Sunday, August 5

The Well-Designed Garden
Part Five: A warm welcome

Entrance gardens should be inviting

The Daily Journal/Kim Carpenter A well-designed front garden should anchor a home to its surrounding and welcome visitors by directing them to the front door. By repeating colors and textures, and extending planting beds far enough out into the yard to balance a prominent garage, Bourbonnais gardener Sue Clark has done both.

Over the past several weeks we've introduced four design principles that can transform your landscapes. Now it's time to put those principles into practice.

Creating an entrance garden is a good place to start. A well-designed front garden gives your home personality and adds curb appeal and value. Just remember that the purpose of any entrance planting is to anchor the house to its surroundings and to emphasize its front door.

One of the easiest ways to draw the eye is by repeating plants. (A triangle of three plants in one area and a group of five repeated on the other side will look more natural than two groups of three.) Select those that are known for their long bloom time and that have attractive foliage all season long.

Some of my favorite perennials for shade include purple coral bells (Heuchera), lungwort (Pulmonaria), Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum 'Pictum'), and hosta. In sunny areas try sedums, 'Zagreb' coreopsis, or perennial geraniums like 'Rozanne' or 'Max Frei.' Salvia and catmint (Nepeta) can also work if you cut them back to the ground once their flowers fade. Both will grow back quickly and their foliage will look attractive the rest of the summer. The salvia may even flower a second time.

Complete your design by placing one or more container plantings by the front door. These should be planted in the same color as your dominant perennials. If you choose to use annuals in your containers, they can be changed out seasonally. Think pansies in spring, mums in the fall and, if your containers are made of fiberglass or plastic resin and can be left out all year, evergreen boughs and red twig dogwood for the holidays.

Mix it up
Too much of the same color or shape is boring, so don't overdo it. That's why shrubs should never be sheared into 'meatballs.' Round forms across the entire foundation of a home are monotonous and don't give the eye anywhere to rest. Keep things interesting by introducing plants in a variety of colors, shapes and textures. Perennials with purple or chartreuse foliage look great with all other colors and make wonderful accents along the front walk. Just don't overdo the colored foliage. Use them as accents only.

Ornamental grasses are another good choice for creating variety at the front entrance. Their linear leaves and upright form provide relief from mostly-rounded perennials and dwarf shrubs. The height and narrow shape of feather reed grass (Calamagrostis) make it a nice choice in tight areas. Miscanthus sinensis 'Gracillimus' is a large vase-shaped grass that makes a wonderful focal point near the front door. This ornamental grass easily grows to six feet tall and three feet wide so make sure your planting bed is large enough to accommodate it.

Shorter grasses like fountain grass (Pennisetum) or prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) also work well in groups of three or five used alone as focal points or repeated. (All these grasses do best in full sun but will tolerate a few hours of shade each day.) Remember to choose plants that will stay proportional to the size of your home once they mature. You don't want them to obscure the windows or door nor will you want to prune them every year to keep them small. Dwarf varieties like 'Everlow' yew, 'Bronx' forsythia, dwarf fothergilla, 'Knockout' rose, tree peonies, or dwarf redleaf barberry are all good choices.

Corner plantings should frame the house. For two-story homes, small ornamental trees such as serviceberry (Amelanchier) or Japanese tree lilac (Syringa reticulate) work well. For a one-story home, planting shrubs that grow five to six feet tall in a group of three or five wrapped around the corner are a better choice. Consider 'Judd' viburnum, oakleaf hydrangea or 'Limelight' hydrangea.

Beautiful borders
Borders should be large enough to anchor your home in the landscape. Pulling the bed on either side of the walk widens the depth of the foundation bed and provides space to repeat perennials or shrubs. Another way to create better proportion between your home and the landscape is to pull some planting beds away from the foundation. If you have a short driveway, consider running the planting bed along the driveway and curving it into the sidewalk. Perennials are a good choice for this area because they die down in the winter when snow removal becomes an issue.

Another option is to create a bed along the property line and public sidewalk. This is especially nice if you have a front porch where you can sit and enjoy the fruits of your labors. Just make sure to repeat some of the same perennials or shrubs that you used in the entrance plantings in these areas, too. And never put a detached planting bed right in the middle of the lawn. It will just compete with the front door. Shape your beds using a hose, rope or extension cord. Gently undulating curves look most natural. Once you find the size and shape that work best with your home, use marker flags to help you determine where to place your plants. This will give you a good idea of how many of each you'll need to buy.

There will always be some trial and error involved with gardening. But if you think about the principles of repetition, variety, emphasis and proportion as you're laying out your landscape, you're much more likely to get it right the first time and to save yourself the work of having to move plants later on.

Marcy Stewart-Pyziak teaches gardening and horticulture classes locally and at the Morton Arboretum and the Chicago Botanic Gardens. With a degree in ornamentals horticulture from the University of Illinois, this former Will County Extension horticulturist also gardens on her own 10 acres near Wilton Center.