My front garden - Ideas?

Moonraker - I hate roses too

I was thinking the grey slate like gravel (this can be walked on to get around the cars).
In the dot beds, early spring bulbs such as Crocus and Iris reticulata. Proper spring bulbs such as Daffs and Tulips then follow. Followed by Camassia and some choice Foxgloves to aid privacy (privacy is not so important during the dark nights is it?). As the Foxgloves finish, the Delphiniums and taller Aconitums take their place, followed in late summer by the stately annual that is Nicotiana sylvestris.

The only real maintenance is picking weeds out as you spot them, and growing some Nicotiana every year................

Sold????

 

In my case, privacy is more important during the winter. You see we live in a neighbourhood which is general good, but has a large proportion of families with kids. Kids get bored easily, especially when its too dark and miserable to wander any distance. That's when they occasionally become a nuisance, playing knocky hido or throwing things at the window in the vain hope of getting a chase.

Wandering round the neighbour hood a few weeks ago, I noticed something for the first time. Every other house except our has their front garden designed in such a way that it would be difficult for anyone less than 5ft tall to throw a snow ball at the living room window. While some neighbours have taken the conventional approach, with boring panel fencing or high hedges, others have been more creative. One has their hedge right in front of their window rather than at their front boundary. Another has a small tree right in front of the window. Of course roughly 50% of the neighbours don't have to do anything really. The architect that designed our neighbourhood over 100 years ago decided rather wisely that the living room should always face south, that means that about half the houses are back to front, with the lesser used kitchen at the street side, and the living room at the back. Unfortunately I'm not in that 50%.

 

Aahh, less privacy and more security defences then!!!

 

I'd say more camoflage

I have a young kid so I don't want to go for anything with fierce thorns or anything. Kind of so we can sit out in the front garden on a sunny summers day without feeling like we're in a fish bowl, and also so that there are no easy clear trajectories for snow balls launched by microhumans.

 

I'll have a go at that with my cad landscape software .... be patient, when I have time (most prob on the weekend), I will play around a bit and give my suggestions

 

Its the weekend

 

Lawn could be revived fairly easily.

If it were me I'd find some attractive stepping stones and put a path diagonally from the door to the drive.

How about a row of Daphne transatlantica Eternal Fragrance under that window - evergreen and flowers from April through to October so every time you go through the door you'd catch the scent. Won't grow too big either.



Am loving dim's upgrading of the car

 

Thanks Dim. I like the change of car best I think. I think I'll sell the Merc, by a 10 year old Renault and with the change, I'll pay someone to do the garden

Its a good inspiration, but someone would make off with those nice planters. probably the unknown kid in my doorway.

What's the plant on the trellis by the door? Where the horrid rose is in real life?

 

just showing layout more than anything (so don't look at whats planted) as I dont know where the sun is on the pics (north facing etc) ... also the shasta daisies against the hedge may not be a good idea ... they need full sun, are evergreen and hardy but may hamper the hedge pruning

the crawler on the trellis is star jasmine (evergreen but needs full sun though)

the pebbles and extra bed near the front door/driveway may discouarage people walking over the lawn

as for the driveway, not much you can really do, as it's narrow and if you make a bed against the wall, people climbing out the car may step on the flowers

 

The next challenge:

How to convince the wife, who likes lawns no matter how poor condition they are, that most of the lawn is going in order to make way for lots of flowers and shrubs.

Its going to cost me. Here's the plan:

1. Buy most of what I need to do the job in one day.
2. By a spare set of tools in anticipation of breakages.
3. Get Paul, my mate the Neandertal/Homosapien cross to come round
4. Convince wife I have more money than I have and send her off down town to buy herself a new dress. As she is a woman, that will take her all day and if I'm lucky, given that Redcar has no posh shops, I might get away without my cards being confiscated in a shop.
5. Work as hard as I can, regularly throwing mars bars and cans of beer at Paul to keep him doing the same. See if we can get at least the back bone of the new garden in place before wife returns in taxi with several bags of clothes that will never get worn.

 

Do this on Tuesday!
Better still, get her one of those pampering days - that way you'll know exactly how long she will be gone. As you see her off the premises assure her "I'll be hard at it all day getting your other surprise ready".