Some general things about the front yard, 1) One of functions of any landscape is to direct a person's attention to a desired point. 2) In the front, that pt. is usually the front door. To accomplish this: us tall plants at each corner and generally decreasing in height toward the door. 3) Make the beds flow using curves. One method and very functional later on, is to use your lawn mower to shape the curves. If you can accomplish this without having to turn the mower, you have a practical and functional design. 4) Move your walkway from the driveway at the corner of the house to the center of drive and curve it to the door. Now you have two planting area: one on each side of the walk. 5) Do not use any plants with sharp surfaces; like roses, barberries, and yuccas. Sharp edged plants present a hostile feeling where as mums present a soft warm feeling. Got to go now, but will comment later about the backyard.

Straight lines aren't necessarily bad. It does seem that your beds are quite narrow, and by widening them, you could allow for more freedom with the planting. Roses are great, but having only roses puts a lot of pressure on them to perform in all respects. They generally aren't regarded as plants with best year-round interest.

I would hesitate adding a central island. Your front yard is not very large; having beds deep enough for an effective cottage garden look would leave even less space available. An option is to get rid of the lawn completely, but it is not necessarily the best solution.

I would not advocate moving the pathway to create an additional planting bed. The front door is located flush to the right - having the front path curve away then back to the door would be redundant and wouldn't afford a decent planting area. What I might suggest would be to enlarge either the path or the patio under the overhang so it does not seem so claustrophobic.

Finally, I would avoid any standardized solutions. As stated many times before, "it depends." It is common to come across simplified suggestions, but given that every situation is unique, you cannot expect a generic solution to also be effective.

- Audric

I'm back. The backyard is yours to be creative. I like the area by the BQ and shade areas. I suggest you round out the corner where beds meet. I suggest you use trees/large shrubs to block the view of the homes on each side. You seem to have done that in the shade area. The slope would be great with locally adaptable plants. Google your state Cooperative Extension Service which should have a list of useful plants and descriptions. Great free knowledgeable source.

My favorite way to get great curb appeal is with a huge container. Load it with annuals!

Your front yard needs a focal point. This could be a large urn by the front door or maybe one outstanding plant. Grefsham Spirea is one example for Zone 4.

It might help, also, if you layered your plantings a bit more. Throw some curves in there and consider where your eye is drawn. Standing across the street to view your yard is a great first step!

Here is a link that might be useful: Landscape Design Tips

The word that comes to mind when I look at your pictures is "fussy." I think you have done a lot of work and that the close-up vignettes all look lovely, but for my eye you would draw better lines to start with from a big picture perspective, where all the little details don't carry any weight and visually compete with each other too -and are dwarfed by the house. That's also why more cottage is the last thing that I would want to see here - but obviously it's your house to follow your preferences. But from an outsider's view, I'd like to see plants that provide some bone structure, and beds that are wide enough to carry them.

Let us know how all this is striking you, and perhaps others will round out the dialogue.

KarinL

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for all your tips, I am new to gardening so please bare with. Karin, you really nailed it for me. I feel like my house dwarfs anything I have done. I take a step back and I don't see a lovely garden, I see a house and some nice plants. Can you go into what you mean about drawing better lines? I am not happy with my beds and am all for expanding those out. I cannot expand the porch area because that would deal with concrete, I can however work with the lawn and bed designs. Although I am inspired by the cottage garden, it is and inspiration that needs to fit with what I have. I like the idea of making the lawn and oval, but am somewhat at a loss with what was being suggested as far as the walk way. I get the idea of adding layers, I don't have any trees, or shrubs and it seems like that would be important in adding depth. I love my roses, but they are not what I want as the focal point. I want them to work in cohesion with the rest of the garden. I do struggle with the porch area, and how my door is not centered, but rather to the right. I would love a focal point, but again I am not sure how to achieve that....
Thanks for the ideas, please keep them coming!
Christina

I will go out on a big limb and say the front yard plantings need more structure, more boldness, and more unity. I think that is akin to what karinl is saying as well (pardon me if not).

laag is the unity king, and so I will get into trouble with it by myself, but since the front of your home has a variety of different backgrounds--the wall, the inset porch, including the little fence, the driveway with garage viewed beyond-- those backgrounds themselves do not tie anything together, and so something in the garden itself has to--the choice of shrubs, or a strong edging planting, or something.

Then, the fine-leaved plants disappear into the current background, and the ones you have now don't have much shape, so to me it all seems to disappear. So some kind of small tree or shrub with a trunk, or some larger-leaved plants, might give some oomph. Some of these would need to be set farther away from the house and driveway--the narrow beds hugging those edges contributes to the problem of not having the room for something with some mass or visual oomph to it.

Or, as in the container suggestion, there could be a way to get this kind of structure in a non-plant material, and that might even work better.

That said, it isn't necessary or even desirable for the plantings to all be continuous from the L edge (as viewed from the front) across and down the driveway edge. It might actually be better to think of having separate planting pockets in 2-3 areas in which you can design for the height and depth of the plantings that look best at that part of the house; then you would either tie them together with a low groundcover, or mulch, or potentially even the lawn connecting them. (To me, it's not always wise to tell someone that their plantings have to be one big sweep, because for some people that will create maintenance issues of large areas to mulch and to weed, compared with the simpler process of mowing the lawn, as long the way the beds are edged does not itself create more maintenance, or the lawn invade more, or something. Because otherwise, it may be too hard for you to plant fully in that whole area in a way that is affordable and looks good. In fact, I'm not sure that planting along the edge of the driveway does much of what you need from a front-yard standpoint--except that it's a fine way to grow more flowers and plants--something that I can sympathize with.

Since you naturally want to try to use plants you already have, an example, I think, could include that instead of having narrow rows of roses all along the way, you might use several in a mass planting.

Someone else here will really have to help me more with these concepts. Because one thing I am saying is that it lacks unity, and at the same time I am saying that I don't think you can accomplish a good thing by planting just a row of homogeneous little shrubs all along those edges. I'm not able to combine these ideas into a "do this" instruction, however.

Don't despair--clearly you are getting out there and arranging and planting and learning about what you like and don't like.

Thank heavens there is more than one of us here, as Frankie has come up with the words structure, boldness, unity. The one place I see this is in the photo you have labelled backyard walk, where the sweep of the walkway, defined by a clear and nicely shaped edge, jumps to the eye. Even if/when you fill this area with plants, its overall shape, of both the walk and the beds, will be clear. That is what I see as missing from the front.

I get what you mean about being restricted from working with concrete, but there is a way around this, and that is that other people work with concrete and sell it in finished shapes... that is to say, you can buy bricks, slabs, rounds, and even blocks in almost any form or size. It may not meet the "close-up" test to put, say, a row of 12" x 12" pavers alongside your present walkway, but from a curb appeal and spatial standpoint it can make a huge difference and be a cheap way to test out your plan before you do something like hire a contractor.

And just rereading Frankie's post, I am struck by the idea of removing the bed along the driveway. I can't flip back to your photo now, but one thing that does catch my attention is that I can't actually see how one gets to your house. Removing that bed might just give a clearer view of your walkway.

There may indeed be many other pleasing shapes of beds that may work better. We had some old discussions here on the forum about a syndrome someone dubbed "perimeteritis" and we do all have an instinct, it seems to put beds around the edges of things. Imagine that you were designing from scratch - try sketching some alternative bed layouts.

The plantings definitely can also be beefed up, so to speak, but I think the layout should be considered first.

KarinL

Wow, I am overwhelmed but I am loving all the input. I have noticed in many pictures there is usually a defined walkway, which I don't have. When someone drives up they have to walk up the driveway and that takes them to my porch. Are you suggesting that I create a walkway with my lawn? If so how, I or rather where? Also what should I do with the parkway? Should I plant a tree, and some shrubs?
I did toy with the idea of removing the side bed, but when I talked to my gardener he said the new sod would be a big contrast to what we have.
Okay, my little one is waking up... thanks!

It's hard to describe exactly how to process the "big picture" task and come up with a solution. I think you'll get different ways of approaching that task from different people on this forum, some of which may strike a chord for you and some not, since we all interact with the world and learn differently. So I'll take a stab at it and describe some techniques I tried.

From the looks of things, you love to garden and love plants. So I see the borders of everything in your yard decked out in lovely plants. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not "landscaping" so to speak. With landscaping, you need to take into account the needs you have for your yard, and how they will fit together. You have to think of big structural elements and their function. Even think of different "rooms" with different purposes. For example, the yard in the front of your house you may want to serve as a welcoming entrance, so a smooth traffic flow from the street and driveway to the front door is one need. Blocking noise and providing privacy for your home may be another. And complimenting and highlighting your home's front face might be another and the view out the window yet another. With that set of criteria, then you can think about what kind of structures and beds will fill those needs. Think about the bones--paths, trees, garden beds, effects and shapes--not what plants to plant. For example, a path is needed here, a screen here, something to highlight the house's color here, something to soften an edge here, something to draw the eye towards the front door there. You can sketch this out on paper, and you can also do it in a photo-sketching computer program. Take those photos of your front yard and either draw on them by hand with colored markers, or by computer, big features and shapes. Worry about the plants that fit those design elements later. You can also play around with color that way.

Now this last part is just my .02. If I lived where you lived, my top priority would be to put up a mixed shrub border along the back part of the property, to give privacy and to have something nice to look at. I'd also want some trees to shade the house, if possible.

Also, I think your house and yard look very nice already, you've done a lot of work on those gardens and they look delightful. I don't think you need a lot of changes, just a few big, bolder more definitive ones.