Duplicate post: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6432287/please-help-me-spruce-up-my-home-exterior-it-s-so-drab 

Sometimes you just need to be a little patient (especially at this time of year) before you get many responses. So no need to repost and less confusion to those who do reply if you do not double post.

It is also suggested that you live in a new home and garden for a full year before making any major changes to the landscape. See what it looks like in full season before you decide on any changes.

This post is geared towards seeking landscaping/plant advice, while the other is more focused on the house. I added new tags to this one that I could not add to the other. the other commenters even suggested I do this. I would appreciate the feedback on the landscape.

These are my comments:

Item #1. Adding tall vertical trees to this area will emphasize the height of the house in this area. large sprawling bushes like azaleas would visually lower this side of the house. It would visually push this part of the house back. See Item #4

Item #2. I would leave the monkey grass it is a nice divider between lawn and flower bed.

Item #3. I would leave the Crepe Myrtle for the time being until you have the rest of the landscaping finished. Its size divides your house. The goal is to visually bring both sides of the house together. Eventually it will grow to a size that it must be remove. Someone planted one next to our church. it is a good 30' high and interfering with the gutters

Item #4/ I would remove the boxwood, and replace it with something colorful. Nandina gives nice red color in the winter. But is sensitive to the amount of sun light to get it to turn red. I don't personally like them but there are some bushes that turn yellow and would add color to that side of the house. Something bright and colorful would visually bring this side of the house forward.

Item #5. My guess would be that there were additional plantings in this area, and the lines may be the remains of some type of border or wall.

Item $6. I would get the landscaping done before spending a lot of time on the lawn. Your new landscaping, would require digging, possibly machinery in your yard, etc that would destroy any progress on the lawn.

PS: I may also consider some type of perennial flowers or flowering plant near the street right of way, and near the drive way.

Sigh. Your first post already tagged the Landscape Design forum and you got plenty of landscape-related feedback. The other 2 fora you tagged are not going to provide much help relating specifically to the landscape.

One comment I did notice mentioned several times was to consult with a professional landscape designer. This is an excellent suggestion and well worth the very modest investment.

@KR KNuttle. Thank you so much for your feedback! It confirms a lot of my thoughts and decisions thus far. I appreciate it!!

@einportlandor Thank you for the recommendation on the nursery. I was thinking of hiring someone off of Fiverr to do a lansdcape plan for me. Now that I think of it, I'm wondering if the machines the tree trimmers used to take out my bushes made those lines in my lawn... hmm...

I'm going to keep to the lawn part with the exception of an observation that it looks like you have new windows on the right part of the house and original window on the left.

If you already have St Augustine and bermuda growing, then I would consider those to be the dominant turf and the fescue and rye to be weeds. St Aug and bermuda can coexist to a degree, but it's never going to look exceptional. If you want it to be the nicest lawn on the block, then you'll have to kill it all and start over. But the mix of the two can look pretty good once you get the fescue and rye out. It turns out that is pretty easy to do with this stuff.

I believe I just posted the same picture to address your back yard. Spraying this will kill all the weeds you have and will let the St Augustine and bermuda live. Yes, I realize the label says this stuff is bad for bermuda, but in my experience using it over and over on different lawns, common bermuda does not suffer in the slightest. It can take 3 full weeks for this herbicide to completely kill everything. For some weeds you'll be wondering if this stuff ever works, and then, SUDDENLY, you'll remember that you forgot to notice it was all gone. It seems to prevent recurrence of the same weeds next year, so win! Again, read the directions 2 or 3 times. Atrazine is outlawed in several states and countries. I apply by walking backwards, into the wind so that I don't have to walk through the wetted grass, and the wind doesn't blow it on me.

After that think about mowing. Mulch mow at the mower's highest setting, always. There is never a reason to mow St Augustine lower than the highest setting. When you do that, and assuming the lawn gets enough water, the St Augustine will dominate all the other grasses including bermuda. It may seem like you have a full St Augustine lawn at time, but don't be misled. Common bermuda may appear to be whipped, but it's not. If the St Augustine suffers or if you mow it low, then the bermuda will dominate and it may seem like the St Augustine has disappeared. I've gone back and forth with bermuda and St Augustine as an experiment, and it's a wonder to behold.

Fertilizer. As I mentioned in my reply to your backyard, I only use organic fertilizers since 2002. For the lawn my preference is alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow - not horse cubes). Get this in 50-pound bags from your local feed store. If you shop at Tractor Supply you can use their fish food as it is mostly alfalfa pellets. Apply at a rate of 15 to 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. I apply by hand. Moisten the alfalfa pellets after you apply and they will swell up into green worms. Let those dry and brush them down into the turf by dragging a hose across the area. It takes 3 full weeks for them to work. Here's a picture I've used for years to show how well alfalfa pellets work.

This picture was taken by mrmumbles in 2011 and posted to GardenWeb. He dropped a handful of alfalfa pellets onto his zoysia lawn in mid May and took the picture in mid June. You can easily see the improved color, density, and growth of the alfalfa fertilized grass.

Watering is the most important part of lawn care. The mantra is water deeply but infrequently. Deeply means one inch all at one time. Infrequently is harder to define but basically it depends on the outside temperature. With temps in the 60s or below, water deeply once a month. With temps in the 70s, water deeply once every 3 weeks. With temps in the 80s water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 90s, water once per week. With temps above 100 water once every 5 days. With temps up around 110, water every 3 to 4 days. But NEVER water every day. Ever. This is your basic starting point for watering. Always water deeply. If you get rain, reset your mental watering calendar. Adjust the watering frequency according to temperature. If you want to get fancy, consider humidity. If you have a front bring you some arid air, you will have to water more frequently during that time.

@dchall_san_antonio thank you so much for your very detailed response on this post and on my backyard!!! This is so helpful and exactly what I’ve been needing for guidance!

What is your experience with grass seed? I’m afraid my budget will only allow for seed… sod is sooo expensive…

There is no seed available for St Augustine. While St Aug does, "go to seed," the seed is not viable. Thus it is only sold as sod.

The relatively good news for St Augustine sod is you should be able to find it for roughly half the price that Lowe's and HD sell it for if you find the right nursery selling it in bulk. In my area I can buy it for $1.75 per piece. This is good news because once it becomes established, St Augustine will spread at a speed of 15 feet per season in all directions. The prime spreading time is whenever the temps are in the 70s. That means both spring and fall will give you about 7 feet of runners. Next season those runners will knit together sideways forming a dense sod.

In 2014 I moved to Bandera, TX and started a journey to develop a St Augustine lawn. Originally there was a 2" strip of St Augustine in the front and the same in back. The rest was wild grasses and common bermuda. What I did was fertilize and water only the St Augustine until it started spreading. By 2019 I had full lawn of St Aug in front and 60% St Augustine in the back. Here are before/after pix from the back yard.

So it can be done very inexpensively if you have some patience. Had I bought some more pieces of St Augustine and placed them strategically around the yard instead of starting with only the few inches I was dealt, it would have covered more quickly.

For your application, if you buy, say, $10 worth of sod and start those pieces in the shadiest parts of the yard, they will take hold much more quickly than starting in the full sun. Then it will spread from the shade to the sun with little trouble at all. I used a soaker hose to water only the St Augustine at first until I had enough grass that a regular, oscillator, sprinkler worked better. I saved money by watering and fertilizing ONLY the good grass and ignoring the rest of the entire lawn. As the runners appeared, I dropped organic fertilizer along the path of the runners and expanded the watering to reach as the runners spread.

There is a trick to using a soaker hose. I turn the faucet on to only a trickle and connect the soaker. Then I leave it running for a week at a time. You can barely see drops forming along the hose, so it's not saturating the soil. All it does is keep the root system moist. It also allows the water to penetrate deeply where you want the roots to go. Here is what I used to guide a "water trickle."

Note that the faucet is turned on full, but the plastic controller is nearly off. I used the nozzle to show how little water was coming out. Without the nozzle it was spewing in all directions and impossible to see. That rate is about 1 cup per minute if you were measuring that way.

Hi again everyone! So, I made a mockup of landscaping I thought might look good in my front yard. I did it in microsoft word so it is FAR from perfect, but used it mainly as a tool to vizualize the different colors, etc.

Vertical plants by the window are sky pencil holly, under the window is indian hawthorne, then I have purple loropetalum, sunshine ligustrum, red salvia, and pink vincas by the crepe myrtle. I'm located in Dallas, TX. Would you all recommend these plants/this layout? I don't know if I should add more plants around the crepe myrtle - maybe a red yucca? What about in front of the indian hawthorne?

I was initially thinking a yellow barberry instead of the sunshine ligustrum, becaues of their smaller size; howver, I was reading that they can harbor ticks and lyme disease so i swapped them. I know sunshine ligustrums get bigger; however, I figured I could just trim them every year to the size i want? Any other recs for a lime green plant?

any and all feedback appreciated - thanks in advance!

How much grooming do you want to do? For example, the Indian Hawthorn and Purple loropetalum are little in the mockup. But they can grow to be 4-6 feet tall and wide if allowed to grow. Sky Pencil Holly can grow to be 10 foot tall and 2-3 feet wide. Sunshine Ligustrum can be a privit, and can grow about 3-15 foot tall and 3-10 foot wide if ungroomed.

@beesneeds i'll do some trimming maybe 3 times a year, but I don't want to be out there every day! Do you think I can get away with that with this selection? If not, do you have other recommendations?

I'm not super familiar with privit - i just googled it. I guess the problem is that it's invasive?

Maybe I could use kaleidoscope abelias or yellow sunjoy barberries instead of the sunshine ligustrum?

I really want a lime green evergreen plant

I'm usually not much help with general plants, but we have 9 Limelight Viburnums in our front yard.

In full sun they are bright yellow-green. In the shade they are more of a dull green-yellow.

Sunshine is just one cultivar of one species of Privet. It is sterile and hence isn't invasive. It is also compact. I have no experience of it but don't condemn it for the wrong reasons.

Wanted to provide an update! I finally got my new landscaping in - yay! Just need the plants to grow a little now :)

YAY!! What are the vertical plants? I'm wondering if the one on the right is going to be a problem for accessing the faucet behind it. If it is a juniper type of plant, you really want to be careful how you prune it, because once pruned, it will never fill in like many shrubs do.

It’s a sky pencil holly. Hopefully it’s not a problem.