As usual, house is asymmetric so formal balance not called for anyway--most matching pairs used in home gardens out of place. I'd probably lay this lot out so that there is a curving lawn up the middle that you walked up to discover something interesting at the far end of (from the house), that was all or partly screened from view of the house by a small tree with a bank of shrubs beneath. Likewise the sides would have shrubs, with or without fencing to enclose it. (Probably with the type of planting I am visualizing you would want to fence the garden in so that unwanted visitors could not disappear into it from the sidewalk (after the shrubs and trees grew up enough to provide screening) and pee (or worse), steal plants or statues and so on.

I would also want to not have passers-by peering into the house, develop the garden accordingly. Otherwise, I would plant alot of small-growing and unusual plants all along the whole thing so that it could be viewed from the street by those interested in such things, leaving all of it open to view from the house (and those of neighboring houses) to discourage theft.

If you don't think theft and vandalism are a feature of your neighborhood, a parking strip alpine garden a couple of us made for a party living on a street corner lot in an old, posh neighborhood (the one B. and M. Gates lived in while the new Bellevue estate was being finished) was relieved of two clumps of fritillaries last year by an unknown party.

British gardening books sometimes show and discuss hypthetical or actual existing layouts for similar lots. Some districts there have many long, narrow residentials properties stacked in beside one another. Some of the plants they would use would be different, of course, but that is not the point of looking at such discussions anyway--you would pick up ideas for bed shapes, tree placement, hardscaping and so on.

Your house is charming! The long narrow front just happens to be similar to a long driveway border in my own yard that I just finished redesigning as an assignment for one of my design classes. My site is zone 6, full sun, sandy loam, so some of these plants may not work for you, but I'll share my design.

My house is an 1837 brick Georgian colonial with a cottage feel to it, and the driveway border is what's left of an old perennial border that I wanted to make more low-maintenance. Driveway is actually behind the house, and enters from the side of the corner lot. Not visible are a couple of downlights I added to throw a soft pool of light onto the plantings, and an uplight to highlight the bark and branches of the existing Heritage River Birch left of center.

I used Juniperus virginiana 'Grey Owl', 'Martha's Vineyard' Rose, 'Robert Chapman' Scotch Heather (Calluna), Pennisetum 'Hameln' and 'Teeny' Mugo Pine. I also underplanted with some spring bulbs.

There is a "before" picture in the upper right hand corner.

{{gwi:20904}}

I like the house.

How about a Medieval influenced "parterre" garden, with the area divided into formal or semiformal sections, with geometric arrangement of perennials and low shrubs. It's great for growing herbs too.

Here is a link that might be useful: mediaval parterre

I guess you have to strive every day to resist putting garden gnomes in that killer of a "once upon a time" house, eh? Such a neat place! What a fun challenge.

It's kind of hard to imagine how shaded it will get, since the trees are bare in your photo, but perhaps it's best that you're showing us just the "bones" of the place. There's not a lot of winter interest in the front yard, and being in zone 5/6 you need to think that way. Structure - not Versaille or anything, but some form of bones - will really make it magical. Where does snow fall off the roof?

You really only have a couple of choices for the 15' stretches. You can either have it all be one wide bed, or have a path through the middle of the 15' so you have two 5' to 6' beds on either side of the path. Since your sideyards have a bit more space, I can see doing a symmetrical path starting perpendicular from the door walk ending in little loop/culdesacs on either side. I'll try to draw it with ascii characters:
:________: The house front
( )------:------( ) The yard's path

For some reason the house front ascii isn't centering, but you get what I mean.
This would allow 200' of planting (is that too much for you?) and a path that gets you looking at the plants - a figure eight, but at least a way to circulate through your front yard.

The first thing that came to my mind looking at your photo in terms of plant choices was that such a whimsical house would look great with lots of interesting dwarf evergreens. There was one in FG last year called "pompom" that I thought of. Dwarf evergreens have such neat shapes, won't overwhelm the space, and will give you lots of structure and plenty of places to tuck other neat plants. They are formal because they don't get out of control, but aren't boring or obvious. Obviously the sunlight would be a factor, but you do have about 7 months of sun, right? :> At the real shady end, you could do a couple of clipped yews in some simple but fun shape, like two globes. They'd be just another fun evergreen at that point.

The plants you described as already living there seem very lovely and fairly small statured. If they lived in sections of the front beds surrounded by stronger structural elements, you could cluster a whole bunch of each thing (the hellebore will be easy, if they grow like mine!) in the pockets between bigger plants, and really pack a punch with each one of their effects.

Man, what fun. Yummy! One last thing - take a look at Bressingham gardens http://www.bressinghamgardens.com/ for some long bed inspiration, especially the items in the virtual tour around #21.

I've got a different angle. A path through the middle of the 15', creating two beds on each side would just exaggerate the breadth of the front yard. Instead, there should be a meandering path...not exactly a zig zag, but a more general swerve with interesting garden areas on each side. Use some taller/larger plants at the ends and shorter stuff toward the front entry. I'm not talking planting flat beds, but rather clusters of various things so that the meandering path really wouldn't be seen as a wiggle...you'd see the path disappearing into the next section.

Ron, why are you concerned about theft? Why is this house any different than any other house? That stuff happens everywhere (even to me, alas...last year's xmas was not merry).

It's a cute house. It's much easier to landscape for an architecturally interesting house than to try to create a garden and a sense of style for a house that is boring and just plaing ugly (ask me how I know). Have fun with your house!

I've taken the liberty of copying your text and link from the other post--it will make it easier for everyone:

Mad Nil's post over in the gallery:
Our house is very close to the street -- about 15 feet from the edge of the sidewalk to the outside wall of the house in front. However, the yard is wide: 100 feet from end to end. As you can see from the pictures, there is more yard on the sides, but I've been struggling for years with how to make the front yard look more interesting and how to break it up. The house faces east , so the sun starts at the end of the house by our neighbor (and the paperbark maple) and moves across the front during the morning and early afternoon. Big oaks behind the house and in the yard to the south mean the southern end of the yard doesn't get sun past about 2 pm.

I don't like formal, although I like things a little more tidy than pure cottage garden. The less grass (i.e. turf) the better; my goal is to get rid of it all.

A brief description -- the tree at the farthest north edge of the yard, hardly visible without its leaves, is a paperbark maple. I'm reasonably happy with that end of the yard. It's from about the north (right) edge of the house on that I'm stuck. You can see the star magnolia in bloom, and next to it the silly little mugo pine that I just stuck there, always intending to move it. The front bed behind the magnolia is 4-5' deep and has red roses, alchemilla, heuchera, hostas, helleborus foetidus, and some totally out of control anemonme japonica. To the other side of the front door the bed is a little less deep, and has yellow and white roses, tall daylilies, geraniums, coreopsis zagreb... At the far south end of the front yard is my vegetable garden, which gets closer and closer to the house every year as the neighbors' trees shade it more.

I don't have any suggestions yet--except that I would be tempted to elimnate the turf entirely. How well does grass grow where it exists?

melanie

Here is a link that might be useful:

Thanks, mjsee.

Grass would probably grow fine, if I took care of it. When we moved in 9 years ago I was determined that I'd eliminate almost all the grass and so let the dandelions and purslane and ground ivy take over. I didn't realize it would take me so long to get rid of *all* the grass; about half of it is left. I'd still like to get rid of it, but I may have to retire before I have enough time to do that.

Mad_nil
Roundup is great for doing a "start-over".

You can consider both your goal for the space and how to implement it. If you settle on some kind of general look and purpose, you might think about whether the size of the job overwhelms you. If so, your area, being a long narrow strip, might well lend itself to that incremental approach featured in the Fine Gardening publication--you do a section at a time, one or 2 per year, in spring, or one in spring and one in fall, over several years.

For example, let's say you decided on some kind of theme of a series of small ornamental trees underplanted with a few shrubs, perennials and bulbs. Or perhaps all low plantings of some evergreen shrubs, flowering shrubs and groundcovers or perennials. Once you decided on this general theme, you could break the planting area up into segments--10-20 feet or whatever--each being a "vignette" composed of your chosen plant forms that are in general repeated along the length of the strip. You work on your plan to finally decide exactly what trees/shrubs you would like to have and window-shop/catalog shop to see if prices & availability are good. Then you start installing sections. Kill grass on a segment and use some kind of temporary grass edging/barrier to separate it from the undeveloped area, improve soil, buy just the plants for that section, install. Mulch,water, weed and see how it is working and if that is cool, then next season, kill off next grass section and repeat.

The upside of this approach is that it is something you can do in manageable chunks of time & energy & $$, including the sometimes high early maintenance of a new planted area. The downside is that of course it isn't all done at once, you do some of each part of the job each time, and sections will mature at different times, and there are issues related to not being able to buy or order all of one particular plant at one time or make the most of bulk soil products or delivery. However, if you designed carefully, the "backbone" of this design might be that each section contains at least one or two specimens or masses of a repeating pattern of readily available plant material that you can usually find as healthy specimens in stock. Then each section could also have some variables--could be different shrubs, perennials or annuals in some kind of repeating color or form so that you can achieve both some variety for interest and also be flexible if certain plant material was not available one year, or just to see what is happiest in your location. If the "backbone" consists of items that often are available in different sizes and you are trying to stretch your $$, you could start with smaller specimens in your first section and if installing a final section or 2 a couple of years later, step up to larger specimen sizes so the sizes look caught up. For perennials and groundcovers you might be able to use divisions from one section to help fill in subsequent sections.

Just a thought.

Frankie,

Thanks -- that's a good idea. It's more or less what I've done -- that is, turning a little more turf into garden every year. What I've been missing, though, is the theme. I like the idea of various small ornamentals, and I have the paperbark maple and star magnolia to start with. I still get a little stuck with the narrow parts, though, since even with a small tree it seems like I have to put it about halfway back in the yard (something that has a 10-15' mature spread will hang over the sidewalk or bump into the house unless it's halfway between the sidewalk and the house). That means I end up with a line of trees across the front of the house. Am I being too careful about placement? Should I be more flexible about the distance I plant trees from the sidewalk or the wall of the house? Thanks.

I wouldn't put trees in front of the house. Off the ends, yes, but with only 15' of space, I'd stick with shrubs and perennials. Just my opinion.

Can you find dwarf trees, or naturally small species?

If you use a large shrub, you can prune it up to look like a small tree. Lilacs (the cheap, common, wonderful-smelling ones) will do this easily.