snackie
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Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:07 pm
Location: northeast pa

Blank slate and new style...need HELP please!

I recently lost my 2 story colonial to a tornado and now have a brand new ranch home. It took 17 years to finally get the front yard gardens perfect and now I am faced with a big, empty, very rocky area to beautify again. I am at a loss where to even begin. I lean towards "cottage garden" style, but just can't picture it with this house. I am open to any and all suggestions. I am in northeast PA and the house faces west.

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tomf
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Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 8:15 am
Location: Oregon

Post some photos, hard to say any thing with out seeing.
I say just think of different ways you want it to look like. What you wish to grow, how much work and money you want to put into it, and what you have to work with. Drive around and look at a few homes that are like yours to get some ideas.
Way to bad about loosing your home to a tornado, I can not imagine what that must be like. I watch video of tornados and think; wow I would not want to be around one of them.

snackie
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Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:07 pm
Location: northeast pa

I live on a Main St in a very rural area where most are older 2 story homes that have plain lanscapes. There aren't any landscapers/nurseries nearby either.
Losing the house was not scary at the time because I was too shocked to realize what was happening until it was over.
I will try to post a pic. Hopefully this works...
Image

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rainbowgardener
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Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

Wow, blank slate for sure! That leaves lots of options. I think you want to start with hard scaping. You probably want to put a walkway from the drive way to the front door and maybe one from the sidewalk to the front door. The space between the drive way walkway and the house might define a foundation planting area. So don't make that too close to the house. Most common landscaping mistake is to plant a narrow row of stuff across the front, very boring and all out of scale to the house. So give yourself plenty of room and don't make it a straight line. Your house is very plain rectangle, you will want lots of curves.

Your front door really needs something to make a more welcoming entrance. A front porch would be really nice, but if you can't afford to add a porch, think about putting an awning over it.

Image

It's pretty inexpensive, dresses up the entrance, and protects visitors who are standing at your front door. Put in some wider concrete steps (if the awning were circular like the one pictured, then you can make the steps curved to match) with a landing area in front of it and a curved walkway from there to the sidewalk, and paint the door a contrasting color. You can put containers of plants on the wide steps and landing area to add color/ interest. Put a walkway around to the other side where the white fence is and put a gate there. That will define the other side of your foundation planting.

Get a nicer mail box and move it on the other side of the sidewalk, on to your property and put a planting bed around it. Then put in a tree /shrubbery island in the lawn somewhere.

snackie
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Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Feb 15, 2013 1:07 pm
Location: northeast pa

Thanks! I really appreciate the suggestions. The steps out front were just put in as an exit until we could get to the front porch, which was in the plans for this spring but I really like the look of a small landing with an awning as in the pic. I can't move the mailbox since we have delivery by vehicle. Out front on the other side of the drive (out of the pic) is a picket fence. I wasn't sure whether to go on across the front with it again or not. As I said, I love the cottage garden sorta "mess" of flowers all over, similar to what I had before. I just don't know if I can get it to look right with this style house.
I do plan on planting one or two small flowering trees (even tho all the trees I had before are what ultimately destroyed my old house). I will go with the walkways tho.

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tomf
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Joined: Mon May 18, 2009 8:15 am
Location: Oregon

You have a nice backdrop of trees and hills, I would think about playing that up by doing something that brings the two together. Oh +1 on what RainbowG said.



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