Any advice on our very plain front yard?
Laurel Latham
6 years ago
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gtcircus
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoLaurel Latham
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Need landscape advice for our new [very boring] yard!
Comments (2)I agree to remove the large shrubs that are too near the window. The small tree/shrub in left front yard, would probably look better if thinned out and create a small mulched area around it. If you are going to put flowers or ground cover around said shrub, then make it large enough, not a little tiny ring around it. As for the shrubs in front of the right hand window, I personally don't like what some refer to as "meatballs" for landscaping. You either have to keep them trimmed or let them go natural, which is my personal preference. Still you want them to be below the window. I like the idea of a patio or larger landing at the front entrance. Not sure exactly what would work or be in the budget. Congrats on new home!...See MoreCan we get a Midwestern woods look in our front yard?Pix
Comments (11)Yeah, if it were my propterty, the rocks have to go, if you keep your trees and especially if you add more. You'll surely regret the combination for maintenance, plus it looks odd. Give bit more thought to what you really want once you understand what's going to happen under lots of trees. Roots, no grass, need to mulch and will still have rake up leaves out of your yard every year and will have to weed the grass-less mulched areas to some extent. I haven't been impressed with the "natural mulch" of falling leaves in the front yard--they drift where they want to and leave bare other places, drift up against the house, etc and so you usually need to rake or shred or otherwise deal with lots of leaves on a residential lot. Not saying you have to make it all TIDY, with nary a leaf in sight, but just that I've not been able to just let them all stay where they will and still carry out proper home maintenance and even growth of other plants (in the forest, it's survival of the fittest and not necessarily in the shape you'd like). It may well work, but I think I'm hearing you may have a kind of fantasy image of a domesticated forest floor. Certainly the gravel is out of place in it. You might do just as well with nicely placed shade tree or 2 and some shrubs. Have you made a mostly-to-scale sketch of your front yard? That will help you decide where to place trees, which you can sketch in with their expected canopy spreads. It already looks like yours are too close together, but it may just be the problem with evaluating distances from a photo. 30'x 40' seems only big enough for 1 or 2 shade trees plus a few smaller understory shrubs or trees....See MoreNeed suggestions and advice for front yard
Comments (15)Well, let me start by saying that I don't have a mailbox like that, so my opinions are exactly that - opinions - and no more. I think you have a point when you say they don't look great growing out of the grass. But they don't make really convincing flowers either :-) What a mailbox garden in an otherwise plain yard says to me is "I couldn't think of anywhere else to put a flowerbed." That said, if having a mailbox garden is important to your wife, it doesn't seem worth having a war over. They can be cute, and they are actually a bit of an American cultural icon :-) An image search brings up lots of ideas for them by the way, including a charming row of mailboxes springing up out of the grass - but it seems to me that mailboxes have a function. I would think that function is best served if you have a brick pad around/beside it to stand on, which would also make mowing around it easier. Maybe a brick or paver pad, or even a 24" x 24" slab, with the flowers adjacent and good edging in a nicely shaped bed would be the best of all worlds. For my taste, a bed without hardscape always looks a bit accidental (unless it has really crisp edges). I always say that landscape design is for people, and so what constitutes good design in each place depends on who lives there. We, and the renegade gardener, can only give some objective guidelines, which if followed slavishly in all cases would create their own kind of undesirable outcome. So your landscape should definitely reflect your preferences. I'm also not a foundation planting guru - I prefer no foundation planting in the vast majority of cases - but let me take a stab at the problem with yours. I remember in an old thread, our guru Laag saying that a dark-foliaged plant reads in the landscape as a dark hole, or something to that effect, and gave as a solution something about backing it with something green. So one possibility is that the purple foliage is itself the problem. Only in this case, maybe if you put something bright green in front of it, using the barberries as a background, they might look better - deepening the bed to accommodate another layer of planting. You could also consider extending the foundation planting as far to the left as an antidote. Maybe move a barberry beyond the house corner. It looks on the aerial view as if you have some space there. But if you do that I would actually shift the planting weight away from the front door. The other general idea I was hoping you might pick up from those threads I linked earlier was about creating space in front of a recessed doorway instead of shutting it in. You have a fair bit going on there - I don't like what's in the middle either. But somehow what really bugs me here is that you have two uneven sections of your house, the garage one and the one to the left of the door. The one to the left of the door is smaller already, and your planting is hiding more of it; your tree will later do more of the same. That's why I would rather be able to see (or at least discern) the foundation of that section. And in contrast, the plantings on the garage side do such an inadequate job of hiding any of its mass that they look a bit... incongruous. They have no hope. They do not begin to address the blank mass over the garage door, which I think is what needs... screening, disguising, balancing... things that plants may not be able to do here (your tree on the right will maybe do it later). I don't know all the things that a person can do with that wall. Perhaps a little rooflet to match the one over the window on the right? A section of grey siding? Out of my realm there, but you get the idea. But in pursuit of having plants help with it, I would draw the bed on the right up toward the house instead of down to the driveway entrance. That will also maintain better sightlines for driveway egress. KarinL...See MoreFall front yard garden is finally taking shape (warning: very pic
Comments (35)I'm sure your neighbors were happy to see veggies, even bolting crops, over the weedy yard, Spaghetina. Here's a couple of suggestions I have from my time growing organically up in SF and Marin. 1) Most of those flowers of the bolted veggies are edible and tasty. While the leaf flavor has turned bitter through the winter and the taste change that comes with bolting, the blossoms often gain a very interesting taste that is great topping salads or lightly fried in certain dishes. 2) If like germinating your own crops from seed, remember which of your crops are heirloom (their seeds will usually produce true) and which are F1 or other hybrids -- it's seed is typically still viable, but may have very different characteristics than the parent. The GW seed exchange forum is a great way to get those exotic seeds you mentioned w/o having to pay catalog prices or drive all over the Bay area, but you need your own seeds to reciprocate. Some of the best plants & veggies in my yard are from trades I've made with other GW members. 3) To my way of thinking, your soil mix seems too heavily focused on decomposed organic matter and doesn't take advantage of the alkaline SF clay topsoil and it's associated soil flora. The compost/purchased soil is great for nitrogen and drainage and you can artificially pump up the P/K/Fe to grow good veggies & plants in it, but organic amendments like blood & bone meal, fish emulsion, seaweed and others need bacteria & fungi to free the nutrients for your crop's roots. That's generally not true for soluble inorganic amendments, which is why they are popular. There's definitely a risk of adding weed seeds by using your yard's topsoil in the garden beds, but that soil food web is necessary for growing good organic crops, IMO. For plants that need lots of N and like great drainage, I go 2/3 purchased soil/fully composted organic matter and 1/3 native topsoil. For tomatoes, peppers and others that suffer in N-rich soils, I use 2/3 native, 1/3 organic matter....See MoreLaurel Latham
6 years agodecoenthusiaste
6 years agochiflipper
6 years agoLaurel Latham
6 years agoLaurel Latham
6 years agoashtonchic
6 years agodecoenthusiaste
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoEmbothrium
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agogardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
6 years agoswrite
6 years agochloebud
6 years agoswrite
6 years agogardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
6 years agochloebud
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agogtcircus
6 years agogardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
6 years agoNHBabs z4b-5a NH
6 years agoharold100
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6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoDig Doug's Designs
6 years agoGail Eichelberger
6 years agoLaurel Latham
6 years ago
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