Front Yard Landscape Design - Fresh Ways

Creating an inviting front yard landscaping design can be a challenge, especially on a small lot that is exposed to the walkway and street traffic. But as the entrance to your house, this space ought to have some careful consideration.

Rather then only carpeting the soil with lawn and edging it with foundation plants, Westerners more and more are rethinking their front yards landscape designs. They make every square foot count by expanding outdoor living space; replacing lawns with low-maintenance, water-wise plants; or adding elegantly curved beds. Some homeowners with shaded backyards are using sunny front yards for vegetable beds and fruit trees.

What can you do with a front-yard design on a busy street corner? Plenty, as garden designer Doug Stapleton found out when he began building up his small front lot in a Seattle neighborhood.

Before the redesign, the space amounted to a bit more than lawn and foundation plantings, and it was exposed to the street. Stapleton wanted to form places to sit outdoors. He also wanted a sense of enclosure without feeling fenced in, distant from the hubbub of the street yet open sufficiently for him to greeting passing by fellow citizens while he gardened.

Stapleton began by stripping the yard of sod. Next he surrounded it with an open-grid cedar-and-copper hedge atop a dry rock wall. He set two small, unevenly shaped patios at contrary ends of the yard; Pennsylvania blue-stone payers lie on a bed of 2 inches of gravel and 2 inches of sand with crushed rock between the stones.

Stapleton came to a decision to rely mostly on leaf texture and color for interest, rather than flowers. He planted small-scale trees, perennials, shrubs, and ground covers to shape the garden's backdrop.

Along the fence and rock wall, he combined low, flowering ground covers to produce the effect of an alpine rock garden. Then he tucked in bulbs to pop up in spring. As the time of year changes, a horticultural symphony progresses throughout the garden.

To come up with the plant mixtures, Stapleton roams nurseries by section, from sun lovers to shade lovers, mixing and matching plants for foliage color, form, and texture. He's willing to experimentation. What works keeps on put. What doesn't gets shifted to a new spot.

And when Stapleton relaxes on his patio with a newspaper and a cool drink, he can truly take pleasure in his front yard.

Because front yard landscape design such as Doug Stapleton's is in complete view of the neighborhood, he requires regular maintenance to keep up their looks. But the work doesn't have to be complex or time-consuming. Stapleton proposes these ways to make it simpler.

Make daily rounds in early morning or late afternoon to check out your plantings (keep clippers handy). Snip off any spent foliage and flowers. Pull weeds as soon as they come out. Prune errant branches. Make these little routines part of savoring your yard; that way, they never build up into huge chores.

Allow plants to naturalize. Many plants will spread and multiply if they are happy. They'll fill in plantings for you.

Do two yearly cleanups. In early spring and again in late autumn, clean up garden debris. In fall, dig and separate any clumping perennials that need it; cut back others to keep growth densed.

In late winter or early spring, top-dress garden beds with 2 to 4 inches of organic material such as compost. This feeds the plants, conserves water, protects roots in cold as well as scorching weather, and reduces weed germination.

Be generous. Share plants with friends and neighbors. Invite people in to look around and talk. That's half the fun, and you'll learn a lot too.