This Guide To Landscaping Will Make You An Expert

Welcome back to the third chapter of the How to Build guide! Today we will be talking about landscaping. This guide also has a video companion, which you can find here: http://youtu.be/HC1w-CBcd0s

We start out with a little bit of forest. I’ve already gotten rid of most of the trees, but we still have a lot of work to do.

The first thing that we’re going to do is get rid of the landscape. This may seem to be a strange thing to do while landscaping, but it is quite useful. It allows you to have a blank slate to build on top of, which gives you more freedom with the landscape itself and whatever build you put on top of it.

The next step in setting up your landscape is getting the terrain itself down. The method I will be using here is contour lines, as they are relatively standard for mapping height. I used white wool for visibility.

Once you have the contour lines all laid out, you can fill in the rest. Since this area is a forest, I used grass for the top, and occasionally used stone in steeper areas.

Filling in the whole area can be extremely tedious, so you might want to leave it hollow. However, you’ll want to make it so that mobs don’t spawn (if you’re in survival), so make sure to light it up, or lay down half slabs.

For the build, we’re simply going to put a basic log cabin. It’s not too big or pretty, since it’s not the main focus of the guide, but it gets the job done.

To start off, we’re going to add some basic niceties to the house. These are parts of landscaping, as they are outside of the house. On the left is just a flower box, using podzol surrounded by trapdoors. On the right is another simple garden, using the same components.

A useful part of larger landscaping projects is paths, to provide a walkway and also to split up the area. For this particular area, I used cobblestone and gravel, to enforce the natural feel. For more refined builds, you can use smoother blocks, and have a more consistent path.

Trees are an extremely important part of landscapes, as they’re one of the most common plants in real life, and in Minecraft as well. Minecraft has default trees, but if you really want to enhance your landscape, you’ll want to make your own.

The first part of to building the tree is laying out the trunk. You’re going to want to have a main trunk, which is wide and in the middle, and then branches that come out of it. In this picture, the tree is overhanging, so the branches hang. When adding leaves, it’s a matter of taste, but a good place to start is covering all of the branches with leaf blocks, and starting from there.

Bushes are another big part of landscape design, and can be used in more ways than one.

The first main use of bushes is to divide up the landscaped area. This can be useful along the edge of pathways, such as is shown to the left. They can also be used for pure decoration, as shown by the mini-trees on the right.

Bushes can also be used to show when an area is overgrown, such as this area right by the overhanging tree. This is generally accomplished by randomly placing leaves in a certain area, with the occasional double tall grass thrown around.

Water can be a bit finicky at times, but it’s a great way to add to the atmosphere of a general area.

Every river needs a source, and a waterfall is a good place to start. Since this is a relatively small-scale area, this is a pretty small waterfall, but it can be as big as you want. The situation is the same with the pond. I also put podzol around the side to look like wet dirt, and tilled soil can be used to reach that effect as well.

From the little pond, we made a river. The river is another thing that is good at splitting the terrain into sections. Like the pond, it is also quite small, but it gets the job done. There is also a bridge so that the path can go over it.

The next part that we’re going to do is some more separation. If you haven’t noticed by now, separation is crucial in larger-scale builds, especially landscaping, as it allows for easier building and more organization. Here, we just use some fences to get the job done.

Yes, there is furniture for outside, too. However, it’s not quite the same as the furniture that we talked about in the last chapter. Outdoors furniture is generally larger, and more natural. For example, we have a picnic table in the background, a swing set in the middle, and a picnic blanket in the bottom left.

The amount of trees/bushes that we added in pervious was not satisfying, so I added some smaller trees, as well as some gardens, which are a good way to add color while still looking natural.

If you are in a survival world, you’re going to need to add lights if you want to keep monsters away. A weaker player would just use torches, but not you! Lampposts are a much nicer way to add lighting, as you can see in this image. These are just glowstone covered in trapdoors on top of fences, but you can come up with your own designs, or find others. Also, if you’re in survival, you might want a bit more light than this, as this is just for atmosphere.

The last step in landscaping is using bonemeal. However, you don’t want to overdo it, as too much grass and flowers can get very busy, and even a bit ugly. The way I did this was going over the whole area, and then breaking grass where I felt it got too dense.

This is only the third chapter, and I think I’ve got a few more in me. My name is Kaephis, and you can check out my Youtube channel here: (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSu6wsDF3d6C6b35GMEpT1g) if you want to see some more of my stuff. I’m hoping that everyone learned something from this, and most of all, thanks for reading!