Ruth: I think your instinct to curve the walk is a good one. I'd also suggest curved plant bed. I am not sure that azaleas are appropriate for a spot that gets morning to mid-afternoon sun. There is a great book called Mid-Atlantic Home Landscaping by Rodger Holmes that will give you some very good ideas for landscaping your front yard. Imagine a nice small tree, like a serviceberry, sweetspire, a butterfly bush, and daylillies in a curved bed. There is a good book called Paths and Walkways by Hazel White that will give you ideas for your pathway.

I'm waiting with baited breath for examples also! Though there is nothing semi-formal around our place. Silvia has lovely paths in her back garden, but for me they were difficult to walk on. This is a photo she posted in another subject. Our 'most' formal path is still in progress, it winds from our driveway to the front door. We turned an area we traversed constantly into a formal path. We are using dwarf mondo grass to line the edge of the path. The path itself is brown mulch from Bolling Green. It compacts nicely to provide a nice firm and secure footing, and it looks different than the other mulch we have in the gardens. There is an ADA playground mulch that compacts very nicely that that I would really like to try, and it can be blown. I'm also interested in trying out 'crushed asphalt'. There was a patio of crushed asphalt in one of the demo areas at Epcot during the Flower & Garden festival that was quite nice, and permeable. I've got a picture somewhere if you want me to find it. The rock place in Sanford has granite fines. I'm going to bring home enough of those to test a short 4' or so path. Here are a few more of our 'au naturale' paths. Here, it is the grass that gets mowed on Mondays (picture today) is a grass path in my veggie garden area: This is what happens when the gardens and the paths are all the same type of mulch, hard to tell the path from the garden. Of course, sweet potato goes pretty much wherever it wants. I saw a picture somewhere, maybe here? A path laid out with poured concrete edging. That was lovely. I'd love to do those in our back. 'Flowerlady' down south uses roll roofing for paths. That sounds like a really good idea that I'm going to test out along our back fence. waves hello to Flowerlady Allrighty then, time for some more paths to chime into this thread! ~dianne

Yardvark, thank you so much for evaluating my proposed plan. I appreciate your comments and will try to address your questions as I understand them. I too had a problem with the sharp angled lines of the walkway. I think it was drawn that way to avoid the water/sewer access points that are imbedded in the flower bed. I had planned to change the sharp angles to curves, but I have to admit that I was having a hard time making a decent curve as our front yard is not too deep and the walkway would connect to the patio over a shorter distance than desired. The front flowerbed was already executed a few years ago and is actually not as narrow as it appears on the plan. The yellow highlighted path was existing to the property (our home was built in the 1950s), and as you note, it is somewhat narrow (probably about 2’ wide). However, it has been very convenient to walk around the property. Do you propose that we make that path wider? Other elements on the plan we did not plan to execute include the black squares on the driveway’s edge that represented large flower filled urns on black rock (and a small awning at the beginning of the front porch from the patio). The narrow flower bed that runs along the front porch would be eliminated. My main concern is that I feared that without distinguishing the walkway/patio/front porch in some manner differently than the driveway, it would look like a massive driveway. But since the front of my house is only bedroom windows, I needed to find a way to make a more welcoming presence and an obvious path to the front door instead of weaving between cars in the driveway. In your proposed revision, do you think the 90 degree angles of the patio/seating wall would be appropriate because the house has the same lines? I think it would look good. What material would you propose for the walkway/patio/front porch that would run alongside the driveway? My hope was that I could do some kind of stamped concrete there that would be complimentary to the driveway but subtly different that would distinguish it as the walkway. I am really taking your observations to heart and so appreciate that you took the time to give me your professional opinion. Your comments and suggestions are really making me rethink this. Thank you very very much! Kathy

I think that solving the main problems is going to boil down to two things: the walk; and the making the entrance visible. The walk should definitely be wider - 5' could be a goal, maybe wider near the stoop - and then it should make a better connection with the drive. I don't think this means to necessarily cut across the lawn with it. Given that the yard is small, you could widen the drive a bit with whatever the walk material is, continue on by widening the city sidewalk with the same material, and then turn the corner with the walk, heading to the entrance ... in effect bordering the yard with a "U"-shape "invitation" that extends from the drive to the entrance. (The portions adjacent drive and city walk would not be the same width as the main walk to the entrance. They would be like decorative borders.) When it comes to the portion of walk that heads toward the entrance, I think it would be beneficial to pull it away from the neighbor's drive and incorporate and "S"-curve into it. That way, room for a SMALL tree could be created between the walk and neighbor's drive. It would also have the benefit of making it look like it belongs to your property without any question. Note how entrances are typically clearly marked by some type of enlarged, often raised, paved area, and a roofed covering that offers shelter from the elements. I think you need to create such a structure over the walk, in the front yard, near to the house. It would be the obvious first "entrance" that people reach when approaching the house. But after they've reached it there would be no question about where they would continue to in order to reach the actual house entrance. The structure could be a very nice arbor, or it could be more architectural in nature (such as with brick columns and an actual roof.) BTW, I don't think there's the first thing wrong with your yellow brick. Maybe you're bored of it and that is the driving force behind staining it. But I think it would be a mistake, or highly inefficient at the least, to attempt to change it to another color. If the brick was flat out ugly I'd be all for it. But it's not. You might end up creating, after spending a lot of money and effort, something that is not near as nice. If you could replace the top panel of the garage door with one that has windows all the way across, that would resolve the boring quality of the existing door. There seem to be two main approaches to planting: smother the house with hedges; and smother the house with a variety of all kinds of plants strewn in a randomish fashion. You might consider "matching" shrubs to windows (like steps would be "matched" to a door) as the main shrubs of the landscape scheme. Perennials and annuals can be fit around them in some artistic scheme, keeping it simple preferably. I would plan on keeping shrubs below the window sill height. I would hunt for a spot for another small tree at the right side of the house. (We can't see that area.)