landscaping for front yard
Breeona Zachary
last year
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cecily 7A
last yearBreeona Zachary
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Zone 9a Lafayette, Louisiana. Need help landscaping my front yard.
Comments (4)Monique, curb appeal doesn't rest primarily on selecting certain plants. It rests more on bed layout, plant forms & sizes, arrangement, organization and adding the right amount of variety. The picture you've provided shows mainly the house. But landscaping -- curb appeal -- has as much more to do with responding to the SETTING as it does with just what's in front of the house. It would be good if you could return to the exact spot* where the first picture was taken and swing the camera leftward in order to show us what's over there. The picture needs to slightly overlap with the existing one. Then swing the camera to the right, slightly overlapping again, and show us what's over there. That way we can see the broad view of the entire front yard. Also, with your truck out of the way, move the camera closer in and take another picture of the front entrance portion of the house (from the garage wall to the fence.) *If you can't return to the exact spot to match the first picture, disregard it and take all new pictures that pan the scene. Any chance on widening the walk that goes to the front door? That would help with curb appeal, too....See MoreHelp Needed for Foundation landscape and Front Yard
Comments (5)Much better pictures. I would remove the AC screen and return to the smaller, neutral colored, original version. Screening it only makes an out-of-place thing grow larger. I think if you plant better in the area, it will seem less obtrusive. Then, when it craps out in some future year, you can finally have it relocated to the side of the house. The garden at the middle of yard does not work to distract from any other thing that you don't want looked at. Instead, it seems more like an impediment to better seeing an inviting entrance. I would opt for blank, clean lawn instead. The tree that's in the island might could stay. I don't know if it's a good tree and can't evaluate its placement based on the pictures we have so far. (It would need to be a picture from a distance showing the whole front yard all the way to the street.) If it remains as a tree in the lawn, you would want to remove its lower branches as it grows and keep a nice single trunk all the way to the bottom of the finished canopy. (Instead of letting it branch helter-skelter and become an ugly trunk.) I like the idea of some evergreens to screen the side of the house to the left and help place a limit on your yard. (That is, if you have room for them. It's kind of hard to tell.) The rest is tidying up and simplifying the foundation planting. Right now, there are too many odds and ends one-offs doing their own thing. It needs some cohesion. Also, I'd eliminate the plantings at the near side of the walk and bring the lawn all the way to the walk. The plants there are like a barricade and they don't help the entrance to seem inviting. I can't say what the individual shrubs in the illustration are. They are whatever that grows there that would best do that. I think the little tree at the left corner of the house is an overgrown shrub ... like beautybush or something. Below the largest bank of windows, the depth of bed will determine to some extent what shrub will fit there. The groundcover near the AC needs to come up to the bottom of the two windows, but not higher. The rest are perennials. At the steps could be annuals or perennials. All the details you will work out in a measured plan view (looking straight down from above.) With a small tree added to the right side:...See MoreLandscaping in front yard lacks cohesiveness. I need some design help!
Comments (3)"What is the green plant in the foreground?" I forgot to mention, fill in all the blank space between whatever regrouped perennials and shrubs you were able to use, with groundcover. It could be something that already exists in the plot; you just add more. (I see something low growing at the foreground of the second picture but cannot tell what it is ... if a weed or a good groundcover.) Or it could be a new addition. I don't know what's there, or even where you are, so I'm not calling out a specific groundcover. Plants have to be moved at the right time and/or by the correct method, or they will suffer. Usually, with perennials, they will get over the suffering and move on. The stone curb has some pieces that look to be about 10" or 12" in dimension. It would look better if the entire curb had that uniform width. I'd reset the stones, trying to achieve that, if you have access to more of them. It would mean that some of the smaller stones get doubled up. I would also try to set their top surface with some uniformity. Weeds are always the bane of a bed that has exposed soil. Get rid of them as much as possible, up front. After the planting has concluded, cover all the exposed soil with a layer of plant-based mulch (wood chips, bark, hulls, etc.) Apply Preen according to mfg. directions. Preen is applied on a schedule so be sure to enter the reapply date in your calendar. I'm convinced this is where most people become dissatisfied with it and say it doesn't work. Also, it may not be as good during the first application simply because there will be spots missed. The subsequent application will bring improved results. My Lowe's sells a smallish Preen for almost $20. Home Depot sells a large tub of it (almost 3x the size) for under $30. I would recommend the latter as it is much cheaper per square foot....See MoreLandscaping help!- Front yard zone 10b- Florida
Comments (25)Don't listen to the guy above about ditching the arches, use them to make a new orleans style courtyard out of them, google "new orleans style courtyard". Put a small water feature on the patio. I would then drill in some eye ancor bolts directly into the brick and use some wire to train 5 bouganvilla "20$ each large", Purple, Red, Purple, Red, Purple going up the brick and espalier them off to the brick. "est 150-200$" Take that windmill palm to the left, remove the ciruclar pavers, take the bed about two feet wider, replace with a tan rock to match your house and use fabric underneath "est 50$". I will also say something, so many people put shrubs and trees right up against the house and its a huge no no more often than not. You can use stratigic stuff like cannas, dwarf promgranite, ginger, etc to get the same look of whatever your going for without blocking your view from the house. In saying that, I think you need to have something that gives your house some mystery. That large tree is a huge focal point. I also don't like the hedge in the front which kind of looks like legustrum. I agree with the bottle brush row between the neighbors house out the right side as I think it would be nice to have the privacy. I would go from the large tree to the black driveway and take the grass out from there to the street. Then would add in daylillies, coleous, sweet potatoe vine, birds of paradise, amongst other things. I would also put a couple of orchids on the iniside wall of the arches so you could see them from your house....See Morececily 7A
last yearlast modified: last yearBreeona Zachary
last yearcecily 7A
last yearSigrid
last yearBreeona Zachary
last yearBreeona Zachary
last yearBreeona Zachary
last yearcecily 7A
last yearffpalms
last yearBreeona Zachary
last yearDig Doug's Designs
last yearBreeona Zachary
last yearlaceyvail 6A, WV
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