Front yard landscape help needed - Chicago (Zone 6)
Y. S.
12 days ago
last modified: 12 days ago
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Patricia Colwell Consulting
11 days agolast modified: 11 days agoY. S. thanked Patricia Colwell ConsultingRelated Discussions
Ideas 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 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 MoreNeed help with landscape design for smaller, north-facing front yard
Comments (4)Check out this video by Rosalin Creasy, the queen of edible landscaping. She also has a Web site. Then follow any links from there. You'll find a lot of inspirational photos and resources online. Yaardvark's basic design can be followed, you just need to figure out edible plants with the shapes he has drawn that thrive in your zone. I'm not that up on edible weeping plants, but lots of big shrub-shaped edible fruits and there are also fruit trees that have a columnar shape (column shape) such as sentinel apple trees. Raspberries and blackberry tend to get droopy and weepy-ish shaped (fountain shaped). There are edible easy to maintain groundcovers too, like lingonberry, although they need acid soil to thrive so you may have to amend. I grew bearberry which also goes by the name kinnikinnick as a groundcover. It is not really "edible" so much as medicinal, where it goes by the name Uva ursi. Lots of herb ground covers like thyme and chamomile and some low growing mints. There's also wintergreen but that needs shade and can be fussy. Not too much in the way of edible evergreens although you can grow balsam or fraser fir in some zones and collect the needles for their scent and oil. With juniper you can harvest the berries and make gin. Some junipers are columnar. Some make good groundcover, a fairly common low maintenance option for small yards. Edited to add that you're going to have to be thoughtful about planting your front yard since most edible plants like sun or partial sun, and your sun is going to be filtered at best. Try not to plant things in the shade of other things, so watch where the shadows fall during a whole day at different times....See Moreneed help with plant placement and selection for zone 6 front yard
Comments (9)I presume you are talking about edging the planting bed with a hardscape feature ...? Always, I find edgings that stick up above grade usually add a busy, junky quality to the overall scene. What makes this worse is that they are usually installed in an unprofessional way ... wiggling and undulating a bit, which makes them look cheap and tacky. A much better solution is a flush laid brick, stone or paver mowing strip that is 8" min. in width, installed to smoothly flow (without wiggling or undulation) with the grade. If you're talking about "edging" with plants, I absolutely would not do this. It's not necessary and is almost always (of course there are a FEW exceptions to just about every rule) a visual detraction. Many times it makes maintenance more difficult, too, as one is tasked with needing to keep an edging plant separate from the plants behind it....See MoreY. S.
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