KT, love that photo!

"Say, Bob, didn't it say FOUR bushes?"

"Don't ask me, all we've got are three bushes and a tree and this truckload of mulch..."

I too don't understand why people want to pay money for trees and shrubs growing out of what appear to be termite mounds. (Well, I do understand-- the person footing the bill is not a gardener and really doesn't give a hoot-- but I wish I didn't.)

I actually saw a very well-done planting in front of a gas station (!) a year or two ago. It was somewhere vaguely in my neighborhood; I'll head out with a camera and see if I can find it again.

hehehe. I like how you included the McD's sign in the photo. What is the deal with those mounds of mulch. It's like some kind of weird inflation...who has the tallest mulch mound?

Please cross post this over at the Landscape forum...I can't wait to hear the response over there.

On the other side is a recent proposal for a small commercial development in my town. The developers made the politically smart move of involving the local gardening groups. Their proposal included landscaping with lots of natives. It was very nice. Not sure if the development will proceed but they got big kudos for their landscaping ideas.

There's a shopping center here in Mystic that has wonderful landscaping, IMO. It makes sense. The site is hilly. They've used a combination of ornamental grasses, butterfly bushes, lavenders, gaura, kousa dogwoods, caryopteris, & Russian sage. I'll get pictures of it this weekend. It's mulched but little ground shows much after mid-June.

Anyway, it's nicely composed & the maintenance is meticulous. It draws birds & butterflies. You get wiffs of the lavender & Russian sage fragrances walking thru the parking lot. Nice.

As a lender with commercial experience, I can tell you that landscaping as a line item in the budget is always shortchanged. Were it not for municiple requirements most commercial developers wouldn't landscape at all because it's money spent that doesn't return any dollars.

/tricia

greening,
"Say, Bob, didn't it say FOUR bushes?" YOU ARE TOO FUNNY
barefoot,
Sounds as though your town is on to something.
stoloniferous,
Thanks for attempting to assist me with vocab. but I did indeed mean innocuous; not interesting, stimulating, or significant; pallid; insipid. As much as part of me agrees with you that at least poorly designed and maintained landscape is better than no landscape, it seems to me that Commercial Landscaping rarely has an opportunity to mature, most often what I see are plants either die of neglect or a few years down the road the new owner/manager intuitively knows something isn't working has the existing planting removed and starts all over again.
triciae,
Sounds lovely I am looking forward to the photos.

What, are you kidding?? Who ever did this is quite clever. Do you know how hard it is to find people willing to dig holes? And how much you have to pay them if you do find them?? As the picture clearly shows - there is no need. Just set the balled and burlapped plant on the ground and cover it up with a big pile of mulch. SO much easier to replace the dead stock also. The weedwacker guy will never have a chance to girdle the trunks. And there are no low-lying branches to catch Mctrash in. I bet you are just jealous of the far-reaching insight and GENIUS involved!

Deb

I am choking and laughing at the same time. And maybe crying too. The worst part is that a lot of people will admire this. Don't ask me how I know. And yes, definitely post this on the Landscape Design Forum. And then stand back.

Soooo...Cloud9 The Queen Of Witty And Droll (not drool) strikes again.

Seeing as "innocuous" also means "harmless", Im curious as to what it is you want from a McGarden. Little Shop of Horrors?

So some business owner with no knowledge for or interest in plants has some space to fill in order to make the place look minimally professional. He hires the cheapest landscape team, who also have no particular interest in the job other than spending the least amount of money so that they can stay in business. Its not art. If you want it to be art (or a park, or a nature preserve, or whatever), you would be better off talking to said business owner, and convincing him that it is in the interest of his business to spend money on a garden that will save the environment or make people stop and notice. Any ranting here about McShrubs is just preaching to the choir.

LOLOL!! Termite mounds, dig-free planting, easy weed-whacking...maybe some innovative techniques will emerge from modern commercial landscaping!

Tricia, are you thinking of Mystic Village shopping center? The one next to the Aquarium? I used to love walking around there and admiring the plantings. (Back when my in-laws had a house down that way). They definitely made more money from me by making it such a nice place to walk around on a summer afternoon.

Yes, Olde Mystik Village is also very well landscaped especially considering the large amount of pedestrian traffic the landscaping must survive; but it's the shopping center immediately across the street that I was referring to...behind Starbucks. McQuades Grocery & West Marine are both located there. I think it's beautiful & a perfect example of what can be done commercially. It requires no augmentation of natural rainfall to flourish, provides blooms, fragrance, & bird shelter/food as well as being pleasing to the eye. Gosh, what more could one ask from a commercial developer? I live in Mystic & love driving around that place. I drive real SLOW leaving the grocery store so I can look at everything. :) It's at its peak August-October but even in February it's attractive because of the meticulous year around maintenance.

/tricia

Moving away from the specific topic of McDonalds I was thinking that there seems to be a common landscaping thread that ties all banks for example together, before I see the sign nine times out of ten I can tell by the landscaping that it is likely a bank, or even more predictable is the over the top landscaping at funeral homes. I dont think landscape design whether interesting and well maintained or not can ignore the need of a business to use landscaping as a tool to assist in identifying what type of business they are but I wonder if commercial landscaping has become so homogenized that it will soon befall the same fate as shopping did when we started shopping in malls. Do we even bother to look at the landscaping of many commercial businesses and if not what purpose does it serve? I thought it might be interesting to post photographs of different commercial landscapes without architectural clues and see if we can match the business to the landscape, and I can use your help on this one so please bring your cameras with you the next time you go out on errands. I am also looking forward to photos/descriptions of businesses that you think have broken the mold with their landscaping. kt

Funny, I was driving past the local neighborhood gas station today and it had a beautiful full pink rose in bloom. Just off by itself. It looked like a mistake,but a pretty one.

Dang, I am kicking myself for the umpteenth time for a photo I didn't take about 5 years ago. Please skip this post if you've heard about this before.

A local establishment - actually it was a free-standing pizza place of indeterminate, vaguely modern design - planted a row of green giants or some similar ubiquitous (and, yeah, innocuous, too) conifers - 6 of them, in a straight line along the property border. Not exactly a hedge, since it didn't run anywhere near the corners of the lot - just 6 sentinels in a sea of mulch. Within weeks, all were dead and a lovely shade of orange-brown; apparently there was no plan to water them. The owner, not to suffer a total loss on his investment, promptly dealt with it. When I drove by the next week, they had been spray painted - red, white and blue. What a sight.

The scary thing about commercial landscaping is that it seeps into people's minds as "professional" looking. I walk around my neighborhood and see huge swaths of mulch (orange!) it's pretty clear the gardeners are repeating what they've seen at the mall.

Stoloniferous, I don't consider this thread to be "ranting about McShrubs" - I think it's an interesting topic for anyone who likes to think about the landscapes we encounter every day.

OMG do I have a photo to add to this post!!!! I saw it last week in someone's front yard and will try to get back there to take a photo and post. Forgive me if it takes a while as I have another enormous wedding coming up!

WG

I took some photos of commercial landscaping in my neck of the woods I am curious if anyone will be able to identify correctly what the businesses are based solely on their landscaping. I intentionally tried to take a photo at two of the same type of businesses. Included are two different banks, two different post offices, two different gas stations, a grocery, and a professional building.
PHOTO ONE

Gas Stations - #1 & #7
Banks - #3 & #8
Grocery Store - #2
Post Office - #4 & #6
Professional Building - #5

Am I close?

/tricia

OK, first of all, the quality of the landscaping way better than some stuff I've seen around here. It must be something about being on the coast.

Here are my guesses:
1 and 4: Gas Stations
3 and 5 Post Offices
2 and 6 Banks
8 Professional Offices
7 Grocery Store

How'd I do?

1 and 3 - post office
2 and 6 - bank
4 and 7 - gas station
5 professional
8 - grocery

I want to play too!
I must say ... no landscaping in my town looks this good!

1 + 7 are gas stations (neglect, trash)
2 + 5 are banks (lush, prosperity?)
3 + 4 are POs (hmmm -- stretching here -- low maintenance massing)
6 Grocery (4 season interest?)
8 Professional building (who else would have a lawn?)

When will you tell us the truth?
ML

Well, I'm cheating because I recognize the last photo as being Oak Bluffs, am I right? That means it's a professional building/bank. I know it was a bank once, but is it still?

Hmmmmmm......so much for my theory that businesses can easily be identified by their landscaping. triciae,barefoot,cloud9 were correct two out of eight times Mayalena once and alicepalace the cheater was correct #8 is a bank.
Banks #8 & #3
Grocery #2
Post Office #1 & #5
Professional Building #6
Gas Stations #7 & #4
I do think this little experiment bares repeating so if anyone else is willing to take their camera with them the next time they are out and about that would be wonderful.
The scary thing about commercial landscaping is that it seeps into people's minds as "professional" looking. I walk around my neighborhood and see huge swaths of mulch (orange!) it's pretty clear the gardeners are repeating what they've seen at the mall.
What do you think of dtd's comment do you feel commercial landscaping sets the stage for residential landscaping? What do we think of the current residential street side entry gardens??

I caught onto DTD's comment also, Katy, and yes, I do think she is right. I do think that commercial landscaping influences residential landscaping, at least in yards where no real gardener lives. I'm always kind of taken aback at the amount of mulch used, for one thing. I see these shrubs all lined up, with a huge swath of mulch, in people's front yards. Those who do not garden see these commercial landscapes, think they look nice and low-maintenance, and voila! Next stop, their front yard.

I wonder too, how much of it is because of the "landscapers" that these folks hire to do their yards. They pick what is most easily available, what is easily planted (or not, therefore lots of mulch!) and what is easily maintained. Many people, I believe, just use their lawn guys to do plantings too.

I've got to say, I had a local nursery with a very good reputation do a front foundation plan/design for me, and I emphasized I wanted a cottage garden type of look, and I was quite disappointed in what they came up with. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it included a line of hollies and a line of spireas. At least there wasn't an overabundance of mulch, but nevertheless, I passed on installing said landscape.

Using the reverse notion, I have to say that one reason I have trouble warming up to grasses in the home garden is that they remind me of corporate office parks. I see grasses, I think corporate, because of their heavy use in those landscapes in my area. I don't dislike grasses, and my reluctance to use them in my garden is breaking down, but that's the first connotation that comes to mind when I see them.

By the way, I have to say that I think the businesses in your town do quite a nice job. Their landscaping may be predictable and repetitive, but overall it looks much better cared for than lots of shops/banks/stores around here.

:)
Dee

> What do we think of the current residential street side entry gardens??

I think there are entry gardens and street-side gardens, and they're very different. The entry garden might be between the driveway and the door, and the street-side garden could be in the hell strip or all along the front of the house, inboard of the sidewalk.

Curb-side gardens, like we have on Main Street in Falmouth (and which Lauren Springer popularized), can be a pain when you park along the street - no place to put your feet when you get out of the car.

Gordon Hayward writes that an entry garden sets the tone of the transition from outside to inside your home and gives a clue as to who lives in the house. He did a great talk about that at the Boston flower show a couple of years ago, showing slides of different entries and describing what each one told him about the occupant. I specifically remember one comment (but not the garden that went with it) - "We know that, whoever lives in this house, there are no dishes in the kitchen sink."

I thought that was pretty wonderful and have always thought that people driving by my house will likely know there's one or 2 dishes in the sink at all times.

Not to harp on Hayward, but I also like his idea that we should try for the effect of a 'house in a garden' as opposed to a house with some gardens around it.

In my case, the purpose of the street-side garden is really simple. It's another place to put plants, after running out of room in the back yard. Design-wise, that doesn't have much value, but to a collector it's really very important.

Okay, I admit it, I'm one of those people with too much mulch. But I see it as my pendulum-swing reaction to the Jurassic Garden I "inherited" when we bought this house. I can't even begin to explain how out of control every bed was/still is. Absolutely all the flowers self-seed and have runners and ... I dunno. All that STUFF just overwhelmed me, including the monstrous azaleas and the forsythia that towers over my head. At least I have managed to rid the place of the bull thistle that was about 6 feet high our first summer here.

I have two elementary aged kids and I work full-time, so there's no time to be thoughtful about how to avoid looking like corporate America. I just want something that looks reasonably good which isn't going to require my sacrificing every blessed weekend from April til November. After 5 years of splitting and ripping out and hacking back and such, I'm STILL not done. 'Cause you know, things grow back!

I am a very inexperienced gardener, and am so grateful for the advice and help I've received on this very board! I attended a plant swap a couple of years ago and have now got several beautiful plants I didn't have before, but no place, it seems, to build the kind of garden I can manage. So, I'm keeping the plants happy and healthy in my mishmash out back until I can figure out how the heck to get it all to manageable shape.

Just thought I'd add the innermost secrets of People With Great Mulchitude. :-)

IMHO, this type of planting that the OP shows in the original post, is somewhat of a reversal to mass landscaping that was done about 40-50 years ago by builders in the "newly developed suburbs"

Hubby and I bought a home 28 years ago, in a well developed, but small development whose homes where already about 25-30 years old.
Houses where built in the old fashioned design of remove just enough trees to build the house and leave plenty of land for each home.

Houses have 1 acre of land, lots of trees around it, most with quite large land frontage etc.

It's when the landscapers came in that the disasters where created and it was with every home in the development. Nothing was appropriately planted, tress where shrubs should be and trees that would grow to be huge disasters in their planted locations where placed all over the place and at the foundation of houses.

When we bought our home, my hubby thought I was crazy. the house was wonderful, the land was more than an acre to have. Beautiful frontage, very long and large driveway that holds more than 8 cars, and surrounded by beautiful woods and an already chain link fenced in back yard for the 2 year old to play in and added to all that, it was a dead end road and we where the next to last house on the street.

It was the landscaping that was the total disaster. I kept telling hubby, don't worry about that part. It will take several years to repair the disaster, but I could do it, I grew up on a summer flower farm.

It's been a daunting task over the past 38 years but this is what was and has been done.

The front of the house was covered with arbovite trees, all leaning on the front of both sides of the front stairs. One side completely covered the picture window so that no light could come in.

4 weeks after moving in, we cut the trees down to the ground. In the fall we dug out all the crappy soil, filled with fresh loam, peat, etc. In the spring I got to work on that first bed.
Luckily the 2 blue hydrangeas from the market where hardy to this area and they have come back every year, huge and more beautiful every year.
Added to the planting with my potted herb garden and the old plastic birdbath that won't hold water but works beautifully as a container planter. and of course other containers end up arriving there every year

Opposite the picture window, smack in the middle of the front yard, 2 beautiful Colorado Blue Spruce where planted. They looked beautiful and where as healthy as could be. On the other hand, I knew what the future held for them and it wasn't something I wanted in the front yard, especailly when they where already approaching 7 feet tall.
So at Christmas time, we cut those down and gave them as gifts to 2 very close friends for Xmas trees.
The following spring, this bed was dug out, leaving the very low remains of the spruce stumps on either end of the bed

It gets filled with lots of annuals and has perennials in it as well.

lupine under the hanging poles on either side

dianthus firewitch on either side of the birdbath in the center under the arbor

{{gwi:451331}}

The trench with bark mulch that you can see in the pics of the flower bed in the center of the front yard, had a 3-4 foot hedge in it. No idea why, but that was all cut down to the ground and I fill the area with pots of plants.

To the left of the center bed, way in the front on the left side, you can barely see what was left of a rhodie. It was 8 feet tall when we moved in.
I had hubby cut it way down to about 2 feet. You should have seen his face as he kept saying he was killing it. Of course we all know better than that, rhodies do quite well with even severe cutting.
Finally, last year I had my fill of it being in the way. It was cut to the ground and I'm keeping it from growing back.

The opposite side of the front stairs at the foundation had the same arbovite trees growing that where huge as well. We cut those down the first few weeks that we lived here, but I never got to do anything with a bed there.

Oh, the small stump is all that remains of another rhodie that was planted there. 10 feet tall when we moved in. Cut down to 2 feet and kept there till this new garden bed was dug. The kids took it down to the ground because it would block the view of the new bed. I had no complaints as the beat me to the punch in cutting it down to the ground.

I guess, what I'm showing and trying to say is what is shown in the OP first pic is, what I would call, a reversal of fortune. I return to some really dumb and stupid design plantings that existed 30 years ago. No thought in what is being planted, no idea of size that trees and shrubs will grow and the bark mulch mounded is the perfect ingredient to kill what they planted.

Fran

Almost 8 years ago, when my mother passed away, my daughters friends came in and dug the bed for me, filled it with fresh loam and garden soil and covered it with bark mulch, while we where at my mother's funeral.

They knew I would be digging out my mother's perennials from her apartment garden and they created a perfect location to put them in. All I had to do was go get them and bring them home, dig the holes and put them in.
I've kept it as her memorial garden and everything that grows in it where either her perennials, annuals from seeds of hers that she had and plants that she wanted to get and still hadn't gotten.

{{gwi:341495}}

That fenced in back yard, the one with the chain link fence, no longer has young children in it. Both have long grown up, 25 and 30. So it is used to hold all my wintersown containers through the winter and until they are planted. The fence itself gets filled with at least 50 different kinds of morning glory plants.

On the subject of bark mulch. I find it to be an important part of the landscape, not so much for any aesthetic beauty, but more for the ability to help keep the weeds down and retain moisture in the garden beds.

Bad backs are not conducive to weeding and with more spinal surgery in 2 weeks, the ability to garden will be very limited after that.
No way will I be able to weed the beds, it's all I can do to get the 400 containers of WS seedlings in the ground as it is.

On top of that, many communities including my own, have instituted mandatory stage 2 water bans. That's an every other day watering system, based on the odd, even numbers of the houses.
Mandatory stage 2 water bans come with monetary fines as well. In my town it starts out with the first offense being a warning, the second a $50 fine and the 3rd and subsequent are $100 a piece.

I don't have the money to pay fines like that, and water conservation is important.
My flower beds are in mostly full sun and part sun. They take a beating in drying out quickly, but the bark mulch helps to keep the soil moist, the weeds down and the plants happy.

I'm also seeing more and more homes in my area and surrounding towns actually covering their entire front yards with mulch, adding decorative stones and then just letting wild flowers grow where ever they grow.

Again it's a conservation attempt to add some structure of design to the yard and not go broke paying the fines.

It also is a design that is something that some like and others don't. As the say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and what some people like for gardens and others don't is just an individual taste.

I'd be more concerned with the massive waste of water that is used in an attempt to keep lawns green through the summer. If I'm going to spend the money on water, I want it for the beauty of my flowers and plants, not on wasted lawn.
Hence my lawn looks like a disaster and we just keep digging up more and more of it and putting in more and more flower beds with drought tolerant plants.

A pic of the new bed started last fall, after the huge oak tree was taken down that was going to land on the house. The bed is getting full of annuals and perennials now, and it is covered well with a thick layer of mulch.
{{gwi:1079536}}

DTD, I really like Gordon Hayward.

In my case, the purpose of the street-side garden is really simple. It's another place to put plants, after running out of room in the back yard.

LOL!

Turfgrass gets such a bad rap. In reality, it's both unfair & undeserved. Turfgrass isn't a problem...in fact, it's a large environmental benefit. Any problems associated with turfgrass comes from uneducated people maintaining that grass.

Properly cared for turfgrass cools the environment, prevents erosion, filters impurities from the soil, grassed areas significantly lower the levels of atmospheric dust and pollutants (a turf area 50' x 50' produces enough oxygen to meet the every day needs of a family of four), & grass plants have the ability to absorb sound.

Noise levels are affected by the softness or hardness of the surface over which sound travels. Because grassed areas present such an irregular soft surface, they are very effective at reducing noise levels.

Turf planted on the banks of a lowered expressway reduces traffic noise twice as much as paving on the same bank. Other studies have demonstrated that if a grassy turf is planted on a barrier slope facing a noise source, the noise reduction can be as much as 8-10 decibels. Sounds that do penetrate lawn and tree areas are rendered softer and less irritating.

The most natural and economical fertilizer available on the market today is your own lawn. Consider that every individual plant of Kentucky bluegrass produces about 3 feet of growth a year. The average lawn produces about 233 pounds of clippings every year for every 1,000 square feet of turf area. Leaving these clippings on the lawn and allowing them to decay and decompose in place is the equivalent of three applications of lawn fertilizer.

This process also builds up humus, keeps soils microbiologically active and, over time, improves soils physically and chemically. Grass is the most effective plant available for reconditioning the soil.

If you maintain a healthy, dense turfgrass`it will not require much (if any) supplemental water. We never water our lawn & it's in good shape providing all of the above benefits. Mowing the lawn is also good for the gardener...great exercise.

When we purchased this house five years ago the turfgrass (term used loosely) was in horrible shape. It was close to 60% weeds & lots of bare spots. Following good cultivation practices that same turfgrass is now looking great. We've not used anything other than lime, we leave the cuttings lay, mow to a height of 2-1/2", & do not try to grow lawn in an area that's unsuitable such as heavy shade.

In addition to the environment benefits of turfgrass...we've got a great place for our grandkids to play.

When I did my Master Gardener's training I'm glad UNH spent so much time providing us with information of turfgrasses & their benefits. They've gotten a bum rap!

/tricia

So many interesting thoughts while reading alicepalace and littleonefb aka the flower lady experiences of purchasing a home that had mature landscaping planted by nonprofessionals I cant help but shutter at the thought of what I am creating for the future residents of my property. This is a good reminder that landscaping regardless of how restrained the gardener, is ever changing and a few inches or feet of mulch may slow things down or alter the course but change it will. My property while not previously developed before we built was for most of its existence grassland in a sandplain some time within the last 50 years Pitch Pine and Oak moved in changing dramatically the landscape into an understory of primarily invasive plants that I am constantly trying to hack back and remove. After nearly thirty years of trying to get a handle on these plants the thought of clearing a lot of land laying down mulch and allowing anything wild to grow to me is a disaster in the making.
What do we think of the current residential street side entry gardens??
I think there are entry gardens and street-side gardens, and they're very different.
This was a great example of how dtd can read the incoherent ramblings of a woman with too little sleep and still respond with something interesting. Not to harp on Hayward, but I also like his idea that we should try for the effect of a 'house in a garden' as opposed to a house with some gardens around it This I believe is the ultimate goal. Transitional plantings from our neighbors yard or the surrounding woodland that frame your garden leading to your home all need to all be working together to create that final whole picture for the visitor to find comfort in their surroundings. As a plant collector obsessed with screening out my neighbors I have found this challenging, no down right impossible to meet. City Park formal to woodland scrub all on one little acre has made a landscape of lots of little pictures or in contemporary lingo rooms and ultimately a house with some gardens around it. So dtd after all of those thoughts what I was really trying to ask is what do we think of resent spreading trend throughout the country of developers installing gardens at the entrance to the street? What is the purpose of these gardens, what are they trying to say? Do they really tell you something about the people/homes that live on that street?
Oh gosh I am running out of steam and triciae has raised one of my favorite topics that I really flip flop on if you catch me on a hot afternoon after I have just finished mowing I am grumbling about the waste of time and gasoline on a garden carpet, and I would anxiously be thinking that steppables certainly has the answer I am searching for, but in a more rational moment I realize I have created a *garden home* where a lawn of uncut native grasses would be a hard fit abutting more formal gardens (and I dont even want to think about the tick population). My mind continues to stay open on this subject and would love to see/read more examples of what folks have done in replace of lawn. Triciae thanks for a lot of great information.
Fran, I as I am sure all of your GW friends wish you a successful surgery and speedy recovery. kt