Front Yard Landscape Makeover (+ Plant Guide)
We recently gave our front porch landscaping a makeover, revamping the area and giving it more of a cottage feel, and we love it!
We're sharing not only what we did to overcome some soil-water-rock obstacles, but also a plant guide that shows the names and photos for all the plants we used in our makeover. Our goals? To create a cottage-style flower garden and a solid color background against our porch for year-round color.
We're sharing not only what we did to overcome some soil-water-rock obstacles, but also a plant guide that shows the names and photos for all the plants we used in our makeover. Our goals? To create a cottage-style flower garden and a solid color background against our porch for year-round color.
We're enjoying our fresh new landscaping compared to what we previously had! Like almost all landscaping projects, there were difficulties to work around, though, before we could plant and enjoy.
When we originally landscaped our just-built house's front yard a few years ago we didn't realize a couple of things about this area - one, that it had terrible drainage due to clay soil and two, it was full of rocks. So the plants we thought would do there were not performing as well as they should, and a couple died outright from too much water.
Our first foundation plantings were disappointing with their top-heavy foliage and bare bottom branches. We transplanted the original shrubs to the backyard and replaced them with a mix of soft-tough compact hollies and boxwoods. Both can be shaped easily and maintained at the height we needed (about 2-3 feet tall).
The combination of hollies and boxwoods offer different colors and textures and will provide a solid background color. To address the soil issue, we dug up much of the clay and replace it with better topsoil, removing as many rocks as we could.
The original four azaleas haven't done as well here and we'll eventually transplant all of them to an more shaded area in back - these two we're leaving until they finish blooming. Right now they provide a punch of pink cottage-garden color, don't they?
We used a variety of perennials in predominately a pink and blue color scheme and have listed every plant we used, along with a photo as part of our plant guide. These are four of our favorites - find the rest of the plant guide at the link below!
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
Comments
Join the conversation
3 of 35 comments
-
A dramatic change.......what curb appeal........everything is so pretty......
-
Thank you for your kind words!
-
-
Lve the blues and pinks. Great ideas great project.
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
I didn’t see the link for continued reading.