Fern Cook, Landscape Designer
Vision Accomplished Landscape Consulting
Phone: 404-441-0000
LandscapeDesignAtlanta.com
Hey there, this is Fern Cook with Vision Accomplished. Today we’re going to talk about some front yard landscape makeover ideas that won’t break the bank and that you can actually do yourself. This client came to us in need of a front yard makeover. Her yard had been professionally landscaped years before. Um, so there’s some stepping stones in here and some plants that were once appropriate like a large tree died here. So, this paper bush has perished due to too much sun. Um, plants that seemed like a good idea at the time, like these sunshine privet, have just gotten overgrown. And she didn’t want any grass in her front yard because she travels all summer. And so, you can see that the grass has jumped over from somewhere or come back from when it was there before. I don’t know. But this is what it looked like when we got there. This is what it looks like now. This is just after installation, so everything’s really small. But let me talk you through our decisions and why this is a good landscape design. So, here’s our 3D design. This was completed prior to construction. Um, you can see the existing stepstone path didn’t have any of this gravel or border around it, but it led from the sidewalk to the front door and then from the front door over to this driveway and then over here to this side driveway. Uh, in order to maximize her budget, I decided to reuse many of her plants as transplants and also just eliminate so much crowded space. It’s so much easier just to keep a mulched area free of weeds than a ground cover area free of weeds. Mulched areas, you can just put down cardboard before you mulch, not worry about it for a season. Um, but when you have an area like this full of sweet flag, you’re going to be hand pulling all season. There’s no chemical way or manual way to easily eradicate weeds. So, um, the first decision we made was to keep the existing stepping stone path in its location. We decided to simply surround it with decorative crushed brown gravel. Please don’t use pea gravel. Pearavevel is round and it rolls and it goes everywhere. It’s like that dry sand at the beach. When you walk on it, your foot slides out from it and it kicks around and gets everywhere. So, this is actually a crushed brown gravel. You can see that it’s flat and chipped. It comes with some smaller particulates and it makes a really nice after a little bit of time, it really compacts and makes a nice walkway. And and we’ve bordered it with this is called strip rubble. This is a flag stone product much like these stepping stones that were already there. where it’s made out of natural flag stone. It’s only it’s cut into long strips. So they call it strip rubal. So that was the way that we made this walkway more safe, more easy to identify and frankly we just needed to take up some space so that she had less maintenance. So back to the design. Um we had to create a holding area for all of the transplants. This is the side view looking from the right hand side driveway across to the other side past the front steps. So, we had some plants that were worth keeping. I think I repurposed these gardinas basically in the place they’re in. They weren’t dead and I figured once we eliminated all this competition, they would bounce back. There’s the after view of from that viewpoint. But you can see we’ve got some iris. Um, there were quite a few iris all out here in front of the sidewalk and we repurposed almost all of the iris. This was some cat mint that she really liked and we repurposed that. I’ve already talked about this sweet flag. That’s a plant that we retrieved from this mess. We created a holding area during the course of the project so that we could um keep everything alive, put a sprinkler on it, and come back to it when it was time to plant. So, another distinctive factor in this low more lowmaintenance landscape design is using potted plants. This may feel counterintuitive, but potted plants are easy enough for anyone to change out with every season or at least occasionally. I caution people not to fall in love with plants in a pot. um they don’t last forever, but they certainly can last you several years and provide a nice lift of color and interest instantaneously. So everything’s not just small and at ground level. Here you can see um we repurposed that sunshine legustrum that was all overgrown right here. And I actually treeformed it which only means taking off the bottom foliage and exposing the trunks much like any neighborhood tree. You see the trunk and then the leaves are up above. But that allows you to continue to bring the leaf canopy up. And eventually this little sunshine legustramm will become a really nice patio tree for this space. We left in place the oak leaf or limelight hydrangea. I believe these were and the chameleia that were already there. We just trimmed them up nicely so they have a little bit more shape and more opportunity to grow. And you can see we also repurposed and added a few extra boulders, which is another easy trick to adding instant gratification beauty that won’t die. You don’t have to water it. You don’t have to care for it. It’s just pretty all the time. And it makes sense in a rock garden situation like this. When we finished the design, the client said this was her absolute favorite piece. It’s important to remember to add character and whimsy. There’s no reason not to have some fun in your front yard. Don’t leave it all for the backyards. So, there’s the final after. I think the project came out really nicely. It’s easy to maintain, even for a single woman living in a big house, and you can apply lots of these tips and tricks to your own front yard. Thanks for watching. I’m Fern Cook. This is Vision Accomplished.
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