Here's a pic of the house from almost the street. Please disregard the mess that is currently there. we are plumbing for a fountain for the near future. That area will eventually be a courtyard.

Here is a link that might be useful: our house

I added some additional pictures. I appreciate all feedback. I am brand new to this and need all the help I can get. Thanks!

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.ritzpix.com/net/Albums/ListImages.aspx?a=E2423CA9CE377645A23EF5165944135F686DF49944120CF79093C57AB6D6B55C

Cmw, you are going to have so much fun! For some reason, the house gives me a mediterranean feeling. I do think you need some height near the left corner. Something that has twisted, gnarly trunks would be nice. My first thought was something like an olive tree, but as one (former) Pennsylvanian to another, I don't suppose that is practical. I don't know enough to to give you alternatives, but I will research for a day or two and try to come up with something. Cynthia

I have been thinking...and hoping others with more knowledge than I would chime in...anyway, I like the idea of a holly at the left. We have an old holly that was here when we moved in, so I don't know exactly what it is, but it is about 30 feet high and more open than most hollies. I think something similar would complement your house. I also agree that something in front of your gutter would improve that area. How about a flowering tree? If you can set it out from the house far enough to give it room to grow, a dogwood would be lovely. You could also put another dogwood further out to the left and slightly in front of the holly. It would probably be a good idea to stand in the spot from which you took the picture and do some 'creative staring,' so you can be sure the two areas (foundation and courtyard) work together. You may want to take a chair out there and relax with your favorite beverage while you let visions inspire you! It is nice to have some evergreens, but not necessary if you want other plants. With your shrubs, just don't have one row around the perimeter of your house. You seem to have a good sense of varying heights and grouping plants rather than lining them up right against the house. Vary textures and leaf shapes as well. Take your time. Your house is lovely and will be even better with every year. Please post pictures as you go. Can't wait to see what you decide to do! Cynthia

cmw, You might want to try reposting in another forum. The Trees forum or the Shrubs forum seem to be more active and I am sure you would get more responses! Cynthia

cmw, I can't tell how far your shrubs are from the house, but I wonder if you've left enough room. It's a good idea to allow an aisle of at least 12" between the house and the area the plant will occupy when it's mature. That allows room for air circulation which is good for the health of both the plants and the house; it also allows room for maintenance of both plants and house.

So (mature width/2) + at least 1' -- and that's how far the center of the young plant should be from the foundation.

I agree that you need something tall to overlap the left corner of the house. Unfortunately, I can't make recommendations about deer-resistance.

Questions about plant selection (which comes after all the design questions are addressed) do get a pretty mixed level of response here. The odd one will spark the interest of someone with the right zone experience, but some just don't. I always feel sorry to see it when they don't, but none of us (pro or hobbyist) is here to spend the day at the computer for free answering questions that don't interest us.

And speaking strictly for myself, I find foundation planting probably the least interesting part of landscape design, perhaps because I find a lot of common foundation shrubs to be pretty anonymous green blobs. While I totally see their utility as foundation plantings, when it comes to picking what type of green blob to use, I pretty much check out. If I were landscaping a house like this, I'd personally go for much more exciting specimen shrubs, and most of my attention would be away from the foundation.

Questions that involve second guessing a designer who is on site are also always awkward. Forum people - designers and hobbyists - can only work with the information the OP gives, while the onsite designer has a better sense of what is available, what the climate's like, what the site is like, what kind of gardener you are, and so on.

I think a comment that might help the OP out here is that first, plant selection is a matter of personal taste above all, and if you want weigela and spirea, then you should go ahead with that. If you are paying a designer, however, you might as well use the advice they give when it is solid, which the proposal to put an evergreen in there certainly is. I don't see why you can't do all three shrubs.

Second, plants can be moved and replaced, which is good because sometimes the only way you know if something will work is to put the things in the ground and give them a few years.

But I think the ultimate take-away message for perhaps this OP and other potential posters - and I mean this in the most positive sense! - is that sometimes, when a decision is really difficult, the truth is that it just doesn't matter that much. Usually when it really matters, your preferences will exert themselves. When you can't decide, it often just doesn't matter that much. And in this case, where Weigela and Spirea are both fairly shapeless shrubs whose main claim to fame is a brief period of bloom and that will be bare sticks, green blobs, or lumps under the snow the rest of the time, it just doesn't matter that much. So don't torment yourself, give yourself permission to make mistakes since they're so easy to fix, do what feels right to you now, and move on to the rest of your property and other things in life.

Questions about the yard as a whole might net more commentary than a question about foundation planting.

Oh, and the other thing is, if you aren't receiving copies of responses by email, some people just won't bother responding. It happens far too often that we get "drive-by posters" who post their question, get some good thoughtful responses that take a lot of time to compose, and then never show up again. It's annoying enough even if responses are being emailed, but if they aren't, we never know whether our advice gets to the person who asked.

Anyway, good luck!

KarinL

A lot of useful advice from Karin...

I just wanted to add one point about clicking the e-mail box. I'm not sure if it's just a problem for me or whether others find this too - I click that box but I don't get any e-mails! I've checked and the e-mail address on my account is a valid one so I'm not sure why it doesn't work. So, if my experience is anything to go by, clicking that box may have less meaning than one might think.

What's the deal with getting responses by email anyway? Had I initiated a topic, I'd much prefer opening up the forum to see responses - clutter up GW rather than my mailbox. LOL!

I guess I'm just not so single minded of purpose that I don't enjoy looking at all the threads that are posted - 99 times out of a hundred I have nothing to offer, which, in my case, often has nothing to do with interest in a topic.

Go for it, use what you like - there's no pat formula for foundation planting... ie. uprights flanking the entry (you've already got large urns under the lanters), followed by low plantings so as not to overgrow the windows, followed again by uprights at the corners. Jeez, the very foundation plantings I inherited! Predictable, but it works for me.

Plants are plants, they can be edited as need or whims dictate. Not like children that you can't send back if they don't turn out pretty enough or quite like you intended.

Thanks so much for the response. Believe it or not, I check this post like 8 times a day! I get so many emails that I try to limit them as much as possible. Thank you so much for the suggestions Cynthia, I appreciate you taking the time to think about my house!

Missing - I did plant at least 12 inches back. The beds are pretty deceiving but hopefully I left enough room.

KarinL - thank you for the response. I guess your right on the plant selection, might be better suited for another forum. I was thinking evergreens on the back, larger plants off the corner was more design oriented. I do have a quick question for you. I researched this post a lot on foundation planting prior to posting. I saw a number of your posts where you commented on foundation planting being the least interesting. I guess I'm confused on how to design the front of this house otherwise. Would you plant nothing but grass or groundcover? I would love to see any inspirational pics on landscaping that is interesting. We will have a lot going on in the front with the courtyard but I feel the house will look like it's floating almost with nothing around it. I am really new at this and it's my first house. We are trying to make it look great without making a ton of newbie mistakes and spending a lot of money redoing things. I do really, really appreciate all the feedback!!

Hmm, I didn't think I'd previously confessed that I find foundation planting uninteresting, but I have questioned many times whether a given house really needs foundation planting for the site to look good. I do think that yours probably does, especially with a courtyard in view. But my plant preferences would lean toward plants with more interesting shapes; the sculptural conifer cultivars, the twisted trunks of a contorted filbert, the pencil-thin hollies or the ones with tight foliage ('Mariesii' for instance), the spreading, the arching, the carpeting... and the odd green blob thrown in for good measure:-). Along the lines of what cyn427 suggested, I also tend to pick Rhodos with good foliage, since the bloom is so fleeting.

But it's hard to say that when most of the plants are already bought and planted.

In any case I'm glad to hear that you did read some old threads. There have been many different contributors here over the years who have/had some good stuff to contribute.

By the way, did you say which way your house faces?

KarinL
PS when I select email delivery I do get responses - but I have other glitches! And I think I'm just grumpy right now because of the other thread with 16 or so responses and not a peep back from the OP...

Thanks KarinL, in the spot in front of the gutters, I am definitely considering a sculpted evergreen/conifer. I have done a ton of research, in fact, I've spent more time on gardenweb than I have on my regular job :).

I am not 100% sure on what direction my house faces. the sun comes up right on our front door. Would this mean it faces east? Our house is in the sun the majority of the day. Thanks for all the help.

I will be back in the near future with help on how to lay out the courtyard. The house is not symetrical with the driveway, so it's going to be hard to find the 'right' spot for the fountain.

I appreciate everyone's input! thanks!

cmw, that sounds like your house faces east. You can also look at the satellite view of Google Maps, if they're recent enough to show your house. North is always at the top, so east is at the right side of your computer. [My county's web site has USGS map and satellite views, so I can also see where all the property lines are and what's down those long driveways!]

Shade trees are usually most effective placed on the south and west sides of the house. That doesn't mean you can't have trees in front of the house as well -- it's just that those won't help so much with your a/c bill.

I just wanted to say thanks to KarenL for her thoughtful posts. It helps much more than just the OP.

I double checked and my house faces southeast per the google map. Thanks for the tip missingtheobvious!