Starting point for our blank-slate yard? New porch addition.
Hello all!
My husband and I have been slowly remodeling our house. The latest project is finishing up our front porch and then moving on to the yard. I have no idea where to start with adding landscaping, but would love to add some depth to our house.
About our yard:
- House faces North. We are in Maryland.
- The small tree on the left is a black gum we planted a few years ago.
- We aren't sure when we'll be adding the sidewalk, but when we do it will most likely curve to the left and connect with the driveway.
- We still need to paint/stain the deckboards, columns, etc.
- Husband just got a new tractor that will make it necessary for any curves to be sweeping/easy to mow. We may need to buy a push mower after landscaping.
- The porch is 30 ft wide, and 7 ft deep
I would greatly appreciate any and all advice! I'm stumped about how to curve the flower beds and how big to make them.
As you can see we are rather close the the street.
Comments (7)
mindshift
6 years agoA truly north-facing wall gives the equivalent of medium shade to the area at its base as long as there is nothing else overhanging the area. If you add potted plants to your porch they should be along the outer edges to get the most light. In general, one starts by deciding where shrubs should go, and the shape/size of shrubs wanted. Your house is nicely framed by trees now.
The width of a planting bed depends on the need to access plants in the back. If you plant low, spreading shrubs you generally don't need to reach the back of the bed. The depth of the bed will be based on the expected, mature size of the shrubs. If a shrub has an expected mature width of 5 ft you should plant it 2 & 1/2 ft from a structure. I recommend two shrubs against the house on either side of the porch. Put perennials between and in front of the shrubs. Carry these beds around the corners to the side of the house. The area in front of the porch could have perennials or shrubs that don't get over 3 ft tall and wide. You should be able to lay your sidewalk in front of this bed.
While standard Nandina domestica (heavenly bamboo) is a 6-8 ft plant there are many shorter CULTIVARS to 4 ft tall. Nandina grows in zones 6 to 9 and in full shade to full sun. It is semi-evergreen and its leaves turn reddish with fall and winter cold. Your local nursery personnel are full of information on other shrubs that will take shade; be sure to specify how high you want shrubs to grow.
Temporarily fill in between young shrubs with easy care perennials such as day lilies which will take medium shade quite well. Dicentra ssp. (bleeding heart) is hardy in zones 4 to 9 but they don't like wet ground. Brunnera macrophylla (Siberian bugloss) has sky blue flowers hardy in zones 3 to 8. Of course, hostas are always good for shady spots. Once again, your local nursery is the best source of information for your area. Set perennials in groups of 3, mixing perennials for color and bloom times so something is always of interest. Finally, fill in between the perennials with annuals, especially toward the front of the bed.
Does your driveway go around your house? Looking at your first photo, the drive on the right seems to curve into your back yard, but you say you will be adding a walkway that curves to the drive on the left. Perhaps the drive on the right was temporary, but don't be too quick to plant it over with lawn. If you have gatherings, whether family or friends, extra off-street parking can be safer for them. Set up a few spaces off the driveway. If parking is rarely needed it is usually safe to park directly on a lawn, but if extra parking is needed more than twice a year, hollow paver blocks can prevent soil compaction. Hedging can define the limit of temporary parking. Below is a photo that I think illustrates this perfectly.
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Front yard not quite blank slate
Comments (16)Re: the weight of the foundation plantings, I think you're right. I am not a fan of pointy shrubs, the arbs were here when we moved in. They're leaning out from the house in search of light, and tied to the shutter dogs with rope to keep them from falling right over. I had thought of replacing them with narrower upright evergreens that wouldn't get as wide, or removing them altogether. I was going to photoshop them out as an experiment, but my software is acting up. The view from inside is naked. A fence would be lovely, but expensive. I also thought about a hedge, not a tightly sheared one, but maybe Viburnum or something kept tidy but not too much so. Or Boxwood left fluffy. A hedge would also keep the neighborhood dog walkers from using my front yard as a toilet. Small trees would also make the front feel more enclosed, and screen out the houses across the street a bit. They're not unattractive houses, but I don't need to see my neighbor in his skivvies getting the paper, do I? Here's what it looked like before the trees started falling apart. Not long after this was taken, half the large tree with the white writing on it fell into the road....See MoreBlank slate - I would LOVE any help and ideas! Overwhelmed!
Comments (6)Why 4' of river rock around the house? IME most folks in areas with a decent amount of rainfall regret using rock mulch and it's a PIA to remove. It will have dust, leaves, twigs, seeds, etc. blow in and weeds will sprout just like in shredded bark mulch, but it is more difficult to remove weeds from rocks, especially since most rock has landscape cloth under it to prevent it from sinking into the soil. So either you hand weed with difficulty or you have to use an herbicide sprayed on the rocks regularly to prevent weeds becoming established. I would recommend bark mulch without landscape fabric since I find maintenance far easier. Like Yardvaark, I would not plan to use a large evergreen in the front, and instead place it in the back yard where it is visible from windows that in winter you can see it from such as one over the kitchen sink or an office window. In the front I would make the groundcover evergreen and perhaps add another short shrub with winter interest such as one of the shorter red-twigged dogwoods or some evergreen shrubs behind the multi-trunked tree to provide interest in winter since it's about half the year for you. Clumps of early flowering bulbs in the groundcover would be nice also. Look for small trees/large tree-form shrubs for the front trees that have multiple seasons of interest, such as spring flowers and fall foliage color or nice winter appearance....See MorePNW-blank slate yard
Comments (46)"... I know it won't get as tall as what you drew in ..." What I drew was a rough scheme, not a plan, so you shouldn't take it too literally, but as a guide of relative proportions. I think most people would want the front shrub (position #3 in the sketch) to be evergreen so as to carry the house through the winter. I'm not hard and fast on that as some deciduous can provide a lot of winter interest, too -- dried hydrangea flowers being one of those. I don't think I'd also want the next plant (#2, which wraps the house corner) to also be hydrangea. It would be too much similarity, making it harder for either to make a distinctive statement for its particular position. If it was me, I'd let #2 be a perennial, especially a long blooming or colorful foliage one if you can find such a thing. "I'm wondering if I should rethink this plan." There is a much greater chance of the answer being, "Yes," if one focuses too much, too early, on smaller details and aspects of the project. (A love of plants is one of the common early distractions!) It is best to start by looking at the big picture and taking stock of one's goals and objectives, which should be recorded on paper. Before thinking any more about plants, it would be good to have final resolution on the bed line, bench placement, any path or paved area for the bench. The bed line for the foundation planting seems to be resolved, but it seems there is not yet a commitment for the perimeter planting bed. If you take new pictures, please do it in the standard format of taking a complete, whole scene with the camera remaining stationary for the entire scene. These directions are for capturing the foundation planting area. It merely pivots but does not change location. The front face of the house would be one scene and the left side of the house would be another separate scene. Each scene is taken by lining the camera up with the center of the scene. (For the front house face, it would be lined up with the front door. For the side scene, the camera would be lined up halfway between the front yard corner and the basement driveway corner. Usually, the camera distance from the house needs to be positioned about at the city sidewalk or the curb, depending on how far that is from the house. Since your yard is shallow, it's probably the curb. Once the camera is at the correct position, takes a panning series of slightly overlapping shots, shooting from far left to far right capturing all portions of the yard that can be seen from that spot if one were just standing there looking with their eyes and not the camera. After that, it is usually best to walk across the street and take another distant shot that captures the whole yard (relevant portion) in a single picture so we can see what it looks like from the neighbors' point of view....See MoreHuge blank slate yard for cottage-style garden - need ideas!
Comments (17)Another factor is your view lines. You contemplate a garden that will be very pretty, and a fair amount of work. Will it be in view of your most-used seating areas? from your shady seating for hot days? Is there potentially a better place to put it so it can be seen from the house? Might you want to instead place cottage-garden-style beds where they wrap around your verandas a bit more? Is the area between house and barn the spot where you will see it the most? (My personal experience is that spouse and I like to take work breaks at a table in the shade of my patio umbrella where I can gaze upon my "big garden" that is so much work, and maybe write some project notes in my gardening notebook while i sit. And the big garden is visible from all the windows along the back of my house. ) (I always start a garden in grass by laying 6 inches or more of shredded leaves on top of the grass in the fall, then plant in spring. We have a shredder. You may be able to simply start with unshredded tree leaves, or chop up with lawn mower. dunno. Kill the grass and enrich the soil.) I envy you, starting out, with lots of space!...See Moresrb2015
6 years ago
PROYardvaark
6 years agoWorking in plan view will help you immensely. It would be good for you to share your work when you get going.
In order to prune in an efficient manner, you have to think about where you're going with the tree ... its ultimate shape and size and form. Since it has the capability of becoming 20' or more in height, I'm pretty sure you're not going to want the canopy to be 2' or 3' off the ground in the end. (Figure A.) More than likely you'll want to maintain as good a view of your house from the street as you can and you'll want to be able to walk under the tree for maintenance and general use of the yard, which means the canopy bottom will be at least in the 8' or 9' height above ground range. (Figure C.) That being the case means that 100% of the branching and twigging that presently exists will NOT be part of the final configuration. Only the trunks within the present foliage mass will remain, grow and be part of the final tree. In general, if you cut off a branch, the energy stored in the roots that supported that branch will go instead into forming new growth somewhere else on the plant ... usually toward the top. You might get 50 - 60% of the growth back right away. Another thing is that the bottom of a tree canopy looks better if it is parallel to the ground, or level. A general rule of thumb is that you can remove lower (ultimately unwanted) branches up to 50% of the total height of the tree. One might say that 50% is too high if they prefer a top-heavy canopy to trunk proportion. I don't disagree that 60% canopy to 40% trunk looks better. But keep in mind the rule of getting back much of what you cut off right away ... on top. If 50% of bottom branches are removed, within a very short period of time, the proportion is back to 60% canopy to 40% trunk.
Another thing to keep in mind when creating a multi-trunk tree ... a general rule of thumb is that if the limb is more vertical than 45* of level, then it has the capability of being a trunk. If it is more horizontal than 45*, it is a branch. There is no point to allowing branches to remain when they start low in the trunking structure. (Figure A, B.)
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6 years ago
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