Old house,need landscaping

[Kady]

We moved into an old house with no landscaping, my mother put together what is in the pictures. I like what she did but do not love it.

What should I do to make this look stunning? My husband suggested putting in a hydrangea at each end and taking out what is there.

The plants are: closest to the steps, mountain fire japonica, next autumn joy sedum, blazing star liatris, another sedum and the on the ends one side has a rose tree, the other heuchera bc the other rose tree died of black spot. I don't like the ends being different either.

Thanks for ANY input!! Kady

Http://s1261.photobucket.com/albums/ii595/kady85/

[rainbowgardener]

People respond better if they don't have to go look for your pictures:









It looks very shaded by your big tree, which also blocks the view of/from your house. If it were me, I would get a tree-person to come and limb it up a little bit.

I think the commonest landscaping mistake people make is to make foundation plantings too small and skinny, all out of scale with the big house right behind them. You could easily make everything behind the horizontal walkway that goes across the front of the house foundation planting.

Then you need some shrubs and bigger plants. The pieris japonica is nice and will get bigger. Everything else is forbs, except your rose standard. A couple more shrubs would really help.

Now we get into things that are strictly personal taste. But to me, everything else you have is kind of loose and informal, but the rose tree pruned to standard shape is a very unnatural/ formal look, doesn't quite seem to fit.

And you are going to have trouble having the ends match, because where the rose is looks pretty sunny, but the other side of the house is under the tree and quite shady. That's why the rose on that end died. You can look for two different shrubs with a somewhat similar size/shape/ effect.

A simple thing to make it more "stunning" is just to fill in a lot of the mulched space with flowering annuals. You can buy them in six packs very cheaply. This fall plant a bunch of bulbs for spring flowers.

[Kady]

Thank you for the advice, And posting the pics, i could not get them loaded. I looked up a little about foundation landscaping and now see what I need to do more clearly.

The distance from the steps to the end of the house is about 9 feet.
My new plan of action is to keep the mountain fire and add two more "foundation" shrubs. Any suggestions on those?

Also Should I switch the place of the mountain fire to the center,end or keep it where it is.

[rainbowgardener]

The pieris japonica can stay where it is as long as it is doing well there. I can't tell how shaded it is.

For shrub suggestions, you need to decide where they are going first, because you have such a big difference in sun exposure from one side to the other.

But I will just throw out there one possibility. Viburnum is one of my favorite shrubs. It comes in a bunch of different varieties from quite dwarf to big. It has amazingly fragrant flowers in the spring followed later by berries that birds like. It is low maintenance, easy care, and quite tolerant of a range of sun exposures from full sun to pretty shady (though in really shady areas it won't flower and fruit as well).