Glassonion91168
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Location: CT, Zone 5B or 6

New home, new garden, yay/yikes!

Hi All!

We just purchased a foreclosure, and as you can see, it needs a ton of outside TLC. I have some ideas about what I’d like to do, but since I’m a beginning gardener, I would love some feedback/suggestions as to what I can do to make this look amazing.
https://imgur.com/a/1pbpE

In front of the house, I was thinking of planting creeping phlox all along the concrete that abuts the driveway, to spruce up that section. The housefront beds…while I love flowering shrubs, I either had really bad luck at my old house and the branches of my azaleas weakened due to tons of snow, or I just didn’t take care of them well enough. I can’t say I’ve ever had bad luck with hydrangeas though, so maybe I can just plant a bunch of those along the housefront?

In the back, I’m thinking more flowering shrubs along the fence, but I really want to plant bulbs too. Where are the best places to plant bulbs for a house? Housefront beds? Anywhere? I do have a little guy who’s 2 going on 3, so I should probably consider what’s safest for him too.

Lastly, in the front, I would love to plant a weeping cherry. Is that possible with the sloping landscape? Would you recommend a dwarf, or could I go full sized? Should I not plant a tree there at all?

Thanks SO much for help with this. It’s much appreciated!

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Congratulations on your new home. It looks like it will take a lot of time and work for a while. It is good that you have some idea of what you want. I would not rush into planting stuff right now until you learn how the place changes with the seasons. It would be a good idea to draw some plans and do some research on the plants that are appropriate for your climate.

I am an advocate for soil testing especially in a new garden. Some plants will like acidic soil, some like alkaline so it is better to choose plants adapted to your conditions than to try to make something grow that is not appropriate. You will only have bad luck that way.

On your plan make note of the direction the garden faces, north, south, east and west. You want to know how much sun each section gets at different times of the day and the year. Remember if you plant near a tall structure like the house, fence or near a tree, those things will cast shadows affecting the light as well.

Make note of the grade and if you have low spots you want to avoid plants that can't handle that or grade to correct the problem.

Most trees can be planted on a hill unless it is very steep. You just have to make sure you plant it straight and the soil does not erode away from the roots.

This is your vegetable planting calendar for Conneticut. Zone 6 is the middle one
https://www.ufseeds.com/Connecticut-Vege ... endar.html

https://meadowridge.com/gardening-in-ct- ... ur-garden/
Connecticut native tree and shrub availability list. Including cherry trees appropriate to your area.
https://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/wildlif ... tvtree.pdf

I would visit some local nurseries, not the big boxes and see what they are growing out for sale and talk to the people actually taking care of the plants. If you are interested in a plant, bring lots of pictures and ask them if it would be a good choice and if it is. Take notes on how to take care of it.

Glassonion91168
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Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:58 am
Location: CT, Zone 5B or 6

Awesome ideas, especially the soil testing. I would have never thought of that! Thank you!!!

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rainbowgardener
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It would really help to know what direction the front of the house faces, so what the sun exposures are for the various areas....

With time and TLC this could be a lovely place that you presumably got for a big bargain as a foreclosure!

To start with, here's a few general principles of foundation plantings:

Make it big. In general people tend to make a little strip of foundation planting that is all out of scale with the house behind it. You want a planting area wide enough to have layers/levels of plants with taller things behind and shorter things in front.

Make it curved. The other very common mistake of foundation plantings is to make one straight line of shrubs lined up like soldiers. Very unnatural and boring and just accentuates the boxiness of houses. Your house is plain and boxy and would really benefit from curving front plantings.

Think about four seasons. If you do all one thing, hydrangeas or whatever, it will be beautiful in hydrangea season and boring all the rest of the times. Mixed plantings are much more interesting. You can mix a couple evergreens, with something like red-twig dogwood and ornamental grasses for winter interest, with some spring bloomers including at the front some spring bulbs, some summer perennials, and some shrubs that get fall color.

Look for inspiration pictures.

Here's a couple of bad examples:
boring foundation planting.jpg
Notice very big building with very small shrubs in a line.
foundation hedge.jpg
foundation hedge.jpg (75.67 KiB) Viewed 22078 times
Straight row of uniform hedge does nothing to add to the looks of the house.

Better examples:
Image

Image

Image
personally I think the tree is too big for the space and blocking windows. A smaller red Japanese maple would have been nice, but otherwise very attractive.

Glassonion91168
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Location: CT, Zone 5B or 6

I love those suggestions, rainbow! Curved foundation planting, I would have never thought of that. I added an aerial view of our new digs since I couldn't get Google Street View.

https://imgur.com/a/9cCPM

There's a VERY large tree (evergreen? fir? I'm not very familiar with the difference between these) in the front yard. I really don't care for it, but I'd feel badly about taking it down, plus I can't even imagine what the expense would be. I bet it'd look better without it though. Ugh, it's probably got big roots under the house too, oh dear.

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rainbowgardener
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You didn't say what direction your house faces...

I imagine with the huge tree, the front yard is pretty shaded?

I see what you mean. I love trees, and still I would want to get rid of that one. But I don't know if it would be prohibitively expensive.

Glassonion91168
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Okay, I figured it out, our house is south facing. Here's some more pictures I took yesterday, a closeup of the landscape.

https://imgur.com/a/wuYDD

I love the birch tree most of all!

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rainbowgardener
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Wow! Obviously needs the TLC, but TONS of potential! :)

The original pictures you posted seem to have disappeared. There was one of the slope to the driveway, where you were talking about creeping phlox that isn't in this set.

South facing would ordinarily be a very sunny exposure, but with the big tree there, I guess I am going to call it part sun.

So for the area in front to the left of the front door, maybe 2-3 shrubs. Good choices include viburnum, dwarf serviceberry, red twig dogwood, mountain laurel, summersweet. An ornamental grass is always nice for mixing it up. Pink muhly grass, purple love grass, sea oats or switch grass are nice ones. Putting them in a container keeps them from spreading too much.

Then you could make a layer in front with very small shrubs and some perennials. Shrubs that come in super dwarf versions (less than three feet) include a purple leafed physocarpus, very nice contrast with all the green stuff, weigela in wine or sunset foliage colors, mountain hydrangea, baby forsythia, dwarf evergreen arborvitae. Note that you will need to find a good nursery to work with, these will not be available at big box stores.

Then you would fill in the front with some very low growing perennials and ground covers, maybe mixed in with some annuals like petunias and marigolds that will pump out flowers all season! Also can fill in the front with spring bulbs - crocus, snow drops, daffodils etc, to get some early color started.

It helps to give yourself a color scheme. One or two main colors and one or two accent colors. You can pick warm colors or cool ones, high contrast (red and white, purple and yellow) or low contrast (red and pink, purple and blue). Having a color scheme gives your mixed border a more unified appearance and gives the color more impact.

So much fun! :) I'm looking forward to when I'm done setting up all my veggie gardens and backyard plantings and can rip out my straight row of big old overgrown evergreens (that were here when I bought the house) and design a nice foundation planting.
Last edited by rainbowgardener on Wed May 03, 2017 1:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Glassonion91168
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Joined: Sun Sep 29, 2013 7:58 am
Location: CT, Zone 5B or 6

I can't wait to get started! Off to ask questions on other threads. :)



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