z5 is about half the US.. and wildly divergent.. beyond min winter temp ... big city name .. plz ...

a pic of the driveway will probably get you better suggestions ... use the camera/photo icon below the box you type in... to add a pic to a reply ....

is road salt used around town ... will the plants be were the cars park .... its a little more than whether you salt the driveway.. near parking areas ...

how wide are you thinking.. in regard to the bed??? .. is it already built??? ... im not sure a one or 2 foot wide bed down a driveway will work ... how is the grass cut ... will weedwhipping be an issue???

ken

I have a similar situation... it’s a small strip next to a high retaining wall that supports my driveway. I needed perennials because the neighborhood sometimes plows the snow and I can’t have bushes there. I have gone with dwarf fountain grasses (they have a nice white seed head), mums, and autumn Joy sedum in that narrow strip. I love how the sedum looks very structural next to my retaining wall, which is stained a very dark brown. Stella de Oro daylillies would’ve been another great choice. Nearby, the strip bed opens up into a much larger bed with a pathway running through it, I added many more plants in that larger area (like hardy hibiscus, a ginkgo tree, purple coneflower, daylilys, Shasta daisies, daffodils) but still continued repeating the three plants that dominate the narrow strip as well so it ties in nicely.

Some durable plants I would have (if they work in your climate and space) ...

1. the very old school 'Caesar's Brother' Siberian iris. It's very tough, spreads well without being invasive. Easy to propagate. Spectacular bloom and handsome foliage for the rest of the year (vertical foliage, somewhat cattail looking & slightly blueish cast.)
2. Russian sage ... lots of brilliant color
3. Hybrid daylilies ... fun, easy, nice bloom. Would buy from a local grower/garden while in bloom, as there are many hobbyists who grow and sell. Can acquire a vast blooming season and variety of colors. (Not talking the orange "ditch lilies" here.)
4. Coneflower
5. White makes me think Shasta daisy.
6. If you need yellow, Rudbeckia is always good.
7. Some kind of poppies

A photo would definitely help as Ken mentioned. And also as Ken mentioned, salt brought home on vehicles that are then parked in the drive is a major issue. We have trouble growing even grass where snow is piled due to salt that drips off of our cars, and we don’t salt at all.

I tend to advise caution in planting anything other than grass along a driveway because if anyone parks in the driveway they may need to step on the plants growing adjacent to the drive, but without a photo it is difficult to determine if this is the case for you.

How wide are you planning to make it? Without a frame such as the wall in skmom’s setting, I think a 1’-2’x 50’ bed would look awkward, so if it were mine, I would be more likely to make it 3’-4’ wide and plant to have more than 3 plant types. Consider some larger more structural plants like Baptisia or Amsonia that are fully deciduous but during the growing season are the size of small shrubs along with some mid-sized perennials (Yardvaark’s list has some great ideas) and some groundcovers such as creeping phlox, creeping thyme, Sedum Angelina, or Veronica Georgia Blue. Just be sure that whatever is planted close to the road is low enough to see over for safety.

All good points, NHBabs.

I didn't get a sense -- maybe it was mentioned and I didn't see -- of the bed dimensions. I've seen a couple people responding to "1'-2' wide" .... that's not enough. And it should be set back from the drive, not immediately adjacent to it (though I consider that a breakable rule if the bed width is large enough to allow for low "edging"/groundcover type plants within a couple of feet of drive..

Picture definitely needed! How the driveway is built and other garden beds nearby are relevant issues. Our driveway has a raised 'French curve' concrete edge on either side and the main front garden beds are nearby on the north side. So the 'driveway bed' on the north side is only 12-18" wide, but immediately adjacent to it are other beds that mean you don't see the north driveway border as a stand-alone bed. The south border is on a steep bank between our driveway and the neighbor's driveway so only part of that area is plantable. So my advice - in the absence of more details and a picture or two - would be to consider the driveway border(s) as part of a larger garden space, making it link together to the larger space in color and style. I wouldn't limit plant choices to only perennials (we have small shrubs too that get buried in snow from driveway snow-clearing and survive just fine....)

Hi all. There's no bed yet. And the driveway is just a basic blacktop driveway. We're getting ready to repave ... it'll likely maintain a straight line and will be blacktop again.

I was originally imagining the bed to be about 3 feet deep, but I was going to spray paint the grass to get a better feel for what works, depth-wise. I know it needs to be fairly deep to feel balanced with the size of the house, which is immediately to the left of the driveway. It's a 100-yr-old red brick American Foursquare, with white trim. Former dairy farm.

We're in SE WIsconsin, near Milwaukee.

Salt is used in our community. But no one would be parking on the bed. I do hear you all on the salt that tracks in via the vehicles though.

this is the house, if it helps ... you can see the driveway in lower right (yes, we need landscaping in front ... just thought I'd explore the driveway bed idea first since we're planning to repave. I'm planning to redo the walkway at some point, too ... so, until then, no landscaping in front). I use baskets in season to add some color

If the bed is on the house side of the drive, I would flat nix it. If it's on the property line side, set back a bit, that's fine. If you're wanting a bed at the left side, a large, shade tolerant groundcover bed around the tree would be fine, but it's not a place for typical blooming perennials unless it things like Hosta, etc.

No, I was imagining the bed on the property (open) side. The house is to the left of the drive, so the prospective bed would be to the right.

What a lovely home! I can fully imagine it set on an old dairy farm in the rolling green hills of Wisconsin!

Since it’s a large home, make sure the bed is large too - matching the scale of the house. I’d do big swaths of the same plant instead of a polka dotted arrangement.

I’m fond of white Shasta daisies. Or you could do echinaceas, which have a similar plant structure.

Phamm, I'm still confused. Your last post seemed as if you were contradicting yourself on the bed location. As viewed from front and running front to back there is a right-side property line, a skinny strip of land, a driveway, a broad strip of land (containing the house in the background) and the left-side property line. Is the bed between right property line and drive? Or between drive and left-side property line (in the broad strip with house in background)?

does this help? maybe I'm using wrong terminology

I agree with many suggestions already made. The bed should be wide to balance the size of the house. I would also consider an undulating border on the lawn side, rather than a straight line. Use larger perennials in the broader portions of the bed. I would also choose plants that will provide interest throughout the growing season. Spring bulbs followed by penstemon, then daisies/coneflowers, then sedums or asters, as examples.

Martha

So, the bed would be an obvious central division of one large part of the yard from another large part. The sketch suggests that it is immediately adjacent to the drive. We are not being asked if it's a good idea ... but only for suggestions of what to fill it with and possibly about its internal organization. The more I learn, the more I think, without reasonable justification, it's not possibly a bad idea, but that it's definitely a bad idea!

The first question that must be asked is, "Why?" What is the purpose of the bed and why that exact position? If there is some answer that justifies it, for a large yard, the bed would still be better set back a few feet from the drive -- by at least 5' or 6' -- than it would be to run concurrent with it. And then, for such a bed to be 3' depth (width) would be all out of scale for the property. It would need to be at least 6'; but 8,' 10' or 12' would not be the
least unreasonable.

But then back to the question of, "Why?" If we're just looking for a place to plant some pretty flowers, there have got to be 20 other places that would work before we have to resort to this one. It is not uncommon for people to come here saying they're going to do such and such, when that action happens to be a bad idea, because they don't have enough experience with landscaping, to solve landscape problems in better ways. My suggestion, Phamm, is that, instead of inquiring about the mechanics of implementing your solution, you present the original problem that drove you to devising a solution in the first place. If we were to hear about the problem and see the corroborating evidence (a relevant spread of photos) we would either agree that what you are trying to do is the best solution, or tell you why it is not and what you might consider doing instead.

A relevant spread of photos is a COMPLETE scene that shows all the parts that apply in panoramic form. But computer and camera-generated panoramas are usually too small to see much or be of value. It is better to stand at one spot where you can see the whole scene, and then snap a series of slightly overlapping photos that pan across it (without moving from that spot.) In this case it would be while standing somewhere near the near the fore of your drive, panning across the entire yard from left to right -- a full 180* (which is usually about 5 or 6 pictures.