14 Best Pool Landscaping Ideas (2024)

Picking out features or plants for landscaping a pool should take a decent amount of research, time and consideration. It’s not as easy as setting up a pool landscaping design and picking out what you think will look good next to your pool.

Some plants or trees can shed into the pool to create a huge headache. Others have spines or thorns that can pick you as you go by. Some plants have fast growth or invasive roots, and this isn’t good to include in your landscaping ideas for pools. The following tips will help you make the best choices.

14 Landscaping Ideas for Pools

No matter if you’re going to be landscaping above-ground or inground pools, start with research. Flower and fruit-bearing trees may look wonderful, but they may also drop needles, leaves, nuts, flowers or fruits into your pool. Fruit or flowers means you’ll have extra work to deal with when it comes to your pool cleaning system.

1. Avoid Thorny Plants

Never play the game of thorns around your pool. Exposed skin and stickers or thorns don’t mix well, and it can quickly end your pool fun. Beautiful roses have stickers or thorns, as do barberry, bougainvillea, luscious blackberry bushes and pyracantha. Add succulents and cactus to the mix. Can you imagine your child playing in the pool and accidentally falling into a rose bush?

2. Choose Low-Maintenance Plants

Swimming pool landscapers work hard to enhance the area directly around your swimming pool while helping to set a mood. You could create an oasis or island theme with the right pool landscaping design in Emerald. You don’t want to dedicate a lot of time fertilizing or trimming your poolscaping, and this goes double if the area is difficult to access. Keep it simple with low-maintenance plants. They’ll allow you to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

3. Beware ofInvasive Roots

When you’re landscaping an inground pool, you really have to be careful of plants with invasive roots. These roots can grow very rapidly and damage your pool’s structure, the plumbing system or the surrounding area. Avoid evergreen figs, Camphor laurel, weeping willows, poplar trees, Liquidambar, jasmine, bog sage and Australian indigo in your pool landscaping design.

4. Consider Size

Adopting smaller plants is a better philosophy when you’re landscaping a pool. Try to find plants in six-pack, four-ounce or one-gallon containers at the largest. However, be aware that just because a plant starts out in a small pot doesn’t mean that it’ll necessarily stay that little. Check the label before you buy anything to find the mature size. By knowing what you’re getting, you can lay out several landscaping ideas for pool and pick the one that works best with your space.

5. Set up a Harmonizing Walkway

Do you think you should restrict walkways to your front entrance? If so, think again. Laying out some pretty stones between your pool area and deck is like rolling out a red carpet for this area. Including a backyard walkway in your pool landscaping design can link two halves of a garden together for a continuous, harmonious feel and look. You could set up a nice trail of individual stones, faux wood picks or choose a flagstone-inspired design.

6. Create a Spa-Like Feel

If you’re a minimalist at heart, get larger patio slabs and use them to create a spa-like feel for your pool landscaping. You can pick out a single shade and use them around the entire design, or you can create a zen-esque pattern with two or more complementary colours. It doesn’t matter if you pick out classic concrete, slate, smooth or a textured slab, your hardscape will help radiate relaxation and calm.

7. Water Features

For landscaping inground pools, you can easily help create a larger-than-life impression by adding an eye-catching water feature. You could install a sleek fountain inside your inground pool or at the very edge and have the water tumble over into a basin. Water walls are another tasteful touch, and they release a light water cascade from the side of the pool into the water.

8. Incorporate Sweet Scents

Nature has a lot of sweet scents floating about, and you can plant several sweet-smelling flowers around the garden and pool. This will heighten your pool landscaping by engaging your sense of smell. Gardenia, honeysuckle and plumeria are all great choices. Maybe you want to add some lavender. Not only will you get a gorgeous floral scent, but it also keeps pesky mosquitoes away.

9. Lighting

It’s possible to incorporate lighting right into the pool itself, but you can also add it around your pool by adding it to your pool landscaping design in Gladstone. The correct lighting is an affordable and simple way to make your pool area, patio or deck shine, and it can also help make the area safer after dusk. At night, lighting gives you the ability to have a dreamier swim under a blanket of stars.

10. Material Mixes

One of the nice things about landscaping a pool is you get the freedom to mix synthetic and natural textures. You could incorporate landscaping stone around your pool that allows grass to come up between the joint spaces, or you could design a checkered layout of stone and grass. Not only is this eye-catching and unique, but it’s very balanced and symmetrical. It works exceptionally well for landscaping inground pools, but you could also create a fun walkway up to your above ground pool using material mixes.

11. Design for the Space

If you’re short on space, a Little Pool is a great way to keep the pool as the focal point of the yard without running out of space. You can choose from the Relax line, plunge pools, lap pools and the Refresh pool range. They have smaller profiles than traditional above or inground pools, and this allows your swimming pool landscapers to create a beautiful area that flows from one point to the next without being too crowded or breaking Australian safety standards.

12. Add Privacy with Shrubs

Shrubs give you the ability to transport yourself to a luxurious retreat without ever having to leave your yard. Landscaping a pool with bushes, shrubs or plants that grow lower to the ground will help you create a resort feel anywhere you are in Queensland. Think gold thread cypress, sedge, forsythia or barberry. There’s a shrub that will do well in every climate, and all you need to do is a little research. To enhance your pool landscaping even more, replace some or all of the grassy areas by the pool with pebbles, rocks or cobblestone pavers.

13. Don’t Forget the Firepit

Maybe you want a less mechanical source of light for your pool, or you plan to entertain a lot. Adding a firepit to your pool landscaping design gives you an active source of light that is a gorgeous accent piece. It illuminates your area, catches your guests’ attention and keeps everyone warm when they come out of the water. No matter what time of year it is, incorporating a firepit by your pool gives you the perfect ambiance to sit back, warm up and relax.

14. Add Accent Plants

You most likely have a plant or two in your backyard already, but you can add a few more to liven up the area directly around your above or inground pool. They’ll add vibrant colours and lush textures that give you a very peaceful feel. You want full sun plants that don’t lose a lot of leaves or debris. Try to add a few potted aloe vera plants, red justicia or octopus agave.

Pool Landscaping Gallery

Have a look at these different landscaping styles for Compass fibreglass pools and get inspired for your own pool landscaping project.