan out how best to divide your space, where to plant shrubs and trees, and help you anticipate any problems to your landscape plan. To help save water and maintenance, try to group shrubbery together by their watering and sunlight needs. Also, plan for the future in deciding where to plant foliage by determining how big trees and plants will grow when they mature. Will they block a view from window, or will their root systems have to struggle against other plants’ roots for nutrients as they grow? 

Determining how you will most often use your Tulsa outdoor environment will help you to better use the space you have. You may not be able to include every outdoor feature you would like in your space, so by drawing or writing out your plan, you can better see the amount of unfilled space and prioritize what you’ll include accordingly. Do you want an outdoor kitchen space or a fire pit? Would you like to have an outdoor dining area? Is a swimming pool a must? Knowing what you must have in your outdoor living space will help you know where to start when you begin building.  

Professional Tulsa landscape architects can help you to design and build your entire outdoor environment and can assist you in choosing a theme that will best match the architecture of your home and how you want to utilize your outdoor space. These professionals also understand how to use retaining walls and other hardscapes to prevent erosion and how to effectively divide your outdoor space into ‘rooms’ that mimic all the comforts of home.  

So before you dive into renovating your backyard this spring, think about how you want to use your space and carefully design a landscape plan and theme that will create a one-of-a-kind outdoor oasis.

Adding Charm and Functionality - Tulsa Retaining Walls

Is your landscape having some erosion problems? Or do you have an uneven spot on your Tulsa landscape that makes it more difficult to use or creates unsightly dirt piles? These landscaping issues can often be fixed with a retaining wall. There are many benefits to these hardscape structures. Adding a retaining wall to your Tulsa property not only can protect it, but also create a beautiful landscape design.

Retaining walls hold back soil that might otherwise erode or move downhill on a landscape. These structures act as barriers, preventing erosion or a landslide that would cause significant damage to your home. Thus, for a sloped area, retaining walls provide the vital support your landscape needs.
These hardscapes help to mimimize flooding by reducing the flow of runoff water from rushing through your landscape to your home, garden, or the connecting city street. An effectively-designed retaining wall will complement your drainage and irrigation system to divert rainwater to the right places.

Tulsa retaining walls add functional value to your property by creating level areas where previously there were hills or slopes that made the land difficult to use and maintain. By adding a retaining wall, these problematic areas become usable space, perfect for a garden or a complete outdoor environment with a patio, pool, outdoor kitchen, and more. Tulsa homeowners can thus utilize more of their property by implementing these hardscapes. These walls can be used to divide areas of the property, adding dimension to the landscape.

This added dimension to a landscape is part of another benefit retaining walls offer – that of creating a sophisticated, polished look for the landscape. Organization often gives objects a sophisticated look. Having an organized landscape can do the same. Retaining walls not only help to “organize” your landscape, dividing areas, even having different layers of walls with different purposes and keeping things in place, but they do all of this in style. Retaining walls add a decorative architecture to your landscape, creating a contrast between nature and hardscape.  When done effectively, they can add beauty and charm to your landscape. These hardscapes can coordinate with the architecture of your home and outdoor living space to provide character.

Retaining walls can be made using a variety of decorative materials, each with their own look and feel. This artful variety of hardscape materials and the skillful and purposeful building of these walls is what adds character to the landscape. These materials can include natural stones, interlocking blocks, concrete, wood, bricks, and cinder blocks. When they are textured and aged, retaining wall materials can have an alluring Old World feel. They can also be smooth and symmetrical to have a more urban look.

However, for retaining walls to be effective, they must be skillfully built. Otherwise, these hardscapes could succumb to the pressures of weather, time, and other natural elements.

Retaining walls are an important part of artful and practical Tulsa landscape design. These add definition and charm while creating functional space and vital stability to a landscape.