5. This budget friendly transformation gave the homeowner the entrance and front home design they had dreamed of. Adding a circular concrete driveway, modern concrete slab walkways, lasered corten steel screens with cedar posts, an improved porch, and hardy, native (and a few non-native) plants transformed the front entrance of this home to a welcoming, modern and unique space. The homeowner is a lover of all things modern, and though this isn’t a typical landscape aesthetic for the area, it was about expressing the homeowner’s aesthetic and creating a statement on curb appeal, all while being extremely low maintenance.

The hosta and dogwood were the only plants to remain, while the rest of the weedy mess along with the broken concrete sidewalk were removed to make room for the new, cleaner design. First up, the porch columns were puny and needed mass added while the fascia board also needed repair. We replaced the tiny 4”x4” columns with beefy 10” columns to complete the look and bring the porch to scale and replaced the traditional dentil fascia board with a plain board for a cleaner look.

Concrete slabs as walkways add a fresh look and contrast nicely with the 1-2” cobble mulch between. The white fence to the left of the house provided some screening and enclosure of the backyard, but through design process, we discovered that complete enclosure was not necessary, and just a bit of screening would do the job. Once the rotted fence was removed, the cedar posts were set for 3 panels of 3 panels each to offer an aesthetically pleasing, simple, interesting screen solution.

Plants were selected on drought resistance and ability to withstand the cobble mulch. Native plants such as prairie dropseed, pink muhly, bluestar, American aloe/Virginia agave, buttonbush, hydrangea, bald cypress, and elderberry were used for their multi season and architectural interest.