Beach Style Landscaping Ideas

Movement

• You may not be close enough to feel or smell the salt air blowing in from the ocean, but you can create the illusion that an ocean breeze is passing through your garden. Landscape with movement in mind. Include perennial fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides) into your landscape. Perennial fountain grass has a mounding habit. It grows from 12 to 36 inches high. Use as an accent plant where its tall, arched stalks can sway with the breeze. English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) grows to about 18 inches high. In the summer, clusters of small, aromatic florets grow atop of tall stems. The wind pushes the gray-green to green-purple flowers to create waves across your landscape.

  Add a water feature to provide movement when the wind is not blowing. Choose an understated fountain so that you are not giving the impression that the fountain is a substitute for the ocean. Drill a hole through a large boulder and run copper tubing through it. Place it atop of a catch basin with a pump covered with smaller stones to create an ideal fountain.

Color

• Incorporate browns, blues, greens and white into your landscape to capture the essence of the sand, sky and ocean waves. Build a walkway with light brown, for dry sand or dark brown, for wet sand, pavers. Use manufactured stones rather than natural stone to get a smoother, more uniform appearance along the path. Grow hydrangeas in acidic soil to encourage them to produce intense blue flowers. Test your soil ph levels and also test to ensure your soil contains aluminum. Baby blue marine bearded irises are an intermediate iris that grow to 16 to 28 inches high. They bloom in spring with a light blue color. Baby's breath (gypsophila muralis) adds touches of white, paying homage to the surf crashing against the shore. Do not plant baby's breath next to hydrangea because baby's breath will not tolerate acidic soil unless you bury pots of alkaline or neutral soil and place the baby's breath in them.

Texture

• A visit to the beach is a very tactile experience. Walk along the shore and you will find smooth pebbles nestled in gritty sand, tough skinned starfish and smooth skinned fish. Create your own textures by creating a border with river rock for your raised beds. Give your raised beds the look of weathered wood by staining them with a pickled stain. This faux finish lightens the color of the wood and brings out its underlying grain. Turn an area of the garden where you have trouble growing the plants you want into a art garden. Purchase or create a sculpture made out of driftwood and place it in a bed of white sand.