The long-awaited landscaping project before and after photo post!!!
ETA: I used to have images of what the different plants will eventually look like, but I got a message from LJ reprimanding me for linking to outside images. So I took them all out (even though their problem was only with one image). Sorry.
So, here is what we had before...
That picture was from either the first time we looked at the house or the day of the inspection...gives you an idea of what we started with.
The evergreens are yews (probably my least favorite type of shrub), and there were a couple of azaleas among the overgrown yews, and one forsythia, which was in a bad location and had been hacked to the ground by the previous owner. My dad did a merciless hack job on the shrubs on either side of the steps so we could paint...it was neccessary but it made the landscaping look even worse. We did what we could by trimming everything up, but all of the shrubs were really old, had been planted too close together and many were too close to the house. It doesn't look quite so bad in these pictures because the azaleas were in bloom and we had just trimmed everything up.
Last spring I bought an artificial lavender wreath at Target for the front door. Last summer I painted the front door a periwinkle blue to kind of go with but not exactly match the lavender. One of my big things with this landscaping project was to finally have some of the plants that I've always loved...the most important of which were blue-flowering hydrangeas (see sig picture). So between the wreath, the front door, and wanting hydrangeas, I tried to go with a purple/blue/white flowering theme in choosing plants.
There was nothing existing that was worth saving, so we paid a landscaping company to come out and rip everything out. They cut all of the shrubs out with chainsaws, chipped them up, and ground out the stumps. When that was complete, we had to deal with the lattice under the porch. I think it was original to the house and it was falling apart and rotting. So before we could do any landscaping, we built wood frames and used plastic lattice panels to hide the area under the porch. Here's a picture of the completed lattice panels right after we tilled up the areas for the new beds...
The house looks kind of naked with no shrubs in front, but the new panels were a big improvement.
Here is the little plan I sketched up for the project. It's kind of grubby because we had it ouside with us to measure and lay everything out, so it has gotten dirty. It has also changes a bit and there are things sketched in on top of other things because I changed my mind once or twice.
Our street runs southeast to northwest, so our house isn't square to the cardinal directions. When you are facing the house, the left side faces southeast, the front faces northeast, and the right faces northwest. So there isn't really a true north (shady) side...every side gets sun at some point during the day. I'd say the front is the most shady, but it does get sun from sunrise through most of the morning. Other issues to deal with...
1)I could only go out 5' from the side of the house on the left side, next to the driveway area. Our driveway area is a shared-use easement (our neighbors own the land and we have use of it). They want to sell it to us and we plan to buy it eventually and put in a paved driveway, but that is another issue for another time.
2) On the right side of the house there are wires running to the house from the poles along the street. This is pretty much right where I wanted to put a tree, so that limited what I could choose to put there. There are meters on the side of the house that are associated with the wires and further down on the same side we have two A/C units, so it would be nice to hide all of those things from street view.
Our house sits up very high, so blocking windows isn't an issue at all...things would have to grow about 6-8' tall before reaching a window sill.
I wanted to have definitive starting and stopping points for the beds...something non-arbitrary that made some sense. Plus we couldn't afford to go all the way around the house this year. So I started with a bed running from the side door that goes to the basement, around to the front near the steps, and then from the steps to the side where the A/C units are. I kept the bed lines pretty simple because our yard is small (40' wide lot plus a 10' shared access easement where our unpaved driveway is located), so there really isn't a lot of space for big sweeping curves. The front edge of the beds were set to match up with where the sidewalk starts to flare wider at the bottom of the steps. The bed purposely bubbles out at the right corner to accommodate a tree...I wanted to put something that would get taller to kind of anchor the corner and focus/frame the view when you are approaching the house from along the street.
One thing to keep in mind before I show you the after pictures...everything we planted is MUCH smaller than full size. I designed the plan so that when everything reaches full size, it will look filled-in but not crowded. But in the mean time, there are lots of big spaces with nothing in them. Eventually everything will fill in and take up the extra space. (See the plan above.) As I post our "after" picutures, I am also adding pictures from the internet to help you fill in the blanks with your imagination. And I'm sorry the pictures are kind of small. For some reason photobucket keeps making them smaller and it's pissing me off!!
So showing everything from left to right, here's what we put in...
You can see the door to the basement on the side of the house. The bed starts right next to it. Along this side we planted 3 blue-flowering butterfly bush. I ordered them from an online place, so they are only 6" high right now (you get what you pay for, and they were very inexpensive), but they will get to be about 5' tall and 5' wide. They will look like this, but with bluish lavender flowers...
Among the butterfly bush, I also planted periwinkle, which is a vining, flowering groundcover. They will spread about 2-3' wide and get about 6-8 inches tall.
In the picture, you can see three shrubs near the steps. The one on the far left is Castle Wall holly and the one next to it is Castle Spire holly. There is another Castle Spire on the other side of the steps. The Castle Wall is the male holly that pollinates the two female (castle spire) hollies. These will grow about 3' wide and 8' tall, and I'm using them to kind of "frame" the front steps. They have berries which will turn red in the fall and add some color through the winter.
In front of the hollies, we put in a small massing of ornamental grasses...but again this is a "you get what you pay for" situation where I ordered them through the mail, and they aren't much to look at right now. They are dwarf fountain grass and grow to about 24- 30 inches tall/wide.
In front of the grasses we planted a grouping of 'Autumn Joy' sedum, which are perennials and bloom at the end of summer and into the fall. This is kind of a diversion from my color scheme (the flowers start out green, turn pink, then age into a russet), but I wanted to have grasses, and these always look good paired with grasses, so I had to have them too.
The other shrub in the picture (the one on the right, towards the bottom of the steps) is a Summersweet. There is another on the other side of the steps. They bloom with white flowers in the summer and smell very good. They will get about 4-5' tall and 3-4' wide.
At the bottom of the steps on either side of the sidewalk, I've left a spot to plant some annuals each year. I'm not really big on annuals (I generally prefer perennials) but I wanted to be able to have a little area that I could change-up from year to year. I planted blue lobelias there this year. (Mine aren't nearly as filled-in as these, though,)
Moving on to the other side of the steps...
Next to the steps are a Castle Spire Holly (furthest to the back), with a summersweet and lobelia in front of it, like the other side. In front of the lattice panels, we planted white-flowering clematis. We both wanted blue-flowering (since white flowers won't have any contrast against the white lattice) but the nursery we were at was out and we didn't want to have to come back again.
In front of the clematis, to the right of the summersweet are three cherry laurel, which are broad-leaf evergreen shrubs. They don't grow in Indiana (which is where I learned plants) so I was very happy to find this evergreen option. (I'm picky about evergreen shrubs.) They will grow to about 4' tall and 6' wide, so they will fill in as a nice mass of green across the front. They also get white flowers.
In front of the cherry laurel is a big space for perennials. I didn't want to spend much more money this summer, so we only put in one grouping of prennials...Royal Candles Speedwell. I really like them, and they seem to be very happy in their location.
At the corner of the house, the bed sweeps out in a larger radius. At the center we wanted to put a tree, but we were limited in size because of the wires. I wanted a Serviceberry, but DH didn't like them as much as the magnolias we looked at, so we ended up with a Sweetbay Magnolia. It is white-flowering from late spring through early summer (so I'm guessing soon).
Surrounding the magnolia tree we've planted hydrangeas. As the years go by and both they and the tree get bigger, we'll limb up the tree a bit. We ended up with Endless Summer Hydrangeas. They don't have any blooms on them yet though. I hope they bloom this year.
Behind the magnolia, at the corner of the house, we planted a firethorn (pyracantha). Right now it's quite narrow, and about 4' tall, but it will grow to be 5' wide and 8' tall. It will get white flowers in the spring and lots of orange berries in the fall that last into the winter. I'm pretty sure that it will be evergreen in this climate (it's semi-evergreen in Indiana).
Between the firethorn and the A/C units, we planted three Oakleaf Hydrangeas. I LOVE oakleaf hydrangeas almost as much as the blue-flowering hydrangeas. They will grow to about 6' tall & wide. They get big white flowers in the summer (which dry up and stay on into the winter) and the leaves turn pretty russet colors in the fall.
As on the other side with the butterfly bush, you get what you pay for, and they are only 6" tall right now. I saw larger ones selling for $80 each at a nursery, so I'm happy with watching them grow for $8 each.
For anyone who is interested, we bought almost everything from Valley View Farms in Cockeysville/Hunt Valley. With the exception of the cherry laurel, which we bought from Poor Boy's in Parkville, and the butterfly bush, grasses, and oakleaf hydrangeas, which I ordered from Bluestone Perennials. And the speedwell and endless summer hydrangeas we bought at Lowe's.