Embrace a new landscape with eye-directing lines and vibrant landscape colors that will showcase your yard year-round. The quiet season is a good time to inspect and notice where you can create some additional attention-grabbing interest. Afterall, evergreens are not the only backbone of a steady color you can count for a winter landscape.

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We specialize in solid timber structures —such as pergolas, gazebos, pavilions, arbors, trellises, post and beam, trusses and more. It is a fast and easy way to ensure a year-round outdoor show of textural interest and sculptural beauty as well as the practical use of space. Plants and shrubs are also another way to introduce intensity and coloration —as is a hedge, piece of garden art, and lights.

Here are some ideas to start you on your way towards more colorful, life-enhancing surroundings —particularly suited to a winter landscape— for four delightful seasons.

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The Inferno model features integrated USB outlets; charge your smartphones, tablets, and other USB devices, while you watch movies on your outdoor TV that is plugged into one of the main electrical receptacles up top. Lighting gives warmth and creates a welcoming atmosphere in a snowy landscape.

Early American Essense: earth, dependable, security, calming, protective, cozy, friendship, nurturing, common sense, organic, healing, orderly, knowing, hearth, caring, stability, simplicity, orderly, protective, outdoors, conventional, elegance, fertility, practical, home, approachable, abundance, grounded, foundation, expressive of Thanksgiving.

Ebony is a powerful color and contrasts well with bright colors in landscape design on an outdoor shade structure. It is also a protective color that has a calm, magnetic, energetic strength to it that evokes a feeling of being grounded. To the Native American, black is a symbol of harmony and listening. Some of the words synonymously used to represent shades of ebony are: black, midnight, obsidian, jet black, ebony, ink, sable, onyx, raven, charcoal, and lampblack.

Some Native American tribes associate the color gray with friendship, a symbolic of dependability, security, and responsibility. In gemstones, the gray color properties are said to be a healing stone and improve the stability of relationships.

A timber frame outdoor shade structure finished in a Canyon Grey stain has a cooling and stabilizing effect when it is placed against more vibrant colors. In landscaping, gray is a reliable, conservative and composed, color.

The color of Beach Sand is the color of unbounded beaches and endless deserts; a hue evoking the sense of good health, sensibility, dependability, solitude, and order. Beach Sand is a natural color, the color of sand, wood, and stone. This wholesome tone has the warmth of brown combining the crisp coolness of white with undertones of warm and cool yellow variants.

Beach Sand Essense: Beach Sand is a practical, foundational color that is neutral, calm, and relaxing. invoking the feeling of honesty, loyalty, and sincerity. Beach Sand is friendly and welcoming, associated with grounding, home, healing, down-to-earth, comfort, warmth, and security.

The clear finish of Natural stain shows the beauty of the wood as nature designed it. Douglas-fir displays as a more yellow color while a wood such as Incense Cedar or Western Red Cedar has reddish to light brown hues.

Later, people, in general, used paint on the surfaces. Today, interest is revived in the colonial tradition of rustic finishes, and natural beauty of weathered wood.

Beyond the comeliness of wood and timbers exposed for aesthetic appeal, the life expectancy and unity with future potential coatings are influenced by the process of exposure to weather. Structures left unfinished has lasted for centuries.

The process of naturally exposing timbers to the weather modifies the molecular structure of the wood. Generally, within two months of being exposed to the sunlight, light woods will become darker and dark woods will become lighter. The progression of weathering is influenced by many factors, e.g. extent of exposure, the density of the material, the rate of growth, extractive and lignin content. The more exposure the faster the rate of weathering.

Although the beauty of naturally weathered wood can be pleasing, the initial changes to becoming a seasoned surface is a slow development with varying results.

Weathering through commercially prepared bleach is the perfect alternative. The stain is water base bleach with a silver-gray pigment finish that is allowed to soak for hours and then exposed to sunlight. There is no restraining of the timbers. The longer the timber basks in its environment, the more beautiful the timbers become.

Timber Frame arbors, cabanas, gazebos, pavilions, and pergolas can easily be installed in the winter. Most planting for color will have to be done in the Spring but now is a good time to plan it out for a more colorful landscape of trees, shrubs, berries, and flowers for next winter.