Front House Landscape Design (and Perennial Gardens)

I’ve been hesitant to share our front house landscaping because (as always) I’ve been waiting for it complete. But has anything really been done? Especially when it comes to gardening and landscaping, things are always moving forward. It’s a constant state of weeding, growing, changing, evolving, and that’s why I love it so much. I can’t wait to see how it has grown and changed over the years. Now, I want to share some before and after and talk about how we can improve front house landscaping.

Front house landscape design

The first thing you’ll probably notice from the before and after is the siding. Craig ripped out all the vinyl (and the clapboards underneath) and replaced it with nickel-gap cypress siding. He re-plastered along the foundation and enclosed the front porch, added windows and a new front door. He then built a small awning to cover the front windows and doors, and built new front steps and a paver walkway. It completely changes the look of the house. I’ll learn more about the process later this summer. We still need to paint the trim and soffits (we chose a neutral beige).

As far as the landscaping goes, the house doesn’t have good drainage, in fact there are huge stone planters on the sides that push water towards the house. Winter is such a headache, and with the rain and flooding this summer, it’s an absolute nightmare. I’m glad we got this done before things got really bad.

We had a local landscaping company (Arborscape) remove the stone pots and I’m glad we paid for it as it was a lot of work for two guys with a tractor and a dump truck. Once they removed those, we got to work.

We decided to use river rock pea gravel found at a local building supplier (Britton’s Lumber). We use it to drain about 5 feet from the foundation. We did this at 3″ deep, then used steel garden edging to separate from the perennial beds. We had to remove all the grass, lots of rocks and weeds, so we decided to rent a tractor from Home Depot and it was well worth the money. Craig was able to use the tractor to remove all the dirt and grass and move the pea gravel and mulch which would have been very difficult for the two of us to do by hand.

My main goal for the front landscaping is to low maintenance. I chose a variety of perennials and native plants, some of which are very bird- and butterfly-friendly, as well as some old favorites (hydrangeas) to fill the mulch beds. Here is a list of the plants I have grown so far, I would also like to plant some tick seeds and chamomile, but haven’t had a chance to find anything I like.

Native Plants and Perennial Gardens

• Echinacea ‘Coreflower’ (variety)
• spotlight hydrangea
• shasta daisy
• Geum “Ms. Clementine”
• Catnip (multiple varieties)
• russian saint

Many factories are still small, but will get bigger in the next few years. When we used the tractor the grass was damaged and there was a lot of dirt on the other side of the pavers. We seeded grass along the pavers to allow it to regrow, but we had too much rain. Just have to be patient!

Overall, I like how this vision is coming to fruition, and I’m excited to share more of our progress. Is anyone else currently working on a landscaping project or gardening? let me know!I have many other posts on gardening topics, check out here.