A beautifully built patio or outdoor fireplace deserves equally thoughtful landscaping around it. The right plants soften hardscape edges, provide privacy screening, create seasonal interest, and frame the outdoor living space in a way that makes it feel like it belongs to the landscape. Here’s a practical guide to landscaping and irrigation around Oklahoma outdoor living spaces.
Design Principles for Outdoor Living Landscaping
Soften the Hardscape Edges
A new patio can look stark when it’s freshly installed — crisp edges meeting lawn without transition. Planting beds along patio edges soften this transition. Low ornamental grasses, ground covers, and shrubs in beds bordering the patio edge create a gradual transition from hard surface to soft landscape. Leave a few inches of planting bed between the patio edge and lawn or adjacent hardscape for a finished appearance.
Create Privacy Screening
Most Oklahoma residential lots have neighbors in relatively close proximity. Strategic plantings — ornamental grasses, dense shrubs, or trees in the right locations — create visual separation and a sense of privacy in outdoor spaces. Evergreen plantings (wax myrtle, needlepoint holly, American beautyberry) provide year-round screening. Deciduous screening (oakleaf hydrangea, viburnum, native sumac) provides heavy summer screening when outdoor use is highest.
Frame Views, Block Non-Views
If your outdoor space has a pleasant view — a mature tree, a natural area, a garden feature — use plantings to frame and draw attention to that view. If there’s an unpleasant view (utility equipment, neighbor’s storage, fence line), strategic plantings can screen it. Thoughtful plant placement guides where the eye travels when sitting in the outdoor space.
Oklahoma Native and Adaptive Plants for Outdoor Living Spaces
Oklahoma’s climate — hot dry summers, clay soils, occasional drought — favors plants that have adapted to these conditions over native species. Once established (typically 1-2 seasons), native and adaptive plants require significantly less supplemental irrigation and maintenance than traditional landscape plants.
- Ornamental grasses: Karl Foerster feather reed grass, Blue oat grass, Gulf muhly — provide movement, texture, and seasonal interest with minimal water
- Flowering perennials: Black-eyed Susan, Purple coneflower, Salvia greggii (Autumn sage), Lantana — drought-tolerant with extended bloom season
- Shrubs: Texas sage (Leucophyllum), Knock Out roses, Oakleaf hydrangea, Yaupon holly — low maintenance and adapted to Oklahoma conditions
- Trees for shade near patios: Chinkapin oak, Eastern redbud, Desert willow, Shumard oak — native oaks that provide eventual patio shade without aggressive root systems
- Ground covers: Liriope, Creeping juniper, Purple heart — low maintenance coverage for bed areas that don’t require regular mowing