need advice front yard project: add walkway & expand driveway
chenshop
10 months ago
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Patricia Colwell Consulting
10 months agoWestCoast Hopeful
10 months agoRelated Discussions
Need front walkway ideas, advice, and pics
Comments (19)Brent, This is an excellent question that has many answers. One needs to look no further than directly above in this thread to the posting of the photo by Prairie Love to garner an answer. It is always a little disconcerting to me that this is a forum where we have the opportunity to explore the issues of designing landscapes. Yet, just by the realities of the inescapable human element, we spend an inordinate amount of time not discussing design per se but rather the all-too-frequent real life situation of: I inherited this mucked-up mess... Now what do I do? Quoting Thomas Church, "Landscaping is not a complex and difficult art to be practiced only by high priests. It is logical, down-to-earth and aimed at making your plot of ground produce exactly what you want and need from it." If you are familiar with my writings over the years, you will recognize that I encourage people to use their minds. I really do have an abiding faith that the average person is more than up to the task of designing a pleasantly functional landscape if a bit of time is devoted to both study and thought. Sure abilities and results will vary. Joe and Jolene Average may never have the skill set to handle complicated, high-end projects. However, it is easily within Joe and Jolene AverageÂs abilities to avoid the common design blunders that we repeated time and time again on this very forum. If they need some further inspiration, they should not be afraid to consult a pro. As a society, we have largely abdicated our vital role in the decision-making processes of residential living. We have stood by on the sidelines, refusing to get involved until after the fact. Much of the siting and design decisions have been sloughed off to some contractor whose skills lay in pounding nails. When things really get bad, government gets involved and ordains codes where Âone size fits allÂ. All that one really has to do is go on some of the model home tours and you will quickly and objectively begin sort the wheat from the chaff. I suggest not doing this when you are actually in need of a house. Remove the pressure of time constraints. This exercise is best undertaken as research, not selection. Pretty soon you will find yourself asking; ÂWhy in the world did they do that? Or; ÂIf they would have only done it this way, then You soon begin to see what works smoothly and what doesnÂt. Magically, good design will rise to the surface like cream in the old milk can. As I have already stated, Brent, there are many answers to your question. Of course, each of those answers is site specific. Quite frankly, for many of the existing homes already mucked up, there remains no cost effective solution at this time. Throw enough money at it and most any problem can be made to go away. However, the law of diminishing returns soon kicks in. Problems are often cheaply avoided but can quickly become prohibitively expensive after the fact. For example, just down the block from me, a new home is going up on a corner lot that is almost of mirror image of my lot. My wife and I settled for nothing less than a corner lot. It is the only way to get away from the ÂWelcome to my garage" look with the typically small lots available today. Here was a perfect opportunity. The spec contractor just slapped the garage on the front of the house out of habit. The cost of the house would not have been increased a single cent to implement this bit of design forethought. It is too late now! IronBelly ...Nice job, Linlee....See MoreNeed advice on front yard landscaping project
Comments (8)Colli - grass-less front yards in Seattle are common and with our increasingly dry summers and ongoing water limitations, they make a good deal of sense. Perhaps one in 4 of my design clients are asking for the same approach as you - they no longer want to water or tend ridiculously small patches of unused lawn when something more aesthetically pleasing, drought tolerant and low maintenance can be had just as easily. Reconsider the raised bed approach. This is not always the best idea for a high visibility entry garden, looking a bit like a leftover vegetable garden regardless of what was planted. And seldom does the very precise geometry of a raised bed garden successfully accent the residence unless you are going with a very formal house and a very formal parterre garden with bricks or stone forming the beds and paving the walkways. And this is just not the character or attitude of most Seattle neighborhoods and certainly not your home. Try for something a little looser and more organic in its approach. Go ahead and remove the sod, add some organic amendments and till, forming gradually raised planting beds (mini berms) with a slightly recessed, softly sweeping pathways moving you around to the side yards or wherever access is required. You have your choice of path materials - just allow sufficient width and/or durability to make walking and transporting equipment and supplies easy. For your situation, I'd consider two paths, one staring about 1/3 of the way along the drive, the second starting just past the 2/3 mark, and have them meet up towards the side of the house with the organically shaped mini-berms flanking them and in the center. Add some rock, some low growing and drought tolerant plant material with perhaps a midsized tree for a focal point (place off center in one of the beds) and you're good to go!...See MoreIdeas for new landscaping and walkway - front yard zone 5b / 6a
Comments (10)If it were me and I was going to redo the front walk I would just do poured concrete in an oval shape to mirror the bed around the trees in front of the house. That's the least maintenance. Yes, remove the yews, they should not be trimmed in an unnatural box shape for a home as natural looking as yours. Don't know what the tree is next to the yew shrubs, maybe blue atlas cedar or blue spruce? Either way, it is going to get big so you may want to move it now while you still can. It's a "specimen tree" meant to be viewed from afar, so I'd put it in the back yard, "afar" from the house where I could take it in while sitting on the back patio or looking out the back window. You could take out the front set of birches with two trunks, that is the one that blocks the view the most. I wouldn't do that, but I am a tree hugger. Where the yews and that blue green tree are, I would put some flowering trees or shrubs that would remain small, and maybe something that smells nice to greet me as I walked up to the front door. You don't say your zone, but it appears to be a 4 season area so I'd put in some rugosa roses (but that's just me) maybe mixed with hydrangeas. That's what I have in my front entrance way. Roses can get buggy, so if you want something even less maintenance, shrubby cinquefoil and low growing spirea are just about as easy peasy as it gets. "Knock out" roses don't smell as great as a rugosa but are more foolproof, depending on your zone. BTW, there are small evergreens you could put next to your house. There are some small junipers that would fit the bill, or a bird's nest blue spruce (which I don't particularly care for but some folks love). But like I said, not sure what that is by the yew hedge, it may be a dwarf for all I know but it doesn't look like it from my casual glance....See MoreDriveway/Walkway advice needed
Comments (12)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...See MoreLyn Nielson
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