Amateur over here. Help with front yard landscaping (please!)
LC
2 years ago
Hi all - I'm wanting to improve the curb appeal of my home built in the 1960's (pics below) starting with foundation planting, possibly installing walkway from the left side of house versus center (current center walkway leads to a very busy 2-lane road), and whatever else may be needed to create a well-landscaped front yard.
--Would appreciate any and all landscape design advice, questions, comments, constructive constructive criticism you may have.
**I'm in Zone 7b** (full sun-part sun)
--For the foundation planting, I really like these shrub options after doing a little research and would love to incorporate 1 or 2 if I haven't completely missed the mark with them. Having a difficult time seeing which shrubs and how many of each would help create unity.
- Cinnamon Girl Distylium (love)
- Kaleidoscope Abelia (like the Mardi-Gras Abelia too)
- Crimson Fire Loropetalum
- Flirt Nandina & Lemon-lime Nandina
- Carissa Holly
- Georgia Petite Indian Hawthorn
--Other plants I'm liking are Francee & Patriot Hosta, May Night Salvia, Oakleaf Hydrangea
--Don't really have any ideas on other foundation plants or walkway options so advice on any part of this landscape would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in-advanced Houzz friends!
LC
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Comments (16)
arcy_gw
2 years ago
ShadyWillowFarm
2 years agoRelated Discussions
Newbie needs help with Shady front yard landscaping, please :)
Comments (6)This isn't a 'shady' area. It is an area that gets decent sun. Shade plants can often handle an eastern exposure, but not always. Start by deciding what you would like it to look like *in the winter*. Deciduous shrubs look like dead sticks. So it is usual to plant shrubs that have some sort of color during the winter. Instead of the hydrangea, a blue colored conifer like a blue juniper would provide that color all year, then a shorter, flowering shrub could be planted in front. There are also gold conifers. BTW, the shrubs on the left are probably some sort of flowering shrub. I'd get them ID'ed before yanking them out. A lot of things are looking unusually ratty after this winter, and they may just need a bit of time and some pruning to look decent....See MorePlease help this amateur w/ landscaping my yard!
Comments (4)I prob won't be much help because I hate your neighbors look. It's like a row of stuff that is currently small, but I can see are varieties that will become enormous (arborvitae, mugo pine, grasses) crammed inside another thin line created by the fake rock. Gack. Looks like gramma shopped at Home Depot. A couple of thoughts. First - I admire the fact that you already realize that your neighbor doesn't have the winter months working for her with her plant selections. Good for you - your instincts are correct. Darker colors make an item look smaller - they recede. Lighter colors make an item look larger. The lighter your house color, the larger it will look. It's hard to tell how far back your house sits from the road, so an opposing perspective might be that you could make your house look like its farther away by painting it a darker color. Remember the light grey roof - whatever color you decide to paint the house - the roof is part of the total look so you need to take it into account. Taking lots of pictures is a great way to see what you can't see by standing there in person. If you take digital photos, you can blow them up to 8 x 10 and print them in black and white off your computer and sketch the landscape right onto that. Don't cover up the windows and front door with improper selection of oversized shrubs and trees that won't fit the size of the house in 15 years. This is not inviting - make sure your front door can be seen. Make sure that shrubs are placed at least 3 feet from the house. This defies everything you've seen in new landscaping where small shrubs are planted 12 inches from the foundation but you will be glad in the long run that you can walk behind your shrub border to do plant maintenance,home maintenance, clean windows, make sure burglars don't have a hiding place. And the roots won't grow into the foundation causing you to have to re-waterproof your foundation in years to come. Planted out 3 ft, your shrubs will almost be touching the wall in a few years. Planted closer - you will be running the hedge trimmer back there to get them off the house. I had to go all over my house last year and remove all the branches of everything that touched the house because carpenter ants had started crawling up under the siding. Create curved beds that can have walkways to the house, or through the bed around the house to the side or back yard. You could begin an evergreen shrub border anywhere from the end of the drive to partway up the drive, and S curve it across the lawn at a diagonal around the corner of the house. Make long sweeps, not short changes - it will make the property flow more. Do you have kids to think about play areas? Is there enough room in the back yard for their play areas? Do you need to keep the front lawn for a future badmitton or volleyball net? How much time do you really want to devote to garden maintenance? If you are inexperienced - you honestly do not know the answer to that question and I would suggest that you start small and see if this is something that you would enjoy spending free time doing. If you don't have time or prefer another hobby, its not going to be fun to have a bunch of deadheading, weeding, mulching etc to cope with to keep the front of your new home really nice looking. By the way the term perennials implies that they are less work because they come back every year. This is totally untrue and I'd say my perennials take maybe twice as much time as annuals with spring and fall clean up, deadheading, fertilizing, mulching, composting, pinching, weeding and the occasional need to divide them. I don't know where in zone 5 you are, but there are gorgeous evergreen azaleas, rhododendrons, pieris, boxwood, chamaecyparis, junipers, microbiota, cotoneaster, spruces, fothergilla, itea, witchhazel(15ft) and hollies just to name a few things that remain in the 2-5 ft range which would require minimal shaping from you and give you fantastic color. There is a new dwarf 10-12 ft white birch that would give you multiseason interest set off the corner of the house. If sited so it grows to its proper size, Taxus baccata repandens will begin to weep and is a very pretty shrub. There are lots and lots of plants to choose, but most designers will tell you to first design the shape of the beds and any hardscape like sidewalks, stepping stones, water, lighting. Then you sketch the shape and size of the plants you want. The effect I want is for someone to stand back and see a seamless home and landscape, where the landscape uplights the home. Think about layers also. I think sometimes white fences look really nice in front of white homes - also native stone and dark green ground covers. The final step is picking the plants that fit the criteria you've already established. If you are going to change the color of the house you might decide on that first because you wouldn't want to put together a foliage or flower color selection that didn't complement the house. Karin mentioned doing research - and I'd take that to the library and page through landscaping books and books of great gardens to look for ideas that appeal to you. You may end up having an all white garden like the Sackville-West famous garden at Sissinghurst Castle - most photographed garden in Europe. A great catalog to get on the mailing list or website just to look at the pictures is White Flower Farms. They always have awesome annual container combinations. Good luck and keep posting photos as you go along....See MoreFront Yard Landscaping (opinions please)!
Comments (3)If the house faces west or westish, you definitely want shade trees in front of the house! They will help cool the house, though it'll be a few years yet. Trees to the south are also helpful; planting on the other side of the driveway will shade the house in time (though you should also consider the effect of roots on the driveway). [A good way to see exactly which way your house faces is the satellite view on Google Maps -- north is always at the top.] How deep are the front beds? Are you interested in annuals or perennials as well as the shrubs and liriope? Unfortunately there's no agreement online about Camellia sasanqua Cleopatra's mature size -- anywhere from 4-5' tall by 3-4' wide to 15' tall by 8' wide. [Mature size is the average size at 10 years old. If you divide the mature size by 10, that tells you the amount the plant will grow per year, unless it's pruned. And yes, they will keep growing after 10 years.] I have an unknown camellia (planted by the Previous Owners) with identical blooms to Cleo's. Unfortunately, mine has shown no desire to be taller than wide, so I doubt it's Cleo, and I can't advise on how much you'd need to prune Cleo to keep it below the window. I can't tell from the photo how much room you have in that area. If you like camellias, you might plant one on either side of the window, and something shorter between them. Or look for camellias which won't get quite so tall. Like karinl, I'm not too enthusiastic about the landscaper's shrub plan -- but it does provide for spring, summer, and fall blooms. I may be a bit prejudiced due to not liking nandina (got rid of those) or liriope (bad bank landscaping). Your three areas sound a bit too compartmentalized to me: one assortment of stuff here, a different assortment of stuff there, and a third assortment on the other side. What ties the areas together other than the medium-sized foliage? Well, okay, there are nandinas in two places. I'd like a bit more unity and overlap....See MoreNeeding help with front yard landscape
Comments (35)If you're going to own a car it requires that you know something about car maintenance: periodically, the oil and tires must be changed; it must be washed and fluids filled, etc. These are things one learns to do in order to have the pleasure and convenience of owning their own vehicle. Similarly, if you're going to own a lawn, you learn to mow it weekly, edge it periodically, and keep the weeds out, etc. Groundcover is no different. Depending on what plant you make it of, you must learn how to prepare for it, what maintenance that plant requires, and how to control it. Groundcover requires a bit different approach than grass, but it is not necessarily harder or more time consuming. It is just different. I find it to be easier so my yard is 100% groundcover. The number one difference is that weeds must be kept out. This is not harder than weekly mowing. It's just different and there are methods one can employ to make the job easier. In the long run, groundcover can be considerably less work after it's established (which depends on the plant used) than a lawn. Your example of "battling an ivy plant for years" has me thinking that no one is employing any effective methods of controlling it. It is a bit like never mowing, edging or weeding the lawn and then blaming the grass for being out of control. One thing is for sure, only weeds will be happy if you try to grow grass where there not sufficient light to do it. It boils down to the fact that you must have something growing to cover the ground, or you must cover the ground with mulch (and replenish it ongoing). The something growing can be a sad attempt at a lawn (which is what is there now); it can be groundcover; or it can be a mixed variety of plants (like in that picture above). What else is there other than solid hardscaping which is not the least practical? Of those solutions you can already see exactly what one of them looks like because you have it now. You can probably envision the mixed variety of plants covering the ground. Is there any question that it would not be the highest maintenance of any solution? If you take another look at the left side of the photo I submitted of the houses with sloping fronts, you'll notice that it is solid groundcover. It doesn't look like there's a weed in it. You can see at its left side a sharp division where it abuts its neighbor's grass lawn. Each planting is distinctly separate. The groundcover is neither running into the grass, nor is it rampaging over the edges of the walk or steps. How is this even possible? The fact is, it happens in millions of places all over the country. It's obvious that one can learn how to employ plants in such a way. Or they can refuse to do that....See Moreoreolucca1
2 years agoken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
2 years ago
RedRyder
2 years ago
PROYardvaark
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agotsjmjh
2 years agoDo you have a deer problem? We have gorgeous huge hostas (not Patriot) in the front that we have to keep covered with netting - they're like the best dessert ever for a deer. We're in 7b, also.
I like Japanese Cedar
and currently have dwarf blue spruce and bird's nest spruce mixed in foundation hollies.
PROCelery. Visualization, Rendering images
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoSome idea if you decode to leave front walk
RedRyder
2 years agotsjmjh
2 years ago
decoenthusiaste
2 years agolast modified: 2 years ago
emmarene9
2 years agoI like the shrubs you mention.I am concerned about the shrubs you have now. A few of them are very sparse. Does the house face north?
You did not mention the ground cover or vine on the right side? What is it? I think it looks good if it is not becoming a problem.
I see that there is more to the right which we cannot see. Looks like a good place for shade plants.
What is on the left side that you want to connect to the entrance? We should see that side. Is there also a brick planter on that side?
Your house is very nice and I love the door. I would not diminish the entrance area by blocking the view with shrubs. Keep it open. If you have items on the porch put them so they do not block the sidelights.
In addition to the pictures Yardvaark requested I would like to see one from further back. Perhaps from the street if there is ever a safe time to do so.
Based on the little we can see you could do a basic planting like this: the green could be the Distylium and the red could be the Loropetalum. Only if you are sure they will get enough sunlight.
LC
2 years agooreolucca1
2 years agoRedRyder
2 years ago
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