Front Yard Landscape Ideas.
 (Read 100+ times)
By Glory Lennon
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So, you just had the keys to your brand, spanking new home handed to you and you beam at the thought of owning a little bit of earth. But your smile quickly fades. The builders left the yard a huge mess and you have no idea where to begin to fix it. How in the world do you landscape the front yard when you’ve never done it before?
Don’t fret. This is the perfect opportunity to use your imagination. You have a nearly blank slate and all you have to do is look around you. There are ideas everywhere and no, we’re not saying copy your neighbors. Where’s the fun in that? Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but it’s also boring. What you have to do is look to nature and do as Mother Nature does, sort of. You want your landscape to be unique, one-of-a-kind and only you can do that to your liking.
Depending on your lot size and your preference, you might want to do away with the typical front yard and go the cottage garden route. This means replacing the labor intensive lawn with perennial borders full to overflowing with flowers and small shrubs. Perhaps a tad unconventional but it would be quite a sight in full bloom and far easier to maintain.
Want privacy from peering neighbors? Plant a row of tall growing hedges between you and nosy people. Make it shrubs that flower and produce berries and you have a living fence pleasing to both you and songbirds. Possibly your neighbors will like it too. They don’t want you looking at them either, you know.
Small growing flowering trees will be a traffic-stopping addition to the landscape, assuming you want to stop traffic. Crape Myrtle, if you are lucky enough to live in a temperate area where these grow, are almost ever-blooming, multi-stemmed small trees that look wonderful anywhere. At the east or west corner of the house it would soften hard edges and somewhat shade the home from the hot sun in summer without blocking much in winter.
Planting evergreen bushes along the foundation of the home, while blase, would also add interest to the front of the house if atypical plants are used. New cultivars of old favorites come out every year just waiting for an imaginative gardener such as yourself to come along and put them to ornamental use. Such as? Variegated Boxwood, Golden Globe Arborvitae or a Klondike Azalea. All are underused in the landscape and shouldn’t be. For zones 7-9 you might consider a Camellia, another under-valued, flowering, evergreen shrub worth having in the landscape.
Put in a small, prefab pond, a stately statue or a fountain in the front of your home with profusely flowering perennials or annuals surrounding it. That would really get the neighbors gawking with envy. Again assuming you want that. But if nothing else, you’ll like it because you came up with the entire plan. At least you can always say you did. I won’t tell anyone you had some help. I promise.
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Author Bio Box: Glory Lennon
 For more amazing garden facts and cute short stories visit me at: http://www.helium.com/user/32782
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