Hello everyone, bought the house two years ago, this is in the front of the property and I really don’t like the look. What can I do to improve while I don’t give a fortune on it.
by NetworkDynamo
Hello everyone, bought the house two years ago, this is in the front of the property and I really don’t like the look. What can I do to improve while I don’t give a fortune on it.
by NetworkDynamo
45 Comments
Lower the inside level. Put in a small berm to the lawn edge.
Pressure wash them
Plants. Filling it in with color will make a huge difference
The walls look great. It’s the beds that are bare and need more plants
Mettre un peu plus de végétation et de vie que ce désert probablement rempli de pesticides
Jus add plants. There’s nothing wrong with these!
Get some darker mulch or fill out the bed more you won’t even notice them
New mulch
I literally had a new stone retaining wall installed last week that looks a lot like this one. New mulch, new plants. Leave the stones as is.
Sweep the trash and mulch from the bottom where they meet the sideway. Creeping phlox would be the bomb.
The wall isn’t your enemy here, the anemic planting is. You have a massive sea of woodchips with a few lonely plants scattered around like polka dots. When a bed is bare, every flaw in the stone screams for attention. Rebuilding that edge is going to cost real money so skip the masonry work. Instead you need to soften the hard line and integrate the hardscape into the yard using soft engineering.
Stop treating plants like individual statues and start building sweeping masses. You need a solid block of low growing trailing perennials planted right behind those stones. Get creeping phlox, trailing sedum, or creeping thyme and pack them tight along the edge so they spill over the rock face. This cascades over the wonky spots, breaks up the heavy stone line, and turns a chunky retaining edge into a deliberate garden feature.
Once the edge is spilling over, fill in the rest of that dead zone. Plant your shrubs in tight groups so they flow together into a single texture rather than sitting isolated. Right now you are lacking structure entirely. Bring in some native grasses or small evergreens to bridge the visual gap between your new trailing edge and the lawn above. Make the bed a solid mass of vegetation and you will never notice the uneven stones again.
I wouldn’t do much to the stones/wall, look great. Follow some of the advice on this post and improve/add to the beds. Enjoy!
Dig a small trench like 5″x5″ along the retaining wall and then mulch into it. It’ll help keep the mulch off the wall sharpening the line which will do a lot. However you might need to shovel some dirt up the slope to adjust the grade.
This is a major lapse of the Correct Number of Plants to own rule. The correct number of plants to own is n+1.
Also i find most gardeners tend to buy way to much of a variety. But a couple flats of the same flower or a flat of each.
You must be really bored to want to do this. Those walls look very natural and very good. Leave them alone. You might add a lot more plants to that measly garden, however. That alone — and how easy and cheap would that be — would transform the look of that area.
Sedum aka “stonecrop”. Let it hang over the rock edge.
They look like stone – what is there to improve upon – good condition, straight, etc.
What grow zone are you in? You may have a hard time finding creeping phlox, it’s usually for sale early to mid April. Coneflower, black eye Susan’s, geums, monarda, penstemon, butterfly weed, Shasta daisies – these are all perennials that will come back every year.
You’re right these look terrible. Sell me your house and I’ll take care of em for ya
Weathered natural stone?
Literally nothing can improve that.
There’s lots of stuff you can do to make it worse according to your own taste, so you’ll need to specify what that is in order to get useful advice.
Clean them a little with an appropriate cleaner, maybe a mildew remover. I don’t know if power washing is appropriate.
Plant close to edge near rocks for some things to cascade down a bit if you don’t particularly like the stone. If the stones get hot in the summer and if sun is beating down on this spot, choose plants accordingly. I would never remove them. I think they look nice and you don’t have to worry about wall leaning over, rotting, etc.
What’s wrong with their look as is in your eyes?
Creeping phlox
That wall looks great. The problem is you have nothing but mulch in the bed. Plant some plants.
Power wash stone, remove old mulch, some more plants and add black mulch
It looks great as is
Rock wall is awesome. More plants! Go for a rock garden look.
I’d do some native perennials- see what’s native to your areas. They are low maintenance and pollinators will love them. Along the rocks you can get some fun trailing rock garden plants- succulents, sedums, etc.
I hear wood paneling is making a comeback.
I absolutely love the natural look of the wall. Plant the beds better. The wall isn’t your issue.
I actually love your rustic retaining walls. Pls don’t pressure wash. Fill that area w/ plants.
Native options: Arrowwood viburnum, purple cone flowers, black aronia, blackeyed Susans, wild bergamot or Jacobs Cline, liatris, agastache, sedum stonecrop, white sage.
You didn’t ask — but on your back rock ledge put more arrowwood viburnum and spicebush swallowtail. At porch w/ shrubs tie in color w/ monarda or blackeyed Susans in front.
Clean them and refresh your mulch
Creeping phlox
I would just load it up with plants and other various types that creep, like creeping phlox
The stones themselves look great. Just need to soften them with plants.
What’s wrong with it?
Plant some Aubrieta flower. It’s a cascading ground cover flower that will cascade beautifully off the edges. Along the back edge you can probably do some zinnias or wildflowers.. anything with height would look great.
Nothing – they look exactly as they should
Replant the beds and the rock will look amazing
Power wash those rocks!!!
Pull the mulch back to expose more of the stone, and plant things in the bed that will fill in and flow over them, like creeping phlox and some sedums or even annuals.
Pressure wash. Maybe acid wash
https://preview.redd.it/z3oo6bdowzyg1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c72301ff5c359a9b968e572a0dd8cb6fde9cb98
Phlox spilling over would like nice.
I would put one more stone right here:
https://preview.redd.it/cxhn8c1exzyg1.png?width=1360&format=png&auto=webp&s=0eeba6ad320f784eac3f848e50c684cc997becf1
then you’re done. Looks good!
I had a wall like this. We planted phlox and after a few years it spilled over and was STUNNING. New owner has maintained it the past six or so years and it is truly magical.