House in need of landscaping....

[Katie Lanning Carson]

I am looking for thoughts on what to do with landscaping around the side and back of our house. Seems like everything I buy for plants are too small and just not the look I am going for. Any ideas? I am in Michigan, so must be able to handle Winters.503504505506

[Chris]

What is your goal? You say its too small, okay... so you want something bigger?

My first advice is this:

1. Get rid of your square borders. Running a garden 3 feet in a square off your foundation is not attractive. Make a big, organic, sweeping curve, a C curve or an S curve but some sort of curve, it can get further from the house at a corner, or closer at a corner, it can undulate like a wave. This garden shape will make anything you plant look better. Some people lay out their shape with a garden hose, and that is a good tool. Lay it on the ground, and use spraypaint or stakes to mark the shape you like, and then turn all that into garden. If you put down newspaper or cardboard, then mulch on top, you don't even need to dig the grass up, just wait a season and the grass will all die.

2. Then you have enough depth to work with, put higher plants in the back, shorter plants in the front. Pay attention to sun needs but otherwise anything sold at a local garden center should be fine. Don't plant anything within a few feet of the house where it'd be rubbing up on your siding eventually.

3. Try to plant odd numbers of plants, 1, 3, 5, plant them semi randomly, and in addition to looking at flowers, try a selection of foliage plants with different foliage colors. Foliage comes in green, yes, but also yellow, red, black etc.

Specific plant recommendations I have, for sun (it doesn't look like you get much sun)

Lilies, Daylilies, Coneflowers, Daisies, Black Eyed Susans, at least 1 ornamental grass (miscanthus). Barberry (red and gold), juniper (you already have one), carpet/creeping phlox groundcover, sedum groundcovers

For shade

Coral bells (heuchera), heucherella, hostas, impatiens (an annual you'll have to replant each year, but the brightest shade flower around)

For either

sambucus nigra (an elderberry, very hardy, with nice japanese maple like black leaves, gets big, put it in back), hydrangeas, rhododendrons