To answer your question directly yes, they look like a collection of dead sticks or a big void in winter :-) And while there is no hard and fast rule of foundation planting landscape design, a good rule of thumb to follow for the entry garden (plantings immediately surrounding the entry, porch or walkway) is that it should look pretty uniform in appearance throughout the year. And that means more evergreen than deciduous plantings.

That doesn't mean you can't include deciduous shrubs (and in colder climates, one is limited in the amount or types of evergreens available).....just that they should not be the focus. I would also intermix them with the evergreens rather than having them be out front and center. They are far less noticeable by their lack of presence in winter if they are somewhat randomly interspersed.

"...I like the idea of mixing some evergreen and deciduous shrubs to create a semi-formal design...."

Semi-formal or informal design is not so much an evergreen vs. deciduous decision to my thinking, but more a design, balance, uniformity, or symmetry decision or approach.

Semi- or informal would incorporate curves bed lines, and an asymmetric arrangements of plants as well as varied textures, plant sizes, shapes, etc. They can still be 'in balance' but just not rigidly symmetrical.

Formal design incorporates straight lines or a straight rows of the same plant or uniform plantings, carefully clipped hedges, etc. Formal style tends to be higher maintenance.

Yes, it is best to have evergreen kinds at corners and other places where they can function as bookends or otherwise provide a greater level of structure where this would be an enhancement. A scheme is also given more overall substance if more of these are used than deciduous kinds. Which in informal planting might best be limited to places where they provide transitions in visual weight between that of evergreen shrubs and herbaceous plants. And interact with herbaceous plants at flowering time, forsythias blooming behind daffodils for instance.

I also like some evergreens in the foundation plantings, though the placement for me is more about balanced weight than exact placement. So I would have no problem with a corner evergreen, but also no issue with a corner having a deciduous plant with winter interest such as a Japanese maple, weeping tree, or panicled hydrangea with its dried blossoms left attached if there were evergreen plants elsewhere. I don't like having just an empty hole on the corner.

Thanks for the replies. You all are confirming the concerns I had. I just wanted something other than plain old green blobs like you see everywhere else. I guess I just need to find ways to put some interesting things in front of those plain old green blobs.

I would suggest you spend time looking at photos of foundation plantings for houses of similar style to yours to get a feel for what combinations and locations of different types of plants appeal to you. Houzz has a pretty large photo library, but also there are other online sites and library books and garden design magazines.

you need to think of all 4 seasons ....

obviously .. year around green blobs.. cover all 4 season ..

perhaps the reason to use deciduous ... is for another season .. not focusing on winter.. rather, focusing on when they bloom ... so you dont mind putting up with bare sticks in winter.. because of the glory of the season it flowers in ...

try to note such.. as you drive around this spring .... what is flowering.. and when .... and then you might have a better appreciation for those bare winter stick plants ...

same goes for flowering trees ... such as redbud.. which are one of the glories of spring .. imo ... but otherwise just a green old tree with perfect heart shaped leaves....

so.. what are plain old winter sticks for me... forsythia..magnolia ... azalea ... quince... lilac... fragrant viburnham ...... etc.. ad nauseum ... are well worth the winter uglies ... but do note.. many of these can get rather big.. and might not be good foundation plants ...

btw.. foundation plants.. are planted to hide the foundation ... NOT ON THE FOUNDATION .... and properly planted.. might be 3 to 8 feet out from the house ... so they can grow normally.. leaving you room to maintain your house ...

also.. a pic of the house.. might get you better suggestions ....

ken

Some deciduous shrubs and trees have magnificent winter silhouettes and texture. Hydrangea quercifolia, many rhododendron, especially those with the peeling cinnamony bark. Acer griseum, even some barberries that berry heavily look interesting in winter. And dwarf Ginkgo have very cool bark and distinctive buds.

when it zero degrees F in MI... with a 30 mph winter wind ... i dont really care what stuff looks like in winter ... lol ...

perhaps thats the difference between a MI winter.. and a CA winter ... lol ..

ken

Yeah I guess if it’s buried it doesn’t much matter! Or if you are huddled inside and not looking out...

I see my gardens year round when I drive in or out, and I have gardens visible from several windows in winter. I like having winter interest even living here in the frozen north.

Hey everyone. Thanks for the replies. I think I might be leaning towards using some deciduous shrubs, sparingly. Probably keep evergreens on the corners, so that the corners always have a good base.

See the pic below. This is what I have to work with. Please forgive the grass...still trying to get the weather to cooperate and get a good stand of grass. Also, ignore the little shrubs on either side of the walk, these normally go in the planters on either side of the door but we set them out to get the recent rain. At this point we don't plan to landscape in front of the porch.

So, what I am working on is the corners of the main structure (what I do on one side I will do on the other) and also the area in front of the wing on the right. The areas on either side of the porch are 8 feet deep, and the wing is 12 feet deep, so I have room to layer some plantings. This picture was taken today at noon, so the area in front of the wing gets a full morning sun, but slowly the main structure will shade most of the area.

One question I have is the sizing of the corner shrubs. Should the shrub on the wing corner be larger or smaller than the shrub on the main structure corner? Or, should they all be the same size? See the options below. I just worked up the right side, but I would do the same thing on the left for the shrubs of the main structure.

i do not like your idea pix .... its lopsided all on one side.. and the garage opposite just doesnt work well ... imo .. fwiw ... go for it if it turns you on ...

what about two small trees lined to the corners of the house.. out in the middle of the grass ... between the sidewalk and the loop of the drive ...

i might also enjoy something like clematis on the porch posts ...

ken

ps: sara .... when its that cold.. i dont even open the drapes or curtains to gaze longingly outside.. afraid the windows might crack from thermal shock ... lol .. and im sure as heck not dawdling from the car to the house.. when i am forced to be outdoors ... its more like staring at my feet so i dont slip on snow or ice.. while cursing the weather gods rather loudly and exuberantly ... lol ...

Yes, basically your scale is way off. I'd put trees off the main corners - real trees that will eventually grow taller than the house. Then put whatever you like in front of that wing, so long as it can handle the shade.

Also, is it an optical illusion, or does the path really not line up with the front door?

"i do not like your idea pix .... its lopsided all on one side.. and the garage opposite just doesnt work well ... imo .. fwiw ... go for it if it turns you on ..."

ken_adrian, I'm not sure what you mean. What is lopsided, the landscaping of the house? As I mentioned in that post, I only drew right side of the landscaping. What I do on the right side of the main structure I will also do on the left side. And the house is built, I can't move the garage at this point.

mad_gallica, Thanks for the comment. I have shade trees already planted further out in the yard. They aren't included in the frame. You can also barely see a small serviceberry I just planted off the right side.

No, not an optical illusion, but those are just pallets we put down to keep out of the mud until a proper path can be put in. Same for the walkboards that are off the left side. All of that is just temporary to get us through the muddy season.

Here is another pic to show scale (the cedars are coming down...just haven't gotten to that yet)

I usually try to hold back on landscape design posts here. I have strong opinions on the subject, with which some people may not agree.

The notion that residential homes, particularly large single family homes on large residential lots, need scads of various plants jumbled in front of them is a recent aberration. You have a nice looking 'modern day Colonial' house. It's deliberately echoing a historical style, so, logically, the landscaping should echo the style as well. I'm all for experimental gardening, for example, but it would look really strange to plant a bunch of Yucca rostratas and Opuntia cactus in front of this house, because that wouldn't be what would have grown in the historical era of the house's design. That being said if one is an obsessive collector of yuccas - go for it. But I doubt you're an obsessive collector of anything horticultural - which is fine - so I recommend merely googling 'historical colonial homes of Kentucky' (or adjacent states) and seeing how they are landscaped. Which 9 times out of 10 is going to seem very "boring" to the eyes of people used to looking at tacky McMansions with, oh, 2 weeping cherries on either side, a row of yews, and row of azaleas, separated by beds of liriope and some ornamental grasses thrown in etc. etc. etc. Since this isn't a tacky McMansion, don't landscape it like one. ;-) So, like I said 9 times out of 10 you're just going to see a few large boxwoods, placed in a symmetrical manner. There might be very small beds of seasonal flowers. That's it. You obviously have plenty of room to plant other horticultural amusements elsewhere, instead of under your front windows!

That being said, there's an extremely destructive boxwood disease spreading throughout the eastern US now, called boxwood blight. I think the jury is still out on which varieties are truly resistant. You could take the risk of using them, or substitute one of the trimmable forms of Ilex (Holly) or Taxus (yew), or various other less common evergreens. I don't think there's a problem using deciduous plants, per se - certainly a 'Klondyke' or similar deciduous azalea at either corner of the facade of your house would be acceptable, or more acceptable than a weeping cherry* - but I agree with Dave & Gardengal's point about evergreens conveying permanence. And thus logical for 'foundation planting', insofar as that is a valid thing. (which it barely is...the house isn't going to become unmoored and fly off into space, without shrubs holding it down!)

* - I use weeping cherry as a specific example, because I remember seeing some ugly McMansions in Great Falls, VA, a super-wealthy suburb of DC - that had them as foundation shrubs. This was in the late 1990s when I briefly worked with a landscaper and thought of going into the field. Needless to say when I drove through there 10 years later, they'd all had to be cut down. Huge trees planted literally 2-3 feet away from the side of a house. So idiotic.

whether or not i like it.. i am challenging you.. so dont take it personally ... i am trying to make you get out of the box you might already sitting in.. and think outside of it ....

you didnt address my idea.. of two trees out in the lawn ... do you rule it out???

they say trees are the backbone of the setting.. and those are the first consideration .... and if nothing gets done this spring.. other than planting a few heritage trees... and getting the lawn going.. i would consider it a success ... unless .. its a checkbook job [all the power to you] ... and you can do it all at once ...

trees have very specific planting times ... and if you cant get them in soon.. then the next proper planting season is probably fall .... i like this link for general ideas about planting trees and shrubs ..note the first section:

https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub

never forget ... foundation plantings.. are planted to hide the foundation ... but they should never be planted on the foundation ... it is a common mistake to jam too many plants.. 3 to 5 feet from the foundation .. and when those little plants grow to their potential ... it doesnt look good ...

that last pic is cool ... you might want to think about a tree out down the drive.. to hide the sight line of the garage ... and those white garage doors .... so when you are driving up ... all you see is the main portion of the house ...

look thru some of these pix ... as to how you see the house at the end of the drive ....

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=long+driveway+ideas&t=ffcm&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

i love your house.. and i wish you luck with landscaping it ... is there a pond around for those ducks???

keep in mind.. the first impression of your house.. may not be whats on the foundation ... check out some of these pix ....

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=long+driveway+ideas+colonial+house&t=ffcm&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

ken

davidrt...this is exactly what I needed to hear! I spent so much time studying old colonial architecture in order to get the new house to "look old". I used a lot of those same pics in your link as inspiration. It didn't occur to me, until you put it into words, that the landscaping needs to try to match that historic style. And while big green balls on the foundation may be boring, it is timeless. And it doesn't mean that I can't dress up the front in other ways with annuals, perennials, and container on the porch.

Now the only question I have is boxwoods or Japanese hollies. I was leaning towards the hollies due to the boxwood blight risk, but I saw somewhere that the hollies weren't as drought tolerant.

Ken, I don't mind being challenged. Just want to be sure we are on the same page as to what we are talking about. You and I agree that big shade trees are more important than foundation shrubs. As I mentioned in the post above, I have already started taking care of that. They are small, so they are hard to see, but I have already planted 4 shade trees out in the yard and a serviceberry closer to the house. The white blooms of the serviceberry can be seen at the far right of the close-up pic. See the pic below. I also have little saplings planted around the sides and rear of the house, and plan to stagger some shade trees up the driveway.

Thanks for the reminder on giving foundation plantings room to grow. Yes, it is a common mistake. The bed in front of the windows will be 8' deep, so I have plenty of room to pull them out away from the house.

There is a pond across the road from our property. The ducks just started visiting a few weeks ago.

Would a small, evergreen Viburnum on each corner be too...non-traditional?

Would a small, evergreen Viburnum on each corner be too...non-traditional?

No, not at all. I didn't take time to list substitutes but there are plenty of them and that seems like a good one...truth be told I'm more a collector of the rare and unusual, which, to some degree, is exactly the sort of thing NOT to recommend in a case like this. You want something ultra-reliable and time proven. It would be great if Pittosporums were fully hardy in zone 7a or 6b, but so far I can safely say after wasting a lot of money on them, none of them are!

That being said, for example, the hyperythrum Rhododendron hybrids are relatively "new" to horticulture, but I'd recommend them for landscaping if that's what you wanted. (i.e., didn't mind the flowers, which of course Viburnums have, too) My 'Charles Loomis' has formed a perfect bun shape without any trimming at all...it's zone 6 hardy, and incredibly heat resistant for a rhododendron. Growing in almost full sun here in NE Maryland. Just making a point that a small select group of "rare and unusual" has already proven its toughness. It's the exception though.

I guess some Viburnums are more "shapeable" than others, and for that I would defer to various people with more expertise than myself. Viburnum X pragense is maybe a little too loose and open, but I know it is considered a very hardy and tough broadleaved evergreen. I've seen a couple other Viburnums in botanical gardens that have a smaller, tighter appearance (though nothing like boxwood or Japanese holly) but I don't know what they are.

Good Evening All,

i know that this thread is from five years ago, but I am wondering what you decided to use, and if you would share an current photo, plesse?

Many Thanks,

Elizabeth

Hey Elizabeth,

I went with some semi-evergreen shrubs for the big shrubs on the corner, with evergreens for most of the rest and then leaf-droppers sprinkled in here and there. The corner shrubs are Pearlific Viburnum, which we love. They keep most of their leaves through the winter, and even when they get a little thin, they have a dense branching pattern that keep it looking like a ball all year round. Unfortunately, this last winter claimed most of one of them, and we have a decision to make. See the pics below. I'll get a fresh pic of the one that is almost bare to give you an idea of what they look like in the winter.