Hi melady,

You could definitely do a separate flowered garden bed with the small area right up against the house under the window. It looks like that is not grass like the rest, am I correct? A good place to bring some color in... At the front door you could put a pair of large terracotta pots with a tallish spiky plant maybe.

What about taking the slope up and using some stone there to help create a stepped terraced look instead of a rising slope? You could consider taking part of the grass out at the edge of the lawn where it currently meets the driveway edge; put in a brick mowing strip then have a long curved long bed for flowering plants, shrubs etc.

Here, we ended up eventually ended up taking all the grass out of our front yard! We fell in love with roses (we now have 112!), they could look very nice with your yard too- just a thought :0) If you go with any roses don't get Hybrid Teas, go for Floribunda and Shrub types- trust me you be more pleased with them! You've certainly got some unique areas there can could be played with! You need to get some color going besides all that green. Look for hardy perennials that grow well in your area. Good luck and enjoy. It is a very nice looking house.

We've been getting landscaping done at our house, here is a link to my Picture Trail, have a looksie!

Here is a link that might be useful: look at the Landscaping Projects 2007 album

Careytearose, thank you so much for your ideas. I can visualize all the suggestions you made, and a tiered upper yard is an option we'll consider. After all, getting more beds out of this yard would be so great! The green you see in the pictures (under the picture window) is juniper and I plan to pull all that out of there. Enjoyed your landscaping and roses albums and wow! you have such a lovely yard!! Thank you so much for sharing...

I've added one extra photo on my album (last photo) so you can see the perspective from the house up our steep driveway. There are about 5 houses across that upper level of the street that look right down on us.

Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of the house

What if you redid your entire house in a bright green, pink and yellow theme...including the roof? That would sure set your house apart! I a guessing that is not the idea you were looking for, but your post leaves me guessing what you are looking for. If you are an experienced garden with a big budget, then removing the all the grass, installing retaining walls and filling your yard with plants is an option. One the other extreme, adding a few annuals to your foundation planting and maybe converting the steepest parts of the bank to groundcover would be another option.

BTW, the pictures on your page are way too big. The html sets a size to show in the browser, but the images themselves are still full sized. Except for the last one, your pictures are all about 1.7 to 1.8 MB each. I gave up yesterday when I was connected via dial-up.

- Brent

I can see that the site is a bit of a puzzle.

It seems to me you need to segment your needs and prioritize them, and then, as Brent suggests, consider what resources you have to apply. To me they sound like
privacy from side, privacy from across street, soften angles of house, and some "wow" factor. Something like a rock garden on the slope would imply another need, such as "avoid mowing the slope" or "a place to garden." Or that might just be a "want".

To me, "wow" comes from how well you meet the other challenges. Anyone can put up a home depot hedge, or do standard foundation planting, or plunk in a couple of trees. Wow comes from how you select, layer, place, and group your plants, and from what hardscape you use to frame and contextualize them.

For example, you can't get much of a wow from your foundation planting with a planting bed that is - what, 2 feet? - wide, when the height of the house you are trying to soften is ten times that, nor when you limit your plant selection to juniper. Obviously, the previous owner was more cookie cutter - but we're not sure just how uncookie-cutter you are! To what style or standard of landscaping do you aspire?

To get a wow from your privacy screening issues, it's about choosing the right placement for trees (does not need to be right at perimeter) and choosing trees that are wow in and of themselves.

No forum can set priorities for you, and you haven't told us enough about your resources (knowledge, budget, imagination, artistic eye, time for maintenance) to make suggestions that are anything other than wild guesses. I hope that this will have helped a little - and if it hasn't, can you offer us more insight to work with?

KarinL

well with the view you must have from the back of your house, I wouldn't want to waste a lot of time/money on the front yard.
Your main front feature seems to be your driveway and garage-- i just hate that when builders do that to you.
if it were mine:
privacy from the road issue:
1 along the front af the lot at the road side i'd put in a split rail fence: plant some vines or roses to grow along the fence. between the fence and the road a border of mixed day lilies, daffodils, and lilies and some yuccas with mulch. to mark the coners of your lot, sides of the drive-- maybe some sort of shrub or small tree. the hunk of yard between the drive and the fence, plant with ornamental sumacs for great fall color and privacy. you might stick in some smaller hollies or pine trees for winter interest. consider putting a border of perrenials down each side of the drive or just a really tough ground cover-- houtonyia
give great color in the sun and deals well with shade.

house entry:
make sure you have a generous sweep of walk way for you guests to walk up to your front door. Use the space between the walk and the house as a flower bed. this is the area where you want to be fussy in-- you will see it all the time to weed, deadhead and enjoy. keep any shrubs below the window level. Put lighting along the walk: a post light at the edge of the drive in the flower bed, with clematis going up it or an annual vine. On the flat part of your yard
between the walk and the slope is where you want a sweep af perfect lawn, you may also want a path leading across the front of the house to the side and to the back yard-- in front of those junipers. i too would get rid of the junipers
but still plnt shrubs in front of the house. what about rugosa roses-- they are good looking all year long and don't need lots of care once established.

the slope: from the drive down to the house, i would plant
a collection of shrubs anfd small trees that are ornamental:
you could terrace the hill if you like and plant it with
peonies. daffs, iris and add impatients and mums for summer and fall. or start at the top with lilacs, redbuds, magnolias, dogwoods, buddelias, azaleas, rhodadendrons and underplant with a ground cover and bulbs. bring this all the way along your lot line to the corner of your house but
leave enough room to pass along side of the house to the back yard. if you want too, continue a single row of shrubs along the side of the house to the back yard along the lot line.

end of the drive where the car is parked. You got to do something here-- just looking at the photos i thought the car was going to slide on down that slope. Maybe a planting of doublefile viburniums-- i assume that there are steps leading to the back yard-- also i would plant some shrubs along the driveway-- again rugosa roses, some of the shrub
hollies-- you are looking for something about 5-6 foot tall
that is evergreen-- mahonia, camelia(if you are in zone 7),
clumping bamboos, some of the larger ornamental grasses--depends how much space you have to plant in between the drive and the lot lines.

other thoughts: define the edge of you parking area with split rail fence. define the lower side of the drive with
split rail fence.

you don't give a clue where you live or what your zone is, so its really hard to give suggestions about plants. My peronal preference would be to just cut a little grass out front, do a little weeding and deadheading, a spring and fall clean-up. and spend my time enjoying the view and shade out back. Once these plantings i've suggested are matured, you'll be cutting just a bit of grass and triming
only as needed.

good luck
diggerb

Without knowing anything more about you (as others have mentioned), the first thing that comes to mind is some sort of large-ish tree in front of the house to break up the boxiness of it.

Hey Brent, point well taken, I agree that my descriptions as well as intentions in this posting were vague. To answer, I am not an experienced gardener and I haven't set a budget (yet). At this point, I'm trying to see what options are out there for this more challenging yard and work from there. I have re-sized my photos to help speed things up for those with dial-up.

Karinl, I appreciate your idea to segment my goals for this project and I will definately do that. Your insight to notice that the higher goals of the project would be to enhance the overall look of the front of the house (not so much "wow" as just camouflaging the big grey box look) while adding a bit of privacy to side neighbors was dead on! The higher part of the yard would be lower on the priority list to start and since this larger area of the yard deserves more forethought and plan, I will take more time to do my homework. A "style to which I aspire", hmm...have to think on that one. I do however, appreciate your attention to providing me with the "who, what, when, why & how" to landscape and gardening design.

To diggerv2--thank you for your suggestions on types of plants/bushes/trees that is a big help to me! Your nicely detailed breakdown of suggestions for the different segments of yard really helps me visualize solutions. I am in zone 6 (Western Maryland) so I am familiar with most of the varieties you mentioned.

Thank you all.