The ideal landscape provides your family with recreation, privacy, and pleasure — even as those needs change over time. What’s more, the landscape should — and will — add to your home’s value and its curb appeal in all seasons, especially fortunate at selling time. Success in home landscape design is certainly attainable for do-it-yourselfers, but there are some pitfalls that should be avoided if maximum satisfaction is to be achieved. A well-designed landscape is a pleasure to the owner, enhances a community, adds to the property’s resale value and limits environmental impact. Landscape design involves much more than placing trees, shrubs and other plants on the property. Here’s how to get started with your plans. Begin at square one, whether you seek to perform landscaping magic by transforming a new site or you are refreshing an established one. Starting at square one means that you first see what you have to work with. Look at your landscape as if through a giant magnifying glass — scrutinizing every detail. Then allow yourself to dream. Soon you’ll be conjuring up all sorts of ideas and sketching out some rough plans. Not all landscaping improves the appearance of a building. The work of an insensitive designer can subdue a building, conceal important features or contradict the architect’s intent. Good landscape design can significantly improve the building’s appearance by adding warmth and personality. It can also relate a building to its site and environment and give it the desired degree of dominance. Many home landscape designs evolve helter-skelter. A plant is planted somewhere in the yard simply because there is room for it there at the time. Ideally, it’s best to start from scratch, draw a plan for the whole yard, and stick to it. Short of that, try at least to sketch a rough plan for one large area of your yard, and put all your energy into implementing that plan this year.