Green Dreams

So you saw exactly what we are working with as far as landscaping goes here.  Now comes the fun part- the plan!  I'll kick things off by sharing the rendering of our current ideas for what things will look like "after."

Ta da!

Let's start on the north side of the house- the left side of the rendering- and work our way around, shall we?

The north side.

The north side of our house gets no sun.  Like, none.  The photo here was taken at high noon in the middle of summer- that's the sunniest it ever gets.  And it's just a smidge over 5 feet wide.  It needs to stay a walkway for a couple of reasons- it's the easiest way to haul the yard waste cart to the front yard and back for a month's worth of leaf cleanup every fall, and our A/C unit as well as crawl access are on that side of the house.  And because the walkway is a little lower than the front yard and back driveway, we'd like to install a shallow step on either side to allow for a more defined space.

But you know me... just because it needs to be a walkway doesn't mean it needs to be ugly!  Our first step will be dredging the gravel out, setting the steps at either end, and laying down weed block.  Typically we hate weed block fabric, as it's a nightmare to plant around if you want to change your planting arrangement, but in this case, this area will only ever be a walkway.  Once we lay the weed block down, we'll never see it again.As you can see in our scale drawing, we'd like to install raised beds for shade-loving plants along the side of the house.  Then we'll get a fresh load of gravel in for the walkway and call it good.

Here's inspiration photos of narrow walkways and shade plant groupings found on Pinterest that made my mouth water, as well as a photo of a grouping of shade plants outside a local restaurant that I LOVED and want to incorporate in the beds.

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I talk about these a little here.

This side of the house will likely be one of the first areas we tackle because we know pretty much exactly what we want it to look like, and we know how to do all of tasks involved ourselves.

Then there's the east side of the house- the front yard.  While the north exposure is all about access, the east exposure will be all about curb appeal and beauty.  This is where my love of hydrangeas, rhododendrons, and container gardening will be showcased.  There will be containers planted around the front patio as well as the front gate (three cheers for urns!).  We decided we'd like to give the walkway a little bend to make the yard feel more casual and purposeful.  Obviously we're going to be using some evergreen shrubs to screen the street (looks like a variety of Yew might be our winner right now).  We're planning on building out the flowerbed in front to be larger and have a more graceful shape.  And we'd also like to plant some rhododendrons near the fence line to help soften the lines of the yard and block some of the view into the neighbors' yard.  As far as what gets planted in the flower bed, things are still under development.  I'd like to do as Laura from McAuliffe's suggested and have a blend of colors and textures including early- and late-flowering plants and evergreens.  I DO know that there will be hydrangeas.  We're also planning on painting the front door yellow and building up the post on the outside corner of the patio to give it a little more weight and character.  I'd love to add window boxes below our large picture windows, too.  And although everything beyond our fence is technically city property, we got the OK from the city to do landscaping beyond of property line (so long as we were aware that the city could come dig it up/chop it down whenever it felt like it.  For now all we're planning is planting some wild ginger for groundcover below the giant maple.

Here's my inspiration roundup for the front yard.

Hick's Yew Informal Hedge {via}

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Wild Ginger {via}

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Chunky posts.  The ceiling makes my heart pittter-pat, too.  {via}

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Then we have the southern exposure.  This area will end up being two distinct spaces- patio/entertaining/food toward the east end and doggy play and storage toward the west.  Since we're working our way around, let's talk about the entertaining area next.

For privacy and doggy security, we're going to make this area gated.  I scored a couple of really cool wooden doors on Craigslist over a year ago for this purpose (wooden doors as garden gates = my jam).  We're thinking of using pavers in this entire area set in a herringbone pattern to give us a surface that's friendly for bare feet and tables/chairs/barbecues, whatever.  Obviously the porch to nowhere is going buh-bye and being replaced with some servicable stairs.  Since the sliding glass door on this side of the house leads right into the kitchen and dining area, we want our barbecue, smoker, and patio furniture to live right here.  At some point we'd like to install a pergola that incorporates clear roofing panels in the area immediately outside our slider so we can barbecue when the weather's disagreeable, and still soak up all the vitamin D we can when the sun's out (all 90 days a year).  We've also dreamed about advancing to quasi-homsteader status by growing some of our own food.  Since the southern exposure gets great sun and we'll have so much in the way of dining/cooking already going on in this area, it only made sense that we'd do raised beds here as well.  We think we can run narrow beds down the fence line and the side of the house for 20 linear feet or so and still have enough room down the middle that we'll have room to drag the lawnmower between them to get from the back yard to the front yard.

Here's our inspriation photos for this area.

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Herringbone.  Aw, yeah.  {via}

We love the shape of this pergola.  {via}

This home is located in West Seattle! {via} 

And this one in glamorous Tacoma! {via}

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Which brings us to the back yard.  With the patio furniture and smoker moved to our entertaining area, and a gate installed at the southeast corner of our house, this spot will then be able to serve a few functions- the most important being doggy fun time.  We've already got a crate rigged up for the puppies in the garage that opens to the back yard through a doggy-door, but without a secure gate in place, we've rarely used it (we live next to a highway and are slightly paranoid our dogs will break out of the yard through the rickety x-fence we use now).  We'd like to smooth the grade in the lawn, pull out the rotten wood chips, and plant some emerald green arborvitae along the west fence line to block our view of the McChevron.  I have to say, that may be the part I am the most excited for in our whole landscape reno!  There's plans for a small garden shed outside the garage and a rain barrel since there's no spigots on the south side of the house.  Add a couple of lawn chairs for reading in summer and a few fun container gardens, and call it good.

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So there's the plan.  What do you think?  Suggestions for us?