Elegant Functionality Landscape Design Guide
- Jul 16, 2025
- 5 min read
Elegant functionality landscape design with wildlife-supporting aspects
If neat and orderly brings you peace of mind, consider a formal, yet modern, approach to your landscaping
Usually kept to a minimal colour palette without lots of contrast, an elegant functionality landscape garden used to lean heavily on the colour green, namely, a patch of lawn balanced with neat, orderly, hyper-clipped borders
Today's mid-modern hyper functional yet still elegant landscapes incorporate highly-considered hardscaping to balance the more naturalistic, biodiverse garden beds and plantings
Today's mid-modern hyper functional yet still elegant landscapes incorporate highly-considered hardscaping to balance the more naturalistic, biodiverse garden beds and plantings
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THE VIBE
Outdoor living spaces are opened up and existing features are highlighted in a subtle way that bringing balance and depth to outdoor spaces
Your idea of heavenly is a mix of neutral earthy colours & contrasting textures such as warm brick tones with crisp white stucco surfaces and grey stained wood with corten steel planters
Think long wood-meets-metal outdoor dining table able to sit 20 atop a geometric-patterned contemporary paver lined with geometric borders filled with neat lines of billowy grasses
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FEATURES
Materials: Refined textures such as stainless steel, smooth stone, tile and finished wood help keep the garden hardscape in line with the sleek lines of the residence. Local stone can add a natural, timeless beauty to a mid-modern yard, using geometric shapes and dividing large spaces into smaller sections to keep things dynamic
Concrete is almost always appropriate for elegant functional landscape designs, making it the go-to choice for creating a sleek look. For other hardscape materials, choose light-covered gravel to mulch bare soil, reduce weed pressure and cover paths
Planting: Use static, foundational plantings to define spaces and use uniform heights of plants for consistency. Using a single colour of ground cover or species of flowering shrub type per planted area creates order and consistency
Despite what some designers say, annuals are a complete waste of money, unless sown via seed
Save your money, and time, by finding the right ground cover, bunching grass or long-lasting perennial, preferably natives to the ecoregion, to fill in vacant spaces. These long-lasting plants when used in bulk of the same species and/or colour offer the same result but are more sustainable and less expensive & time-consuming than using annuals
Elements: Keep other hardscape elements matching and/or coordinating with the stone, paver or brick you choose for your paths and patios, and overall stick to warmer neutral tones
A favourite element for a elegant functionality rear yard is the fire pit, not only because it extends the usable seasons of your outdoor space. If it is a sculptural modern corten steel fire dish or a retro atomic-styled firepit, for example, can make a beautiful focal point if the centreline is aligned with a large picture window
Make sure to keep a width of 15 feet in all directions around the fire pit and away from any buildings for safety, and comfort
Containers: If you've always liked the look of corten steel, this is the perfect choice for your mixed modern functional and elegant landscape, combining a stronger feel with a romantic, weathered aspect
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SUMMARY
Design the outdoor spaces to function properly and design them to aesthetically look like they belong to the home
Look at the details of the home to guide your landscape design; elegant-functional homes typically have at least one unique detail whether it’s the front door or the railing of a porch - use that detail in your landscape design repeatedly for cohesion
By using the materials on the house to guide your choices for the hardscape materials, whether that is limestone or basalt, brings those elements out into the landscape to create consistency
However, if you already have plenty of red brick on the home, using a contrasting material would look better than just adding more of the same red brick. It takes time, but eventually you will see how to balance the elements
Also important is to have the design of the gardens reflect the place it is located
A xeric, desert-mountain-style rock garden is not going to look realistic planted in your north-facing and shady New England backyard.
And correspondingly, a fern grove is going to look distressed and require a tremendous amount of water and rich soil if located on your arid Arizona property. Match the garden to the site
Let planted areas highlight the home and hardscapes, and soften structural elements such as windows and doorways with flowering shrubs
Look for a material (an accent not an all-over material), shape, detail or angle to repeat. Use lines of force – centerlines of windows/doors, corners of the buildings - to inform your decisions on where to locate paths and walkways
Let the design be more driven by the house close to the house. Let defined details dissolve as you get farther from the house
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Elegant functionality landscape design upholds boldness, geometric symmetry and classical proportions
Follow our landscape design guide suggestions to create your own Elegant Functionality Landscape
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OUR SUGGESTIONS
Start by laying out where you want your hardscape (the patios, decks, trellises, paths, walkways, etc) to be in your landscape. Make welcoming spaces for dining al fresco by integrating plenty of areas for outdoor living and recreation
Provide the feeling of 'outdoor rooms' with the use of expansive overlapping sails, latticed-top gazebos or black steel pergolas to create airy coverage. By providing a ceiling of sorts creates a pleasant microclimate where the stone or brick pavers absorb daytime heat and release it gradually during cool evenings
Vertical element define an individual space from the rest of the hardscaping. A modern way is to add seat walls using dry stacked stone in wet & rugged environments as opposed to poured-concrete retaining walls in drier conditions
Long wooden or poured-concrete tables or sleek, modern bistro sets provide the perfect setting for entertaining while still retaining a clean aesthetic. Tie the look together by introducing statement planters filled with herbs, edible plants and dwarf fruit trees at the corners and edges
Create a relaxing escape with low-profile pondless waterfalls and fountains, low patios and cascading decks. Gently-moving water encourages a reflective atmosphere and calming mood. Still ponds provide balance to dry gardens
Linear groups of plants close to the house reinforce the style and architecture of the house. Play on the angles of the walls of the home with a corresponding angled planting
Install the largest planters you can in square and rectangle shapes, and fill them with slightly-sandy loam soil
Next add bunches of grasses surrounding even taller meadow flowers, such as rocky mountain bee balm, asters, echinacea and coreopsis for a messy wild but booming with pollinators and songbirds, or keep it neater with a mixture of tidy clumping grasses, various-textured dwarf conifers and abundant succulents draping off the edges
Tie the look together by introducing statement planters filled with easy-to-grow herbs, edible plants and dwarf fruit trees that retains a clean aesthetic and a nod to the historic past of growing your own food
Incorporate tapestries of drought-adapted, low-maintenance plants such as succulents, dwarf conifers and winter- & summer-grasses, especially the clumping kinds. Embrace dense plantings with evergreen ground covers, grasses and shorter perennials with lots of texture
False lily of the valley, creeping cranberry, kinknickknick and spring ephemerals are all great PNW native ground covers that will cover an area quickly if planted en masse, ie: in huge drifts across the beds
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For more of our Elegant Functionality Landscape Style suggestions, download our fully-detailed and specific Design Guide
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