I'd like to see more variety in the #1 and #2 plants, even if you split up the two #1 areas. Also, if you look at the 16 ft. wall and guage the size of the plants, those are some pretty small shrubs to have that many, maybe 3 ft. across if you add the part that extends a bit out past the wall of the house.

I would also suggest that you consider some evergreens as the main framework of your plan, with hydrangeas added in for summer color. Below is a link to a hydrangea in winter.

If the Pear is a Callery, keep an eye on it for breakage. They're notorious for weak crotch angles, and I've seen a lot of them come down when you least expect it.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:32379}}

That picture helped. I don't think I will go with hydrangeas as I want something to show up in the winter--maybe boxwoods or ninebark??

The pear tree is a cleveland pear. i don't think I want another pear close to porch though.

Here's a link to the plan.

Here is a link that might be useful:

I wasn't suggesting another pear. This is a discussion about Pyrus Calleryana here on GW.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/trees/msg0222314316614.html?20

Here's a link to the photo of the house. Do you want to block the light and view from the window where you are proposing another tree? From the plan, it looks like you're planning on putting it about 7 feet or so from the house, and even closer to the walk. We're talking something fairly small.

Ninebark is deciduous, too, and won't look any better than the Hydrangea. Google UConn plant database and Missouri Botanical Garden plant database and enter your site info for some suggested plants. Both sites have pretty good information about the plants, including good and bad qualities, etc.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Do you have a nursery nearby you could visit? A selection of plants hardy to your area and with (hopefully) a knowledgeable staff to offer some additional information will go a long way in helping you make some informed choices. Personally, I have a hard time understanding how much plant selection can be done just from books or the internet as neither of them can successfully duplicate the advantages of seeing and judging the characteristics of the plant in person.

I would encourage the use of at least some evergreen material, otherwise the area is going to look barren for long stretches of time. Boxwoods grow as slow as molasses so I'd not necessarily dismiss the advantages of yews, arbs or other conifers out of hand. Your selection of broadleaved evergreens is pretty limited otherwise for a zone 5.

No I don't want to block the window in that area and don't want something hanging over the sidewalk so I didn't want anything big there and most of the trees grow too big. I was even thinking about something like a rose of sharon tree and then but a boulder under it with some dwarf iris's. I face east and always wanted some azalea's or rhodo's. I'll try the database.

=====================

I agree that if you've only seen yews, junipers, and arborvitae as used in 1960s style foundation plantings that they look pretty blah. HOWEVER, nicely choosen varieties, thoughtfully planted will provide beautiful back drops for other, more ornamental plants and give you winter interest; as well as being easier-to-care for than some other things.

You can go to a local nursery to see some of these beautiful conifers and browse landscaping books and magazines to see them combined with deciduous and evergreen flowering shrubs.

I agree that there are too much of #1 and #2 shrubs. I think mixing it up a bit would be more appealing.

How about first 5 #1 directly to the right of the door, japanese holly (ilex crenata), #6 serviceberry (amelanchier) in between some creeping garden juniper? The rest of #1, some conifer of your choice (check 'em out!) with #3 being a pretty decidous shrub (hydrangea perhaps as you wanted?)

Probably needs to be mixed up a bit more. Also, not sure if there is enough sun for the creeping garden juniper. But, anyway, those are some of my starting thoughts.
Patty

This style house is the hardest to landscape (well) in my opinion. These are popping up all over my neighborhood, and I haven't seen a single one with an eye-catching front yard. Because the garage is so "out there," and the rest of the narrow front is enclosed, it seems everyone squishes all the plants into the small front area. It would be better to bring the landscape out a few more feet than normal, to enlarge the planting area.

I would have to agree. On top of it, I have a 3 car garage which takes up a large part of the lot. It is 85 x 110. The distance from the house to the sidewalk is 35 ft and the design juts out between 8 to 22 ft. For some reason hedges are the "in" thing. I would say over 50% of the houses in the sub have hedges.

You could yank out that walk way that is do close to the garage and then create a courtyard effect (you could use fencingto strengthen this, but not necessarilly). That could change the walk to a greating area (small patio)more centrally located in between the jogs and then bring the walk out from there with the option of a sweeping curve, if you like. It would open the opportunity for planting on the left side of the walk and balancing out the weight of the space. Adding some focal point and depth along the side of that garage will downplay the extension of the garage toward the street and make the house more attractive when arriving from the right as you look at the house. It also adds a lot of visual weight which balances out the planting in front of the 16' face.

This house is predisposed to have you overpower that 16' portion of the house and leave the garage bare. Don't be force fed. Strengthen the weak and don't over feed the strong or you will have a bare garage with a house attached to it with a front door pushed way back in a corner.

It seems like almost no new construction(and most of old) puts in a terrible front walkways that then drive the rest of the decisions in the life of the landscape for decades. It is very hard to make yourself tear up part of your own home when it is brand new; it seems like you should only add "new" things; also, for most DIY people are more comfortable killing some grass and planting shrubs compared to installing a walkway, so you might have to pay for some professional installation, but I agree, if you pry up the sidewalk-type entryway now and do something more functional and attractive, other aspects will fall into place with less effort than is required now. Otherwise you will spend money on other hardscape and lots of plants and still feel is not right and then be even less likely to tear up parts and start over. An appropriately broad, appropriately positioned, correct material entrance walk and landing area does not need as much compensatory landscaping, either, or can get by with some attractive container plantings and still looks "right".

Listen to Laag & Frankie - that skinny little sidewalk will never look right with your house. It will always look like the servants' entrance.

Annie

I could put in another walkway and make it wider but I don't see how that is going to change much of the overall design. It will look nicer but not change the layout much. The porch is only 75 inches. Patios in the front are popular in this area but I really don't like them. I have another design where they put flagstone down and a metal bench on it.

Here's another picture of the house with the garage
http://www.byegonebooks.com/ebay/house2.JPG . the lighting is not that great though.

OK, I'm going to stick my neck out and share a 10 minute mockup of the front of the house, because I know how much everyone loves mockups on this forum. I'm going to issue a disclaimer right here and say that it is not what I'd call an inspired design, but hey, what you want for nothing?

I added the little meet and greet area with bench, and brought the walk out a little farther away from the garage, freeing up a small planting area. Without doing a scale drawing in plan view, there is no way to know if the shrubs I inserted will actually fit in this area, but there it is. I added a mix of evergreen shrubs, along with some pink hydrangeas because I hate the blue ones, and a couple of blooming perennials. I'd probably continue the planting along the front of the little patio, keeping it very low, maybe even just a groundcover. Also, the walk where it meets the patio needs to be a bit wider than it looks in the mockup.

I think that opening up the area in front of the door and accenting the right side of the house without covering it up too much focuses attention on the entry and away from the big garage doors. Or maybe it doesn't. Is this sort of what you had in mind, laag?

{{gwi:32380}}

I have a question for the benefit of byegonebooks. I am NOT asking this because I also have a garage that sticks out 20' beyond the front of my house with a cement walk that leaves a 1' wide planting bed! This is just for his/her benefit. ;-)

In a design like that pictured by Jo, would you bring the paved surface up flush with the side of the garage or would you leave some room for plantings? It sure seems like a planting bed that was even 3' deep would look like the walk headed away from the door and then curved back into the door. Then towards the door, this planting bed would have to get quite narrow. The plantings would also have to be very short so they do not block the view of the front door.

I agree with the Patty's comments on the conifers you mention. I saw some really nice yews at the nursery a few weeks ago and I even planted a juniper and some arborvitae last year. I would not plant a pear that close to my house...though I doubt I would ever plant a pear. ohhh...I just looked at the picture again and it looks like it is already in place. It sure looks like it is going to be scraping your gutters in just a few years.

- Brent

Wow, seeing the garage really changes things. The great thing about Saypoint's design is that it sweeps your eye to the right and balances out the gi-normous garage. The way things were headed previously was to draw the eye to the center of the house, but as Laag points out that leaves everything off-balanced and leads the eye to the dark, almost cavernous, front door. Whereas in Saypoint's design, the front entry is lightened up and inviting.

Just as an exercise, take your original design plan and actually add on, in scale, the garage. Then look at the design and you will feel how out of balance it is.

And, Jo, personally I'm a sucker for a good mock-up done by someone who knows what they are doing. :)

Also, FYI, the hydrangeas will only be pink if the soil is alkaline, so if you want it pink, you can't have acid loving plants with it...acid loving, like laurel, rhodies, azaleas and such. But those aren't in Saypoint's picture so it could be a moot point.

Patty

So that's why my hydrangeas are blue! LOL. Yeah, you definitely have to know what your soil is like before you choose specific plants.

Note: I never claimed to know what I'm doing.

Saypoint--thank you for taking the time to do the mockup. I like the walkway but don't care for patios in front of the house. I know they are popular now but with a 3 car drive and the patio stones, it just looks like cement to me.

I actually had 2 other designs made and one had a smaller type patio along with the original sidewalk

http://www.byegonebooks.com/ebay/design1.JPG
http://www.byegonebooks.com/ebay/design2.JPG

The designer said that the 2 focal points should be on a slight angle to the left from the middle of the window on the 16ft wall and the other where the 16ft wall meets the 8 ft wall at about a 45 angle just a little above the corner point along the 8 ft wall. Is that not right?

Brent--the tag on the pear says 25-30 ft high and 12-15 ft wide at maturity so it should not hit the house or gutter even in 25 years especially if kept pruned. I plan on living here for 5-7 years.

It's interesting how different people react to different design effects, and certainly your own reactions will ultimately determine what you find satisfactory. But in the mockup, there is a greater feeling of spaciousness and planting around the house than if you put similar shrubs right up against the doorway wall. It's just an inital sketch of course and you could modify the dimensions of the "patio".

There might be a way to get some of the same effect as Saypoint's mockup and not be patio, if it really bothers you. The real point is to move the plantings out of the tiny cramped dooryard and farther out into the yard for balance and to have the entry way feel more inviting and less claustrophobic, compared to your original plan, I think. So you could use a smaller landing area, place some kind of groundcover, other than grass, near the entryway, and then continue to move outward with larger plantings.

I can't really make out what's on the drawings very well. I'm not following you about the focal points. I guess you'd put a focal point wherever you wanted to draw attention, whether to highlight an area or to draw attention away from another, less attractive area.

In this case, your front door is so tucked away in the corner and nearly hidden already, I'd be reluctant to fill that front entry space with anything that blocks your view of the entrance. But that's just me. What room is behind that window to the right of the front door?

There are probably a hundred ways to do a design for your house. There isn't one right way and the rest are wrong, it depends on the effect you're after, what your personal preferences are, which plants will thrive in your site conditions, etc. No two designers will do the same design, though you might see some of the same plants used because you have to go with what does well in your area and is readily available at local nurseries. Your budget will affect the design, too. Expensive plants, or easy to propagate and therefore cheaper to buy plants? Lots of hardscape, or none? How much maintenance are you willing or able to do? This will affect plant choices and whether or not perennials are included, or just shrubs and trees.

Whether you have an irrigation system will also affect the design, and some designers will at least note the landscaping in the surrounding neighborhood so that yours won't stick out. Unless you want it to stick out.

And all of this before we even think about style.

Saypoint--I don't know diddly about this but here is what she said.
There are natural focal points as well as forced focal points. Natural focal points are where the average persons eyes would travel and this creates a more flowing and orderly design as opposed to a forced focal point. If you draw a cirle, peoples eyes have a natural tendency to travel to the center and not off to the side somewhere. I dont know how she figured out the natural focal points of this house. While she didn't say anything about balance between the right and left side of the house, she did talk about balance between the front of the house and the sidewalk (where kids ride their bikes). One of the biggest problems with landscaping the houses in my area is that the houses are too big for the lot. So people don't have much of a front yard or backyard. People error in putting too much landscaping in the front so that it starts to approach the sidewalk and then there is no grass. So it doens't look right if you have 3/4's of the front yard is landscaping and 1/4 is grass. The houses that stick out the most are the ones that have too little landscaping or too much.

The room by the door is an office and I like to look out of it so I'm not crazy about a tree that is going to block my view. I was thinking more along the lines of a rose of sharon tree with a boulder underneath with some annuals, a waterfountain or a big container with something upright in it. I live alone so I don't want alot to do. In the front I prefer mainly shrubs with some perrenials. My idea of maintenance is trimming them twice a year and throwing some fertilizer on them. I have a large area to do on the side of the house and in the back as well. I already hauled 12 yards of dirt in so the hard work is done. I have a Mantis that digs holes pretty easily, so I plan on planting the shrubs myself. I can pay someone to do the walkway. My budget for the front is $2500. I'm not buying tiny shrubs but I'm not buying big ones either. We have many nurseries in the area so there are many sizes of the same shrub available. I have a brick paver walkway along the side of the house to the patio that was 2100 so I'm guessing the walkway to the porch would be around 1000-1300 depending on the width. I already have a sprinkling system in but I have a friend that can switch some heads around for cheap.

I do appreciate your input

In design 2, what are the three shrubs closest to the window near the door? I can't make out the handwriting on the plan.

No offense, but the mock up is aweful. The garage is 22' long and the driveway has to be at least 25 for a distance of at least 47' from the street ti the door step. Somehow, you managed to make the 16' wall face that is only eight feet in front of the door step appear to be only 10-15' from the steet. That is why I hate photoimaging.

The mock up does exactly what the walk too close to the garage does. It creates a garden on one side and a garage on the other. It also makes the spectacle of the pavement even bigger like the OP said.

It is not what I had in mind when I said a courtyard effect could help. It can help if you can put some weight to the left of the walk. Its a tough one.

Design 2 the three shrubs are Rhodo's

Vines on the whole front of the garage? To help balance out the greenery of a garden on the right? Maybe a low pot between the doors? Carve up the driveway and insert a grid of brick lines? Part of the problem, I think, is the way the concrete drive flows up into the doors and creates a monolithic appearance. Even repainting the garage doors in the slightly darker trim color (they appear lighter than the trim) might alleviate this look.

Sorry--I've strayed from helping to pick shrubs.

I like the way saypoint's plan invites the recessed door area forward instead of burying it behing shrubs and a tree.

No offense taken, Andrew, I appreciate your comments and value your opinion. :o)

You're right about mockups, it's almost impossible to get a feel for the depth of an area from a photo, and the plantings are pulled too far forward in an attempt to make the shrubs in the rear visible. I would never try to do a design without doing it in plan view with accurate measurements. What is was trying to show is how the house would look from the front with the door/entry unobscured, but the 2D nature of photos doesn't take the garage wall into consideration. In fact, you can't even tell there is a blank wall there. Point taken.

How would you address the position of the door on the far left of the center section? Would you curve the path out to the right to create a planting area and then return to the left to end up somewhere near the door? Ignore the door position and run the walk to the area to the right of the door with a smaller paved area that included the door (assuming that the HO didn't want a patio there)? What would you use for a focal point and/or plantings to disguise the mass of the garage that you see when approaching from the right? Would the focal point and/or plantings block the view of the door from the street? What can be done to minimize the prominence of the garage and driveway at this point, when the whole thing is paved?

Many, if not most, homes are built without any thought given to how the layout of house, drive, and walks will affect future landscaping. I'm sure this big garage/hidden entrance is not all that unusual. Does anyone have examples of similar homes that are landscaped in a way that addresses these problems?

I actually have a similar situation in a plan that I have in progress. The door is also jammed in the corner much as this one is. I have the added "benefit" of a grade change that has the garage floor as high or higher than the threshold of the house door. It does not have an advancing section to the right (like the 8' x 16' section of this house). It has a large established Japanese Maple that the house was designed around before I was involved in the project (a tree spade would have opened up a lot of architectural options).

I brought the walk through the center of the space. Then it opens up as a small greeting patio that connects to the door step off to the side. The idea is that the greeting area is visually the primary destination. The front door becomes the destination from the patio, rather than the drive or street. That creates planting opportunity along the garage that is supportive of the walk and patio (or courtyard, if you will) rather than appearing as frosting for the garage. The garage is now less significant from this space. The planting leads you into that greeting area (mitigate the garage, enhance the courtyard).

There is not much you can do about the large expanse of driveway, so rather than competing with it, you can suck people's attention into the space between the garage and the wing. Over planting the front of the 16' wall face can take away from the drawing of attention into it. It just depends if it draws your attention to much, or if it reinforces your attraction to the deep area between the wings.

Swirl people into the drain - one way to handle it.

Just about all new ranch houses in my area have an entranceway that is set back. The older ranches look like rectangular boxes with little to no dimension.
Sammi--it's actually the front door that is darker than the trim + garage and it already needs painting.

There is another house in my sub that is the same house with a 2 car except they opted for a covered porch (that was 7K more). The outside layout is the same as the one I picked but the shrub layout is different. It doesn't look right because everything is white and green. No color except for the planters which really show up

http://www.byegonebooks.com/ebay/houselikemine.JPG

Eeeewwwww. Scary white rocks and poodle-clipped bushes. That's probably not a landscape that will garner a lot of support on this forum. Kind-of a dated look, too.

The picture of the other house really shows off that garage wall though. That's a toughie. Possibly trellising or espalier or growing vines up will help eliminate the starkness.

There are actually a couple of things that I like in this photo...HANG ON...I like the verticals on either side of the large window on the left. That does something pleasing. NOT spiral dwarf alberta spruces...shudder...but something vertical, conical, or pyramidal (pyramidic, pyramidish) would be nice. A good place for a pair of well-chosen conifers.

I also like the bright pop of color at the door and the lighter color of the door itself.

I can see if you let the creeping, mounded things in the front take on a more natural, flowing shape, and intersperse them with low, arching shrubs or mounded perennials and mulch, that would be nice.

Again, something about this design does sweep the eye somewhat away from the garage, but more height on the left side would be good.

Don't know how that helps your design plan, but I felt like giving my two cents.

Um, that's not ACTUALLY white rock mulch is it?
Patty

Her house brick is nearly white and all the bricks are the same--no multi-coloring. Her rock stones are white. It really sticks out. Plus her bushes are all just about the same color of green and hence no variety whatsoever.

I am planning on painting the door and side window to match the garage door.

So it seems that the overall design is not that bad. Its the shrubs that were picked out and how they were placed in the bed? I also think that as the shrubs and trees get taller, it will look a bit more balanced. When the trees are only 6 ft it looks totally different at 15ft.

"So it seems that the overall design is not that bad"

Whoa! I didn't say that. I said there were a few things about it that I liked. This design needs a lot of tweaking,in my humble opinion. (And by the way, while I am opinionated I am also very much an amateur. Take everything I say with a grain of salt.)

Patty

Notice that the bed in front of the house wall closest to the street is not deep and that the bed between the wings comes all the way out to near the front of that other bed. That gives depth to that middle area drawing you into it. That is what is working despite the marble chips and poodle cones, rather than because of them.

The planting line along the garage is directional pulling you to the door. The planters on the door step frame the door drawing you deeper it. The "porch" makes this a little easier than in the OP's situation because it creates layered depth with the architecture and helps reinforce the position of the walkway. The walkway goes down a corridor to the steps rather than skimming the edge of the garage. The same effect could be created using something other than the architecture. If something has no reason for being, you can create a reason for its being.

I am not sure that you are considering replacing your front walk, but I figured that I would throw this out for anybody that is interested. I stumbled across this online article where they replace a concrete walk along the garage with a curved cut stone walk.

- Brent

Here is a link that might be useful: Building a Stone Sidewalk