Digging up a ho-hum front yard has its risks: What if your plants wilt? What if the bold plan to highlight the entrance falls flat?
What if you make a big mess of your safe little stretch of lawn — in full view of friends, neighbors and random strangers?
But, ultimately, there’s good reason to take the risk, and not just because it’s important to face your fears. You can increase your property’s curb appeal. You can express your vision as a gardener. And you can give the neighbors something to talk about — in a good way.
“Your front yard is really the face you’re giving to your neighbors of your home,” says Carrie Woleben-Meade, a landscape architect at Mariani Landscape in Lake Bluff (marianilandscape.com). “They may never go into your home, but they’ll see your front yard.”
We asked Woleben-Meade for guidelines and a sample border that home gardeners can use to enliven that uniform patch of green, or at least to inspire some ideas of their own.
To start, she advises, consider your house: its character, architecture and design elements.
“In the front yard, the house is the backdrop, so everything needs to speak to the house and complement the house,” she says. “It’s fun to pick up style elements from your house, so if your house is a Cape Cod, maybe you have a nice white picket fence that’s low and inviting and ties into the architecture of the house.”
Similarly, a profusion of bright flowers can work with a Victorian, and tall grasses can reflect the spirit of a Prairie-style home.
In general, you want to keep a front-yard bed fairly simple, says Woleben-Meade, but it’s good to have a distinctive touch or two.
“Give it a little bit of something that might make people do a double take,” she says.
She often uses allium, the tall flowers with large, globelike white or purple blooms, for this purpose, but a grouping of tropical plants or some striking containers at the front door would work too.
There’s work involved, including preparing the soil for new plants. In the Chicago area, that often means digging about a foot down and mixing existing soil with compost and nutrients.
But Woleben-Meade says the final results will be worth it: “To put your best foot forward in your neighborhood is always a wonderful thing. It’s a lot of fun.”
In her words
Carrie Woleben-Meade of Mariani Landscape offered these thoughts on her design
:
The planting was designed to provide yearlong interest in a relatively small border. Something is happening every season.
This is an asymmetrical planting that would be appropriate in front of many styles of architecture. The look is casual but neat; to achieve a more formal look, greater symmetry in the plant layout should be considered.
I like to pick plants for their foliage versus their flowers. The different textures in the foliage are just as important (or even more important) because flowers typically last for only a few weeks. The larger purple leaf on the heuchera (coral bells) is situated by the small blue-green leaf of the spirea to provide contrast. The larger plant elements are arranged at the ends of the border, creating a frame around the residence and highlighting the front door.
I selected durable plants, but all newly installed plants need some level of maintenance and monitoring. After a few years, they should be able to stand on their own.
These are the plants featured in Carrie Woleben-Meade” front-yard garden design:
AA
Blue star (Amsonia hubrichtii) and “Summer Beauty” allium (A. tanguticum “Summer Beauty”): Spring, summer flowers, fall color. Shade substitute: cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) and bleeding heart (Dicentra)
B
Birchleaf spirea: Spring flowers, fall color
Shade substitute: Annabelle hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens “Annabelle”)
BX
Green Gem boxwood (Buxus “Green Gem”): Evergreen
C
Hesse cotoneaster (Cotoneaster “Hessei”): Spring flowers, fall fruit
D
“Happy Returns” day lily (Hemerocallis “Happy Returns”): Summer flowers
Shade substitute: Variegated Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum odoratum “Variegatum”)
G
“Jolly Bee” geranium: Spring flowers
H
“Palace purple” coral bells (Heuchera micrantha “Palace Purple”): Purple foliage, spring through fall
LM
Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla): Late spring flowers
M
“Coralburst” crab apple: Spring flowers, fall berries
Shade substitute: Blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolium)
S
Betony (Stachys officinalis “Hummelo”): Summer flowers
Shade substitute: Astilbe pumila (A. chinensis var. pumila)
V
Dart’s Blue vinca (Vinca minor “Dart’s Blue”): Spring flowers
Y
“Everlow” Anglo-Japanese yew (Taxus x media “Everlow”): Evergreen
Get the picture
Google Images will provide plenty of photographs of these plants, but for growing information on these, and hundreds more, as well as great gardening advice, check out these Web sites:
Chicago Botanic Garden:
chicagobotanic.org
The Morton Arboretum:
mortonarb.org
University of Illinois Extension:
urbanext.illinois.edu/hort
Missouri Botanical Garden:
mobot.org
Fine Gardening magazine:
finegardening.com
About the series:
Planting Your Plan is an occasional series that addresses specific gardening challenges. Go to
chicagotribune.com/design
.
