Making over a front garden: a photo diary
I finally completed my front garden makeover five years later with the help and advice of a good friend, Chris Woods, an English-bred gardener (and now executive director of the prestigious Chanticleer Gardens, located outside Philadelphia), who taught me a valuable lesson about front gardens: 'It isn't necessary to use evergreen material to make a front yard look beautiful,' he told me. 'You have to train yourself to stop believing that evergreens should automatically be placed in the front of a house.'
Now, this doesn't mean that evergreens don't serve a purpose. I learned over the years that evergreens like boxwoods and junipers are essential in adding structure and visual continuity to the landscape. But since I was so unhappy with my shrubs, I decided on a compromise: remove some of the evergreens and add spring- and autumn-blooming perennials. Most importantly, I started to view my front yard as a true garden - not just a place to access my front door. And with that in mind, I began to create the English garden of my dreams - right in my front yard.
Cottage-Garden Perennials
One of the first things I wanted to do in my front yard was create a romantic cottage garden reminiscent of some of the great gardens that I had seen in England. To mimic this feel I made a point of limiting my perennials to a colour palette of whites, soft and deep pinks, blues, mauves and purples.
My perennial mix included:
- Heuchera 'Palace Purple': A clump-forming, purple plant with palmate leaves and panicles of small white flowers. It has a height and spread of approximately 18 inches. In zone six, the leaves retain their purple colour for at least nine months of the year.
- Violet pansies: Although pansies are not typically considered a perennial in colder climates, they will grow back each spring if the winter is warm enough. In hot humid summers they will die back, but then perk up again in the autumn if kept moist.
- Valerian: Blessed with an incredible fragrance, this prolific self-seeder will grow in almost any soil and thrives nicely in a shady area. Valerian flowers will bloom in red, white or pink.
Some other species I used in the front garden were:
Agastache cana (mosquito plant), clematis vine, camassia, Agastache feoniculum (anise hyssop), phlox sp., echinacea sp., digitalis sp., Knautia macedonia, perennials grasses such as Molinia 'Windspiel' and 'Chasmanthium,' geranium sp., Lavandula 'Provence' (lavender), Nepata 'Dropmore' (catnip), Artemesia 'Powis Castle' and Crambe cordifolia.
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