Last modified on May 3rd, 2022 at 8:53 am

Designing a Beautiful and Pet-Friendly Garden

Home and pet owners may believe that keeping a beautiful garden with a pet roaming around may be nigh-on impossible, but it isn’t so. Yes, dogs like to dig up the grass and they like to leave little presents around the garden for you to pick up, but giving a pet a home doesn’t mean you have to compromise on beauty.

Finding the right balance between a beautifully designed and pet-friendly garden does take some thought but, in actual fact, isn’t that difficult. To do this, consider what you want in your garden, as well as what you need to accommodate your faithful friend. Fuse the two together to create a safe haven for all members of the family to enjoy, two-legged or four.

Raised Flower Beds

Of course, you want flowers and other beautiful blossoms in your garden, it would be pretty bland if you didn’t. Any pets that regularly come out into the garden might, however, see these as an ideal spot to use as a toilet which hardly provides your blooms with the nutrients they need.

Raised flower beds aren’t just practical, they add definition to your blossoms. This is because your flowers no longer fade into the background, but become a feature all of their own. Not only that but assuming the flower beds have been raised enough (you might also want to consider a small protective fence), your pets will not be able to tamper with your blooms.

Garden Ornaments

Garden ornaments such as friendly gnomes, water features and other decorations will have to be well-thought-out, especially if they are fragile pieces. The last thing you would want is for a dog to get excited (and you know that they will) and run around the garden knocking into your favorite ornament, causing it to fall over and smash on the floor. As well as breakage itself, you also have to quickly pick up the pieces before your pet either walk on or attempt to swallow any sharp pieces.

Consider the placement and material of any ornaments you introduce into the garden. If they were to fall over after being knocked by your pet, you would much rather they weren’t likely to break. That means you might want to rethink lining up a squad of gnomes along with the patio as they might be a little safer on the softer grass surface.

Real or Artificial Grass

As we have already touched upon in this post, dogs like to dig holes in lawns. As well as those, when they do their business it can have a negative effect on the health of your grass, resulting in yellow patches and muddy spots where grass once was. To combat that, you might want to contemplate artificial lawn alternatives that won’t suffer the consequences of your furry friend’s toilet time. Not all types of artificial grass are the same, meaning that you should consider investing in samples before committing to one type to ensure that you are happy with your purchase.

While you will have to give the surface a quick scrub to avoid the smell lingering around, it does mean that you don’t have to worry about your grass looking worn out, showing the same effects that real grass does. Also, synthetic grass takes away the need to mow the lawn every week in the summer months, giving you more time to spend with your pets and not have to navigate around them with the lawnmower.

In Conclusion

With some careful planning and consideration, the neighbors will look at your garden in envy, wondering exactly how you have managed to maintain such an attractive outdoor space even with animals running around.