I don´t often write landscaping blog posts, not only are they a lot of work but Pinterest also keeps me pretty busy to allow regular blog posts, nevermind long babbling ones, of course i don´t claim to be any expert, but i do love landscaping and decorating in general, and that is probably the second thing that consumes most of my inworld time, the first one being standing afk at events in ridiculous outfits.

Culprit - Victorian Gazebo (available at this month´s edition of  FaMESHed and one of my favourite furniture shops, with amazing LI on all the items and some of the best texturing and use of colour i´ve seen)

Studio Skye - Skye River Bank Building Set ( love this set and is perfect for so many things from the simple use of the premade shapes that come in it to breaking down all individual pieces and resizing them to fit your terrain better, this one along with their beach set and a few other pieces by other creators is what i use to do basically every landscaping, be it in a forest ground, an actual stream or simply around sim edges, only two things i wish i had with it is a fading transparency option for the water prim, so i could do a smoother transition when my streams meets linden water, i used several smaller pieces with different levels of transparency for that, and the basic shading and texture maps, at least an outline of the rock/grass areas so i could customize the textures to my sim ground. But hey you can´t have it all. This set is still a must have especially if you use it in creative ways.)

Botanical – Sculpted Linden Trees (I love these, because i love things that make my life easier, and when something is well done and you suddenly get an update making it ever better, i´m in heaven. They are controlled by HUD to every imaginable seasonal state, and the new update makes them mod also, which for me is always the height of my Landscaping needs, and also allows me to do a little one of my tricks, also these are the one item i never kill script from, because seriously a whole sim of them sees no performance issues, and i´m constantly looking at script time.)

KIDD Grass Garden - Meadow Wild Flowers Wild Hedgrow ( i really love these and bought a bunch of packs to scatter around they look lovely around houses, along paths and riverbanks due to the long shape  i just wish they where mod cause then they would be perfect for flower boxes also with some resizing) Pampas Grass ( i bought recently a huge pack of these to put around the sim edges, they are menu controlled  and include several texture options, making them perfect to lay around beach edges and even river edges, and they come with the option of killing scripts)

Whenever someone asks me about how should i get started with my parcel/sim i always say, start with the bigger pieces and then scale down, that would mean you star with buildings, making sure if they have rezz boxes that you keep the boxes out so you can do slight adjustments if necessary, terrain height is important and might be changed to fit step 3.

My second thing to do is to figure out paths ( this for me is one of the most tedious things to do to be honest) where do you want people to walk to? Where do you want to walk too? simple paths along buildings and sorting corners take time and patience and are also deeply connected to step 3 which is terrain, are you using sl land alone? Can you use mesh pieces to make it 100% times better? Do you have access to terraforming? there are so many alternatives these days to regular LL terrain, let´s be honest the textures on them are of ridiculous poor quality, and with the offer of so many more textures on the marketplace and inworld, you can change them to fit any theme you like.

I personally love mesh pieces that give a terrain the realistic bumps it should have and i´m addicted to rocks, since i first came to sl, people in sl do not use enough rocks, and creators do not make enough rock formations. Rocks can also help a lot on merging step 2 with step 3, so that all your paths are accessible where you want them to be actual paths or branching out into more private areas.

Next after paths and buildings and basic terrain shapes are done we start landscaping with actual trees and bushes, remember again to always start from bigger to smaller adding really big trees to more open areas surrounding buildings with them using tress as a natural privacy screen, and breaking down slowly a big area into small intimate spaces.

By the way i mentioned a trick above, whilst crediting the Botanical Linden trees, a way to give your setting a more immersive look be it forest floor/town square or simply paths is to have a few leaves on the ground, it makes the space more full and realistic for me, especially when the leaves match the trees above our heads, what i usually do if the trees i´m using are copy ad mod, is to take one of the leaves prims flatten it down, resize, and then copy a few about the edges, with different changes to transparency and slight tinting, this can make wonders to an area.

Culprit- Beloved Chair and Endtable set also pillow and plate (FaMESHed)
{what next} -  Cornwall Daisies Planter and Newspaper Pile
C’est la vie ! - messy bag
Trompe Loeil – books
Ginetic - Assorted baked goods

Some people do not enjoy busy, crowed looks, and yet others like Neva Crystall simply make it into their trademark look i myself like to feel a place is being lived in and used, although when people are not around it does get a little of that abandoned vibe, like suddenly all the people ran away due to some mysterious catastrophe, so think about that when designing a space, animals and even funny bots can bring a place to life, along with balanced sound effects which a lot of people forget to  add to their sims, the singing birds, the flying gulls, the water fountain quietly splashing, and the dripping of water from a hole in the roof, random crowd buzzing sounds in an environment that should be busy with people or also random mechanical sounds that seem to come from far away, can do wonders to any space.

Ages ago when me and bf where working on our now gone space station we used to have sounds everywhere, from speakers making randomized announcements, to machinery working on background to people talking, this contributes so much to full immersion and is so often forgotten.

Another thing you might notice about decorating especially when you have mod and copy items and some knowledge of how simple building is done, is that you can basically tear apart every item and reuse it in a different way, i´m kinda like that which makes me a creators nightmare customer, i will take your item and break it and use in every imaginable way that i can, and the more versatility creators give me the more i love them.

My biggest advise when decorating any space is always use it, walk along those paths, sit on every chair, cam around every little pixel, go up walls, walk into the water, and i always do this myself because it has to be a usable space, your avatar has to be able to go up stairs, walk up a wall to enter a meadow, stroll along a beach and have a way to go back on the road, walk up to objects to use them, take your time to actually enjoy and use the spaces you create so that others can do it also.

Lighting, take your time to adjust your lighting, what i usually do is go to Develop/Render Metadata/Lights, this will show you all your light sources, that you can then adjust to the areas as you wish, i tend to keep it minimal myself, and prefer Lights with timers that follow the sim night/day cycle. And speaking of day cycles, pick a good windlight for your sim, either make your own or download one of the many available ones out there, make your place/parcel stand out, that can be set in region easily, and i usually use the sim controlled windlights when walking about, which means i will have them changed according to your picks.

Wearing:
Shape: mine
Skin: Izzie’s – Asia Skin Ginger Edition (Skin Fair)
Eyes: Izzie’s – Natural Mesh Eyes
Eyelashes: Maxi Gossamer - Eyelashes – Groomed
Hair: Tableau Vivant -  Hathaway hair (COLLABOR88)
Dress: ColdLogic - darcy.grapes
Jeans: Zaara - Classic jeans
Flats: Tee*fy – Arden Ballerina Flats (FaMESHed)

1st and 2sd poses by !Bang 3rd pose by aDORKable

Keep your sim/parcel resources in check a sim can be beautiful but if you are constantly crashy and laggy in it what use is there to beauty that can´t be admired? Keep some spare prims for silly stuff, Land Impact changed a lot over the last year. Smart relinking of mesh objects and even regular prims can have amazing results on LI in your sim/parcel, try it out (with copy/mod stuff at least) and experiment see how small meshes with under one LI can do wonders in prim saving when linked. Play with your objects, remember they are yours to torture and mess with, I´ve found over the course of my SL years you learn the best things when tearing stuff apart.

I guess this is it my first actual piece of advise in actual Landscaping, or maybe just a silly tl. dr. rant, like i said i am no expert, and rarely believe in rules (they are there after all to be broken), there are of course no rules at all in enjoying your SL, we each do it on our own way and time.

Do you have little tricks and tips on decorating and landscaping? Share it with me i would love to learn them.

That´s all for today folks, have a lovely weekend and i´ll see you all soon. Just remember this as one last advise, whatever you do  always remember to enjoy your space, it is after all why it´s there, to be enjoyed, and don´t forget to share it with others.