landscaping

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The work of improving an area of land by adding plants, shaping the ground, and arranging outdoor features.

   Professional landscaping can raise the value of a property considerably.

   The city budgeted thousands of dollars for landscaping along the new highway.

   Similargardening

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An area of land that has been improved with features such as trees, gardens, and leveled ground.

   The mansion's landscaping included fountains, hedges, and winding stone paths.

   Construction equipment crushed much of the landscaping near the entrance.

   Similargrounds, gardens

   Note

   The finished result rather than the labor: what a visitor walks through, not what a crew does. It is usually uncountable (the landscaping, some landscaping), though the plural landscapings does occur. The same spelling also names the work itself, and context tells them apart. Landscaping that is crushed, admired or walked through is this sense. Landscaping that is paid for or budgeted is the other.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle of landscape.

   Crews were landscaping the corporate campus throughout the spring.

   She enjoys landscaping her garden on quiet weekends.

   Note

   The working part of the verb landscape, "to create or maintain a landscape." In progressive tenses it follows be (crews were landscaping the campus). As a gerund it keeps a direct object (enjoys landscaping her garden). That object is the quickest test against the noun for the work, which needs of instead: the landscaping of the garden. The verb draws on the land sense of landscape, never the painting one.

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