You can increase your home’s curb appeal, beautify your area and make a welcoming entryway to your house by distinctively landscaping your backyard. Keep many factors in mind when designing the front yard, including the style of your house and the amount of time you’ll have to spend on landscape upkeep.
Create a Clear Entryway
Your front door should be readily identifiable, with a clear pathway leading to the entrance. “Fine Gardening” recommends assembling a pathway broad enough to allow two individuals walk side by side. The walkway can be constructed with materials such as poured concrete, pavers, stones or bricks. The path can be straight, resulting from the driveway or street to the doorway, or curved to wind throughout the yard’s decorative elements.
Produce a Low-Maintenance Design
Layout a yard you can handle. Planting a complete, lush front yard only works at the long term in case you have the right climate and the opportunity to keep up with it. Gardeners brief on time should consider planting low-maintenance crops or adhering to a xeriscaping layout. Xeriscaping relies on drought-tolerant plants such as Blue mist spirea (Caryopteris x clandonensis), sturdy in U.S. Department of Agriculture zones 6 through 9. All these heat-tolerant perennials have several troubles and blossom with blue flowers during summer. Other low-maintenance options include butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii), feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora “Overdam”) and succulents such as Black Hens and Chicks (Sempervivum “Black”).
Start in the Foundation
Create multiseason interest across the foundation of your property. Foundation plantings such as boxwoods (Buxus sempervirens), camellias (Camellia spp.) or rhododendrons (Rhododendron spp.) Are a fantastic place to start when you design your backyard. As an added bonus, flowering shrubs give visual appeal and can be pruned readily to keep their size and shaping. Intersperse flowering perennials and shrubs with evergreens to make year-round appeal and include contrasting textures to planting beds. Container-grown annuals can be set in foundation planting beds or flank your entryway. Containers allow you to easily and rapidly update the front yard with seasonal plants.
Natural Privacy Screens
Plant evergreen hedges to make solitude in which you require it. Fences can be attractive and functional, but natural privacy displays can form a seamless part of the landscape. Alternatives include Hillspire juniper (Juniperus virginiana “Cupressifolia”), hardy in USDA zones 4 through 9. Hillspire juniper grows 10 to 15 feet tall and 6 feet to 8 ft wide. Once it’s established, it requires minimal watering or other upkeep. An alternative is Le Ann Cleyera (Ternstroemia gymnanthera “Contherann”), hardy in USDA zones 7 though 11. This evergreen features shiny foliage and grows 10 to 12 feet tall.