Hey Guys,
I decided to do some landscaping along our new front walk. I thought I'd keep it small and planted a small bed along the curve. The problem is that it looks really skimpy from the curb...has no curb appeal. What should I do? Should I make it wider or extend the bed all along the path?
I bought more plants (2 goldmound bushes, 2 roses and some more perennials). I've attached a pic.
I was going to extend the bed to join with where the snowball bush is and not extend it all the way to the front of the walkway. What do you think?
I'm so confused and in dire need of help. :) Thought I'd get your help before I dug up more grass. Becoming an expert at that! :)
Thanks so much.
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That was a great mock-up and of course I don't mind that you are using my hanging baskets, I thought right away" Oh, they look like mine"....! Great team work, mss's garden is going to look super.
Looks great, mss!! What you did by lengthening the garden was exactly what I had in mind.... I have to admit, I stole the idea I gave to you from myself and my flower garden!! ;) And janmac has some really good ideas for urn & hanging basket placement :)
It was lots of fun doing the mock-ups for you -- anytime you need some help, just ask :)
It is looking good! It follows the lines that Smoodgie had suggested and looks good!
here's a closeup...I'll try the ideas janmac suggested re baskets and urn placement.
thanks once again...i really appreciate your help. :)
haha...I wish I had seen your posts before I started work this morning...I just slaved all morning on the front landscaping and I think it came out pretty good. Wish I had seen your mock ups before though Smoodgie, but I think I had a similar idea in mind. Here are a couple of pics...please let me know what you guys think.
janmac, your explanation was very good :)
I don't have any fancy graphics program at work, so I just used Paint to do the mock-ups. I'd much rather do graphics than the work I'm supposed to be doing!!
I guess I described things better than I thought. That was exactly what I meant. You do a very nice job!
janmac, I hope you don't mind -- I did another mock-up of the picture with your ideas. And I hope Lisi doesn't mind that I used one of her hanging basket pics to create the hanging baskets in this picture.
I also added another urn of flowers to the front corner of the wall to add some balance....
I love Smoodgie's mock-ups. Also I would just move your urn over a bit so it is closer to the basement window and is placed between the basement window and the edge of the house. Also I would look into hanging baskets on either side of the front door. One on the wall between the window and the fron door and one along the long flat wall right by the stairs. They should be at the same height. Wish I could do a mock-up to show you. Things are looking very nice though!
Not exactly to scale, but you get the idea!!
I just played around a bit with your picture in Paint to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.....
I think your flower bed looks really nice :) But if you carried it down along the walkway a bit, I think that would make it even nicer!! You could make the garden that you have a bit wider, and then extend the bottom end along the walkway and taper it so that it comes to an end at whatever point you want to end it. I can post a picture of our flower garden for you when I go home at lunch so you can see if you like that look.
Also, what about using the same interlocking brick that you have along the edge of your walkway to build a small retaining wall where the garden meets the lawn?? Just one or two bricks high. This might give more definition to your garden, and will also make it easy to maintain the line bewteen the lawn and the garden -- a minute or two with a weedwhacker every now and then, and you're good to go :)
yes it is one of the ornamental evergreens...bought from white rose for half price. So DH suggested a great plan tonight. I'm going to join the two beds and make the bed around the curve into a tear drop shape and arrange the goldmound and evergreen in that bed in a triangle.
Will tackle that tomorrow.
Thanks for all your help.
Your roses look beautiful. I understand what you mean about the crappy weather. :( Oh well.
I guess that does pose a problem around the snowball. I would definitely connect the snowball with your other bed. You should also consider widening it and extending it further down your path. Is that one of those ornamental evergreen with 3 or 4 heads you have there? Tried a pic of the roses...don't know what you can see on the small photo. As I said the weather has really slowed the growth of my plants.
Thanks for the advice. I like your ideas, but having just a little bit trouble visualizing. You said to round out the bed around the snowball, but the problem is that our yard boundary is very close to where that bush is so I don't wanna enlarge it too much otherwise we'll have no yard left at that spot.
I"m thinking that I'm gonna bring that line from the snowball and continue around the curve of the path and than maybe enlarge the bed near the middle of the path as you suggested. I'll place the goldmounds between the snowball and the other bed and put the two roses (they are tea roses btw) around the goldmound bushes.
Can you send a closer pic of your roses?
Thanks for your help and your garden looks really nice.
As you can also see from my pic that the goldmound spirea grow quite fast (mine a 2 years old and I have had to give them a good hair cut a few times already!) Leave plenty of room to grow and keep them pruned once a year. I will post another shot to show you how I incorporated my rose bushes. They are around the bird bath...kinda hard to see in the pic. They don't grow very tall, i am assuming they are tea roses. As far as the perennials, I see you have a heurecha. They are a nice purplish color which is a nice contrast with the goldmound spirea. I usually like to plant more than one of the same plant. Otherwise, I find it just too spotty for my taste. Hope this helps and not confuses.
I will try to verbalize my thoughts but I am so much better on paper! i would extend the bed to include the japanese snowball in a large circular shape. Then narrow it leading towards the bed you just dug. Bring the bed to say half way done your walk. Do not make it too narrow. Then flair it and round it at the end. I am a novice gardener myself. I will try and post a pic of what I mean about rounding around and incorporating the japanese snowball.
I really love your colour choices. Why don't you put the goldmound shrubs together, with the rose bushes on either side, and fill in with more small flowers?
Hi, I think your boxwood question was for me! And yes, they are boxwood shrubs - little ones right now! Just want to thank you for the begonia idea as well. I think I'll do that to fill in the gap for this year. We have oak trees on the front lawn and today I planted some begonias around them, so putting more along the walkway would co-ordinate nicely.
thanks for all the advice so far everyone. So I'm thinking I'll join the bed around the curve to the snowball bush bed. I won't expand it outwards too much.
the colour scheme I had in mind was white, pink and blue. I have white impatiens along the border of the walkway which will spill over on the bricks once they grow. I purchased pink shasta daisies, and a pink rosebush. Also bought a white rosebush.
Norm I don't exactly know which bushes you're referring to but I don't have any boxwood. I did purchase two golmound bushes as shown in pic3.
Now here's where I need the help: where should I place the rose bushes and the goldmound bushes? Should I place them between the two beds right now or rearrange some of the plants I already have? I want it to look symmetrical and visually appealing, so am worried if I place both of the goldmounds near the back they'll attract more attention.
Love your house...porch and walkway. Are those little boxwood plants? I saw something similar in a landscaping book recently where they planted bronze leaf begonias (flower colour is very similar to your brick, I think) in between each shrub...it looked so nice... You would probably only be able to do that for a year or two while they are still small. Norm
It looks good so far. I think Norm's idea of, if you expand it, expand using the outward curve like the steps. And I would join it up with the snowball bush bed. Better to have one large bed than a bunch of small ones that don't connect to anything. Lisi has a good point, too about grouping like things -- makes a much nicer display. And usually the magic number is three. Keep in mind also, when you plant them, that these things will grow -- read the labels to find out how much, and how far apart you should plant them, although I do tend, myself, to plant things quite close together to get a more lush look on the principle that you can move them around later on. The idea is you want to think in terms of blobs of colour (foliage AND flowers), as well as thinking of heights and flowering times.
But then I may not be the best one to give advice on beds and their location and size, since my whole front (about 12 ft x 18 ft)is a perennial border with no grass at all!!! LOL
I am not too good at giving advice about flowerbeds (most of my garden is hanging baskets) but here are my 2 cents. I think your beds look fine the way they are. (very beautiful place!) Your plants will grow and fill in but when planting create large areas of one flower rather than intermingling many different varieties.Tall plant in the back and smaller in the front. Decide on colours you like. I had once a combination of pink/red wax pegonias with purple lobelia in the front and to define the colours I put senecio (grey) in it.
BC
i want to expand it but just don't know which way...haha...i like Norm's idea, but just dunno what exactly to do. I guess I'll wait for some other suggestions before ripping out more grass. Atleast the good thing there's always sod if i make a mistake. hehe
Hi,
I would connect the 2 areas together, and put the rest of your plants in. This will make the garden flow, and border the walkway close to the front entrance. I have a similar problem (see pic attached) - new walkway and porch - my shrubs are really tiny right now. Hope they fill out soon!
Your house looks so beautiful. I can see what you mean about the garden from a bit of a distance. It wouldn't hurt to make it a bit bigger and maybe add the new plant you purchased. Then again, I am no gardening expert by any means!
When you find the file you want to attach, you double click it and it attaches itself to your message. Only thing is you have to make the file smaller as the forum only accepts pictures under a certain size (can't recall the exact size) so the file cannot be too large. You can resize your picture by using the program that came with your digital camera.
I hope that helps...
I think it looks very nice, too. I would only suggest from looking at the first picture that you might want to enlarge it along the outer curve...something similar to your botton step maybe just slightly bigger in relation to the the two steps which I can see from that view. I would put the tallest of your plantings in the enlarged area to keep the walkway visually open. Just a thought....or just leave as is and wait until the plants get bigger! I need some help not only with my yard but I can't seem to get a picture to stick to my messages.... once I hit "browse" and see the file I want....I am lost after that. I would appreciate any tips.... Norm
Here are more plants that I bought. Need help figuring out where I should plant them.
See how the bed looks so skimpy from further away?! or is it just me? DH says its fine and the plants need to grow, but I dunno. :S