Designing Foundation Plantings for a Picture Perfect Yard

This time we are looking at foundation plantings as the next area in designing a picture perfect yard. Foundation plantings are a vital part of good home landscape design and are undoubtedly one of the easiest and most satisfying landscaping elements in your yard. They can be used as backdrops, to define garden beds, and to simply add seasonal interest. Foundation plantings are another way to add appeal to your home by using them to soften, enhance or even hide certain features of your house.

Foundation plantings are often green shrubs intermixed with flowers. Shrubs have many uses within the landscape with foundation plantings being one; others are privacy hedges, and specimen plants. Evergreens can be broad leafed, or have needle-like foliage and can be large or small but whatever kind or shape they are, they are unsurpassed for tying the house to the ground and are desirable in the landscape because they stay green throughout the entire year as they don’t lose their leaves in the winter like deciduous shrubs do.

Designing your planting on paper ahead of time can save time and prevent costly mistakes. There are many ways to plan a landscape and designs can vary from formal gardens, to a naturalistic look, to carefully placed accent plants but one must always give special consideration to beds designed with small trees and flowering shrubs because these plants can get quite large. Plantings may be selected to shade the foundation edge, especially on the southwest corner of the structure and choosing drought-tolerant plantings that will require less irrigation will mean less chance for irrigation water to create a moisture problem in the house. Corners are one of the most important areas of the "foundation" planting. Houses appear awkward and bare without plantings at the corners since they define the outline of a house. Often this definition is created by plants, such as cone-shaped conifers acting like bookends. I prefer using shrubs with different heights and a mixture of foliar colors and forms because it is more appealing to the eye.

The most common mistake in designing foundation plantings is they are usually planted too close to the house because the beds are too small. They should be spaced away from the foundation and properly spaced apart to accommodate them at size of maturity. Typically, you are looking to establish these evergreens space appropriately spaced along the length of the foundation and around corners, approximately five feet out from the house. They not only need space but love good mulch made from well aged bark, peat moss and or pine straw which are all excellent mulches for all conifers.

One problem that people who live in northern climates have is foundation plantings are often injured by snow and ice falling from the roof onto their branches. Injury may be prevented by wrapping cloth or burlap tightly around evergreens to hold branches together. On the other hand avoid planting during the hot, dry months of summer; fall is a much better time to plant in order to ensure good plant health.

Foundation plantings are here to stay. You may want to get a garden designer to work with you on a design that suits both your lifestyle and personal preferences but the work can be done by you with some sweat and effort. It is said landscaping is good for your health and one of the most cost effective tools for improving and sustaining one’s quality of life, whether in the city, the suburbs, or the country.

Designing Foundation Planting “by the yard”