OPINIONS NEEDED: Landscaping / Boxwood border
Ganny Williams
10 months ago
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Patricia Colwell Consulting
10 months agokitasei2
10 months agoRelated Discussions
Opinions needed on front yard landscaping plan
Comments (11)If you are less concerned about how the house looks from the street, why did you take the picture from the street and why are you focussed on a sketch that also looks at the house from the street, and why did you sketch it from the street inward? I'm not trying to be troll, but it does not make sense to me. Most people take pictures the same way they view things. Most people do like the presentation of their house, if not to the people on the street, certainly to their arriving guests and to themselves as they come home from a long day at work. It is OK. There are a few things about the BHG sketch which help make it "homey" that you may be missing. The first is that it has a visible front door. When a door is visible on a house it is somewhat the equivalent of a face on a person - when it is looking at you, you want to look at it (and not get caught looking somewhere else). It draws you into the middle or heart of the composition. The sketch adds to that by putting a tree in front of the door with a skewed perspective that allows you to look over it and adding weight to the middle with a low center of gravity to balance the composition of the DRAWING rather than the landscape. You have to know that if you were standing in front of that landscape you'd be looking at a tree with two ends of a house visible to either side and no door to be seen. The second thing is a psychological response that people get when they see a place that is made for people to be. This is very real and as much a good design tool in a landscape as it is in a sketch. It is the area of lawn to the left of the front door - you want to be there and it draws you in and you stay there. That is reinforced with an arbor going who knows where. The arbor is not there to make you feel like you want to go through it, but to strengthen the space that the area of lawn is holding. The 800 pound gorilla that is missing from both your snapshot and the BHG sketch is the driveway. BHG left it out and you have a truck and trailer (not saying that you did it on purpose) that is framing the front yard. The empty driveway acts in a similar manner as the patch of grass - the viewers see it, subconsciously, as a human space and project themselves into it if it is more powerful than another space. Unlike the lawn area on the left, the driveway does not have the supporting plantings or other elements to contain you there - you just blow through that part of the composition and don't come back. If you truly are more concerned with looking from the inside out, you should be taking your photos looking outward and start to draw up your concepts in the same manner. The biggest challenge is that your landscape currently flows, like most of ours, out into the street. My belief is that you want to build space in your front yard that is separate from the street. You don't have to make a solid screen to do it, but you can combine several elements that can incrementally overcome the power of the street (sounds kind of urban militantish). You can build background, middle ground, and foreground and strengthen that layering with vertical layering as well. It would be easier to describe if you provide a picture looking outward from the house....See MoreLandscaping ideas, opinions, etc on pics
Comments (10)Thank you for the comments thus far. I'm in the St Louis, MO area -- 6a hardiness. We'll get down to 0-10 in the winters and 100 in the summer. Last summer decimated the grasses if you didnt have a sprinkler system. I ended up stripping off my whole lawn and reseeding from scratch in the fall. aloha2009: Thanks for your comments! I'm worried about planting a 30' tree so close to the house. It looks a little odd to me, especially when they mature, and there's always the leaves, twigs on the roof and risk to the house. BTW, no fancy software, just an ipad and a simple paint program to freehand on the photo. I'll post some additional photos later of the planting beds....See MoreHelp designing a contemporary landscaped privacy border
Comments (13)Bamboo is a great choice for containers!! And you do not need to restrict yourself to clumpers - running bamboo is easily contained in large tubs. Boxwood would also work but does grow remarkably slowly and would need to be sheared/trimmed to get the very sharp, clean look you seem to favor. Japanese holly is very similar in appearance and grows somewhat faster so that is a possibility as well, especially the cultivar 'Sky Pencil', which may naturally offer the look you like. Other narrow, columnar needled evergreens with a very restrained habit could work also - Cupressus sempervirens 'Tiny Towers', Cupressus macrocarpa 'Wilma Goldcrest', Juniperus communis 'Compressa', etc. If the phormiums are newly planted, you may very well have some hardiness issues. In the PNW it is not necessarily the cold in winter that knocks them back but rather the combination of cold and our typically winter wet soils. They require excellent drainage and/or a coastal location to really thrive in this area....See MoreNeed help with Landscape Design
Comments (63)Yardvaark, Believe it or not I am warming up to the railing idea. I would use post in my actual design. I was just trying to get an idea of how it would look. I want to make a simple mock up to see how it would look in real life. But I am starting to think it could look nice and add value. Front yard courtyard to relax and enjoy the outdoors in. I can put a stand out there so you can put your drink. Started to look on line at post and railing and was thinking this might look good. My post would not have the tapered part and only go up 3' or so. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwY-hm8D54&t=599s For the sidewalk you mean a red row of bricks like this: BTW you have a picture of the bridge you think would look good. “it is hard for me to like a drawing all the way in which all the plants are individuals.” If I narrow the bed by the house I thought only 1 row of plants would fit. I think it would look odd just to have 1 plant and then a lot of mulch. I am not sure exactly what I could do there unless I went back to your original drawing with only 1 plant in front of the patio. I still think that ground cover would be a lot of work. In fact around there the only homes I see with that type of ground cover are the 1M dollar homes that have full time landscapers. Maybe I am wrong and it is easier to maintain than I think. “I wish there were small tree at the house and larger trees farther from the house, as the yard itself looks "unprotected." Not sure what I can do there as it would take a long time for a large tree to grow. I do have the 2 crepes in the middle of the yard now. I could keep both of them and just add another to the back or some other tree to the back like a queen palm, but that would be bigger in the back than in the front so probably not the way to go. NHBabs, These are virtual designs and when I build the colors would relate. If you look at the planter I actually build it matches the house colors....See Morekitasei2
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