There are quite a few excellent resources available to help you get some ideas before meeting with a professional landscaper.

Let Nature Inspire Your Landscape
Great website that gives some wonderful ideas for incorporating nature into your landscape. The website has a nice variety of links to follow and beautiful, vivid pictures with explanations of what you are seeing and why. If you are interested in having your landscaper keep as much of the natural landscape as possible, this is a truly inspirational site to visit.

23 small yard design solutions
Sunset is most familiar to people planning landscapes because of the book series that the company produces. The website gives some interesting ideas for dealing with cramped spaces such as patios. You will pick some great ideas that could easily be altered to fit larger spaces or as a jumping off point for your landscaper to work from.

Landscape Design Inspiration
This page offers a vast array of fabulous ideas for landscaping. You will find ideas ranging from outdoor kitchens to modern patios to water features. This is a good place to find ideas and can lead you to some truly great sites for further inspiration. You will walk away with stunning concepts to present to your landscaper.

Garden Plans
Better Homes and Gardens offers tips, solutions, plans, and videos to help turn your yard into a dream world. You will discover terrariums, butterfly gardens, rock gardens, and so much more. This is one of those sites you could browse through for hours. If an oasis is what you want to create, you will find many ways to have your landscaper create it for you.

3 Ways to Design a Formal Garden
The clean, classic lines of a formal style garden never go out of style. This page offers up some layouts that just might ring a creative bell. You could easily choose one to present to your landscaper combined with a list of features you want to incorporate.

28 Front Yard and Backyard Landscaping Ideas
Your backyard is your area to relax and unwind and the front yard is what others see when they approach your house. Yet, shouldn’t both areas represent you? This site offers so much in the way of ideas from across the country. Your landscaper will be impressed with the array of things you can come up just by going through the slideshow.

This is just a small sampling of the resources that await you as you begin the adventure of planning your landscape. The landscaper you choose will have ideas of their own, but remember it is your space so don’t be afraid to explore some ideas. Get creative and become inspired by the wealth of information, pictures, and videos that are out there.