Mediterranean gardens are very popular right now in some of the warmer parts of the United States and they are easy to have built by a professional garden company or to build yourself. It depends on your budgetary restrictions and what your taste is and how much time and effort you are willing to put into making your backyard a Mediterranean paradise.

The Mediterranean influences come from Italy, France, Spain and several other coastal places where the climate is dry and hot enough for various plant life. California is another Mediterranean area in which people have large Mediterranean gardens packed with olives, lavender, citrus and many other plants and flowers found through out the Mediterranean regions.

And the Mediterranean gardens are not only about the plants, although they play a major part in the design, it's also about the structure of the space. If you have an archway made of brick leading into the garden, this would be a wonderful place to have growing vines and flowers that are native to the Mediterranean area. There are fountains and pathways, walkways, statues and trees all covered with Mediterranean vegetation and rich, thick plant life and flowers. The smell of citrus and olives in addition to the wonderful fragrant flowers make the garden inviting to everyone, perfect for entertaining or just relaxing after a long, hard day.

If you have a pool or a pond or even a fountain, you can build up against it because the Mediterranean flowers and vegetation grows wild near the water for its dry climate needs water to survive. Building up a wall around the pool or pond then planting beautiful flowers that hang down over the mismatched brick wall will bring out the Mediterranean feel for the area in your garden. Building an archway will remind people of the olden places of Italy or Spain in which there are arched walkways every few feet.

If you can not hire a professional garden company to make your Mediterranean garden, then you can look through books at the library or countless sites on the Internet that will give you clean, step by step instructions on how to build a Mediterranean garden by yourself. And you will get exactly what you want in your garden. You will need some patience and a lot of hard work, but it can be done.

If you do hire a garden specialist, make sure you check out their references to be sure their former customers are happy ones. Then ask to see a 'floor plan' before they begin their work. You want to know what it will look like before they begin digging and building. Make sure they understand the difference between a Mediterranean garden and a regular flower garden or vegetable garden because you want what you pay for and you want to get what you want.