You’ve kept your restaurant lawn and garden immaculately trimmed, and now the flowers are blooming and the neighboring businesses are envious. With just a few books, online tips, and a lot of help from your commercial landscaping services provider, you’ve transformed your restaurant’s empty backyard and boring front yard into an idyllic location for a James Joyce period movie. Then you wake-up—it’s all just a dream.
This dream has been haunting you since your return from Kanapaha Botanical Gardens in Gainesville, Florida. Along with the few others that dotted the Gainesville area, you’ve been inspired to do the same for your business. Fortunately, you could hire commercial landscaping services in Gainesville.
Gardening would seem a formidable task, and in some ways, it may be. But all that is needed to accomplish your dream are a little help from books, online resources, and your commercial landscaping company. After all, Edith Wharton said that our gardens are for us “to escape, enjoy, and behold our own patch of beauty and pleasure”. And you want your patrons to enjoy their meals amidst a lush carpet of beautiful flowers.
Tools of the Trade
So, you have your basic garden tools—your shovel, spade, rake, fork, trowel, pruner, lopper, saw and shear, wheelbarrow, and the ubiquitous hand gloves. Add to that a couple of dozen meters of neoprene cable (these are ideal for outdoor, damp locations as these are designed for industrial use) for your garden lighting needs (which you’ll have a lot of), and you’re good to go.
Type of Flowers
The type of garden you want to cultivate depends on the type of flowers you want to see on a daily basis. Some flowers are easy to grow, while others need a lot of care. Choose the type of flowers you’ll grow in your restaurant garden, depending on the color and how it will blend with the rest of your garden design. Since you’re new at this, ask others who may have had experience with planting and growing the type of flower you want. You can find a lot of them in online forums, your local garden trade clubs, or even your friends.
Landscaping
The success of your restaurant garden design depends on your landscape. It need not be complicated, but it’s important for you to have a clear picture in your head what you want to accomplish. Remember that the idea of the landscape is to give your garden a coherent look, and not end up like a jungle.
Nightscaping
The whole concept of nightscaping is the planning of lighting fixtures all throughout your restaurant garden so that you’re highlighting the best features. It’s also about making it safe. Most people get it wrong because they figure that since the garden looks good during the daytime, it’ll probably look the same at night.
A case in point is the path. Many people buy path lights and just stick them into the ground. The ideal placement is about a foot off the path to show a distinction between the path and the garden. Another mistake they make is they buy uplights rather than downlights. Remember that you’re trying to light the path, not the people walking on the path. This is especially helpful when your restaurant guests take their drinks to head out to your patio.
Your neoprene cable comes into play when planning your nightscape, so measure carefully. If your restaurant garden is going to host an elevated deck or a water feature, consider those as well when planning the electrical requirements.
Gardening is fun and hard work in equal measures. It is never truly finished, but the enjoyment we get from it is limitless. For sure, your restaurant patrons would enjoy the wonders you’ve created.
