Your outdoor signage is often the first impression people get about you. Whether you’re a business, church, neighborhood association, or other organization, your sign is probably front and center on your property, representing your identity with its color, font, and design. It’s an indispensable part of who you are and the public’s perception of you—so it should always look great.
Our landscaping team works with many local organizations to make sure their signage is complemented by beautiful flowers, shrubs, beds, and other attractive features all year long. It’s a job that requires consistency, a good eye for color coordination, and plenty of knowledge about how to properly design and maintain a landscape. Over the years, we’ve learned a few things about how to help make our clients’ signage pop—and we’re happy to share our ideas.
Signage landscaping isn’t a seasonal job. Some organizations make the mistake of sprucing up the landscaping around their signs only once or twice a year. That’s a big mistake for many reasons. For one, lots of organizations like to use annual flowers around their signs because of their stunning blooms and colors, but these won’t last all year. So you’ll need to plan on rotating your plants to keep them fresh and appropriate for the season.
You also need to prepare beds depending on the time of year; for example, clearing out debris and mulching in late fall or early winter will do wonders for the health of your plants come spring. When you have a plan for every season, you can be sure your signage will never have a tired, outdated look
It’s important to use attention-grabbing colors. When choosing colors to complement signage, we typically recommend that our clients go big. Bright, gorgeous, eye-popping colors will command people’s attention, so we often suggest flowers that are pink, yellow, purple, red, orange, and white among other colors.
We also pay close attention to coordinating colors based on season, so we might pair yellow and white together in the spring and orange and red together in the fall. It’s also critical to pay attention to the colors of your sign so you can make sure they don’t clash with the colors of your plants.
Symmetry is key. In most cases, your sign should be the centerpiece of its area of your landscape, and should be flanked by flowers and landscaping features in relatively equal proportion. There are exceptions to this rule, but we wouldn’t recommend trying to set up asymmetrical signage landscaping without a detailed design from a landscape architect.
Think about groundcovers. You have so many options when it comes to groundcovers, but the first thing you’ll want to decide is whether you want a living groundcover like moss or ivy, or would rather use something like stones or mulch. Living groundcover can be quite unique and beautiful, but it can also be difficult to control and maintain. Stones or mulch will require less maintenance, but keep in mind that some stones can be damaged or bleached by the sun, so just like mulch, they need to be replaced to keep from looking stale.
Consider using irrigation. You might be surprised what a big difference a good irrigation system can make in the health of the landscape around your sign. It’s fairly common for signage to be located in an area of the property that receives lots of direct sunlight, where there are many plants competing for water. Irrigation will help make sure all of your plants are getting the water they need, and also that they aren’t being overwatered. Smart irrigation systems can even automate the entire process.
Few features of your property are more important than your organization’s signage. The landscaping around this area is worth paying special attention to, as it can not only make your organization look vibrant and healthy, but it can also attract people’s eyes who may have never noticed you before. Contact us today if you’re looking to spruce up the landscaping around your outdoor signage—our team is ready to help.
