You know, it never occurred to me NOT to have a flower garden in my front yard. Of course, we had a blank slate, one crabapple tree and grass up to the foundation all the way around the house when we bought it, so there was no place to go but UP from there, LOL. The grass in our front yard has been vanishing in increments over the past 9 years. Now there's a nice deep mixed border down one side, and a narrow perennial border on the other (by the retaining wall dropping down to the driveway). The grass on either side of the centered-on-the-front-door walk is the same width - a little symmetry in an otherwise free-form yard. There are also deep beds right up against the front of the house, crammed full of flowers and a couple shrubs. As I've gotten older I've grown to care less and less what other people think about how I landscape my yard. So it's a front yard - why NOT enjoy a wide variety of plants there? My modest neighborhood is very diverse in respect to how the yards are used and landscaped/gardened. I suspect, though, that I would NOT "fit" in a planned development with restrictions on how/what I could plant. Grass is optional, variety is the spice of life, diversity is GOOD in the garden, and my pet obsession/hobby just happens to be in full public view. . . . I enjoy it when people out for a walk stop to look and stay to chat - it's a great way to meet people in the neighborhood. Laurel

My garden IS in the front yard, but I live way out in the country and my "front yard" is a couple of acres since the house sits back quite a distance from the road. Ever since we moved here, my whole goal has been to (slowly) remove bermuda bit by bit and replant the area with something more desirable....from fruit trees to veggies to ornamentals. Little by little I am succeeding in removing the hated bermuda grass. Depending on what your front yard is like, you may want to put up a fence, or plant a barrier of shrubs to keep passers-by from helping themselves to your fruit, nuts (if you plant nut trees) and veggies. Everyone I know who has a garden out front or even in a side yard close to a roadway has had some problems from time to time with "theft" of produce from the garden. To make my highly visible front yard garden as attractive as possible, I have a cottage style mixed border of flowers and herbs around the perimeter of the serious veggie garden. I also companion plant every row of veggies with flowers and herbs, and I mulch heavily and weed religiously so that it always looks really lovely. One way to make a front-yard garden beautiful is to carefully choose colorful plants. For example, if you're going to grow eggplant, don't just grow the standard green plant with dark purple fruit. You can grow eggplants that produce fruit in shades of white, violet, purple, green and orange. There's even some streaked, bi-colored eggplant too. For greens, you can grow Swiss Chard in several colors. Both the "Bright Lights" and "Neon Lights" Swiss Chard are a mix of extremely colorful plants. Lettuce and mesclum both come in many shades of green and dark red. You can have a lot of fun being creative with mixing the colors. One of my "old farmer" neighbors was visiting the other day and he commented on some gorgous round globes of flowers I had planted in a border with four o'clocks. When he asked what they were, I said "Onions--they've been there several years". He just laughed and said "Only you would put onions in your flower beds". I laughed and agreed with him. After all, I put flowers in my onion beds, so why not put onions in the flower beds too. When I first started mixing together veggies, herbs and flowers in my vegetable garden, I read and thoroughly enjoyed several of Rosalind Creasy's books. I'll link something about them below. My favorite (although I like them all) was called The Edible Rainbow Garden. Some of the standard garden plants that look gorgeous in a front yard garden include all kinds of sweet, hot and ornamental peppers (esp. the ornamental peppers with purplish-black foliage), eggplant, tomatoes in a whole rainbow of colors, Swiss Chard, mesclun mixes, lettuce and other greens, kale (green, black and red varieties abound), okra (esp. the red ones and the dwarf ones), black-eyed peas (the vines and flowers both are lovely, onions, potatoes (if healthy, the plants are beautiful and they flower too), etc. Corn is iffy in the front yard garden. It looks great while it is green and growing, but not so wonderful once you've harvested the ears of corn and the plants are browning. I usually companion plant pole beans and they climb the stalks and hide the ugly brown stalks while also producing a great crop of beans. I like to grow "stuff" on the fence that surrounds the garden, including morning glories, moonvine flowers, black-eyed susan vine, cypress vine, purple hyacinth beans, and (of course) regular pole beans and southern peas. And, because I am who I am, I always stick a few veggies into the mixed tree, shrub and perennial borders that surround the house too. So, when you're looking at the flowers, you may or may not realize that there's beans, tomatoes, peppers and sweet potatoes in those beds too. I know some people love the lawns, but to me a lawn is pretty much useless. It is a high-maintenance monoculture that does not sustain much life other than itself (and grubs). I'd much rather devote space to fruit, nuts, veggies and herbs that are useful in so many ways AND which support a healthy insect population (many insects are beneficial) as well as a thriving community of all kinds of birds, reptiles, amphibians, butterlies and moths, rabbits, etc. Don't overlook herbs. There are many, many herbs that you can grow and use not only for culinary purposes, but in many other ways....flower arrangements and wreaths, in lotions, cleaning 'potions', salves, teas, etc. Here's a few of the herbs I grow every year: garlic, chives, chamomile, several types of basil, lemon balm, lemon verbena, sage, oregano, fennel, pineapple sage, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, borage, parsley and cilantro. Finally, don't forget edible flowers! Nasturtiums are my favorite edible flower, but sugared violets look lovely on desserts too. One key to keeping your front yard garden especially attractive is to continually succession plant new crops to replace those that are finishing. For example, when my broccoli is harvested from Bed #1 next week, bush beans will go into that "empty space". Then, when the broccoli comes out of Bed #2 in about 2 to 3 weeks, black-eyed peas will go in there. A fully planted and well-maintained front-yard garden will be the envy of the neighborhood and it will give you lots of produce as well. One year I planted a "rainbow garden" in which every raised bed was a color of the rainbow (with the colors in the same order as they are in the rainbow). It was so much fun that I did it for three years in a row. The biggest challenge was the "green bed", but I found lots of green-fruited veggies (green peppers, green eggplant and green-when-ripe tomatoes, green okra) green-leaved veggies (chard, lettuce, cabbage), and even flowers with green blossoms (sunflowers, zinnias, amaranths and Irish bells). You can have a whole lot of fun with a front-yard garden.....MUCH more fun than you'll ever have with a bermuda lawn. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Rosalind Creasy Books

We haven't had problems with sawfly on the hibiscuses (it's becoming a problem on Solomon's Seal though....). Japanese Beetles occasionally munch on them, but - so far at least! - aren't as bad as they were on the big white rose that used to grow in that area. We got rid of the rose because of the JBs.

One of the things in the list of things-that-look-bad, is 'fake retaining walls'. If that's what you mean by an "... 8 - 10" paver stone wall," I would say don't do it. Since changes to the walkway and mowing strip was brought up, I think that's what whitewatervol was referring to by "hardscape." (... any work that's not planting) Now that I see how the porch and walk interface, I'd definitely make some improvements. The simplest, most effective thing you could do is to substantially widen the walk as it approaches the porch, so that it is really inviting. Now, especially with the raised edging, which makes the walk look sunken, it looks a bit like a section of obstacle course. Another thing that is disagreeable about the walk is how there is a 3" riser and 6" riser at the porch. This should be constructed so there is a single step ... or no step at all, if the grade of yard would permit it. I would definitely rebuild the last several feet of walk in order to fix this. (To eliminate the step all together, it would require rebuilding more feet of the walk.) I live in the hot South, too, and do not worry much about planting during the summer. We have irrigation and many of the plants that grow here like heat to grow. With a little extra water during the first month or so, most things do pretty well. Plus, once the rainy season starts, we usually get out of having to water for a few weeks. It's a visual idea ... not a plan and not immune to altering according to conditions and needs.