Sarah Metlova
Pictures Of Flower Beds In Front Of House – With many of our house projects currently on hold, I thought I’d share what my garden has been like this spring and summer. Full disclaimer – I’m very much an amateur gardener. I used to quickly kill every plant my dad tried to give me, and I thought one of the biggest advantages of owning our apartment was that I didn’t have to worry about the yard!
But after living here for a year or so, I realized that 1) our condo association does very little landscaping, so if you don’t landscape your own yard it looks awful, and 2) I really love gardening! I really like it – I’ve become slightly obsessed! Since we still live in an apartment, we don’t have a lot of land, but I’m amazed at how much we’ve been able to do. I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned from working with our small garden over the past few years with other hobby gardeners who are also dealing with small spaces!
Pictures Of Flower Beds In Front Of House
I tend to think of my garden in terms of different “zones”, and as I’ve gotten better at gardening, I’ve tried to learn the specific characteristics of each zone in terms of sun exposure and soil type to determine which plants do best in which zone. I’m also still trying to learn my gardening style – I’ve been experimenting with what types of plants I like and also different plant arrangements. I definitely like a fairly “tidy” style of planting, but this year I tried to change things up so that everything doesn’t have to be too symmetrical.
Diy Flower Bed And Porch Gains! Wip
We have a large flower bed at the front of the house, which is exposed to the sun in the morning and is mostly in the shade in the early afternoon. This is the bed I’ve been working on the longest and this year I was very happy with how it turned out! In early spring, this flower bed has a lovely mix of bulbs – daffodils, hyacinths and saffron – which I then tie back nicely when they stop blooming. I spent the rest of the spring and summer trying to grow a good mix of annuals and perennials so that I don’t have to replant the entire bed every year, which is expensive and time-consuming!
Since this bed is in front of the house, I planted taller bushes in the back – a hydrangea bush with two azaleas next to it – and lower plants in the front. This year I added a border of small hostas to the front of the bed, which worked very well and filled some of the space where I usually plant several annuals. Hostas are beautiful, low-maintenance plants that bloom year after year!
This year I decided to stick with impatiens as the only annuals in my front bed and I love how nicely they filled the bed with lots of color! Last year I tried a whole bunch of begonias, double begonias, impatiens and double begonias, but all the begonias were eaten by some sort of pest! Since this bed faces the street, I wanted to stick with plants that I knew would do well and were fairly low maintenance. Impatiens just don’t like too much sun or heat, so I try to keep an eye on them and water them as soon as they look wilted!
When we moved into our apartment, the area behind our house was just a patch of dirt and weeds where grass wouldn’t grow. So two years ago, my husband and I decided to make a discount! We tilled the soil, which was mostly firm loam, and placed a concrete border around the bed. It was really nice to have another area where we could plant; the back of our house also gets more sun from noon to sunset, so we had more options in terms of what we could plant. So this year we got tired of looking at the patch of soil and weeds next to our flower bed (the space behind the neighbor’s house), so we decided to expand the bed and cultivate this land too! It’s usually not a good idea to plant behind your neighbor’s house without asking permission, but we thought he wouldn’t notice. Luckily it worked out well as he noticed and thanked us! Here is a photo of the bed in late April, very shortly after we doubled the size of the plot. The original bed is filled with spring bulbs (which were already blooming when I took this picture) and our rose bush that we put in the ground after it lived in a pot last summer. This spring, we also added an azalea to the bed, which in this photo is just starting to bloom:
Landscaping Ideas Worth “borrowing”
Here is another picture of the same bed, mid-May. You can see that the rosebush and azalea are in full bloom and the bulbs are tightly tied (I use rubber bands to hold them in place). We also planted a row of geraniums and sage in the middle and another row of small hostas at the front – again I tried to add a bit more variety to the bed and plant more low maintenance perennials that will come back year after year. fall!
A month later here is another photo showing the expanded bed with everything in full bloom! For the second bed we added this year, I decided to plant a row of large hostas in the middle of the bed (to complement the second bed that had a row of small hostas in the front) and then fill in the back of the bed. with taller perennials and the front of the bed with low-growing annuals. In the back, we planted lilies, which grow beautifully here, a peony bush and another azalea bush. The peony bush was new this year and unfortunately it did not bloom. I’m not sure if it’s because it was the first year or it just didn’t get enough sun…I’ll let the second year go and if it doesn’t bloom again I’ll find somewhere else to tell it. At the front of the bed we tried a mix of petunias, dahlias and some snapdragons! Overall it went really well and I love the many shapes and colors. And it’s not symmetrical, which really pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I love it!
In addition to discounts, we also plant many potted plants on our terrace! They are great to see from the kitchen and I also find it a completely different experience to plant them in pots so it’s nice to be able to do both. I like to try to change things up a bit every summer, but I’ve definitely found a few things that do really well that I’ll continue to plant every year. This is the second year I have planted a hibiscus in a large blue flower pot and I love that it reliably produces beautiful flowers all summer long. This photo is from late May, very soon after I finished planting so everything was just starting to come up.
And here’s another picture a month later where everything is really blooming! Every year I always forget how big these plants are! However, I really like that the patio seems to be bursting with color, so in my opinion you can never have too many plants! I generally plant impatiens towards the back of the patio because that’s where it gets the least sun, and I put dragonflies and dahlias toward the front of the patio because they need the most sun. Last year I bought a dahlia that bloomed once and never saw it again, so I’m really happy that my dahlias have done much better this year. I also tried double petunias for the first time and they did well, although they grow a bit unruly which frustrates me a bit!
Landscaping Ideas For Front Of House (our Finished Yard Transformation)
Finally, as if we didn’t already have enough garden to maintain, my husband and I decided to cultivate the area behind the apartment, right on the edge of the settlement. I really wish our association would do a better job of maintaining this lot and I know it will take a lot of work to plant, but all of our back windows face this place and I’m getting sick of seeing the collection of weeds. Also, since this area is almost entirely shaded by tall pines, I thought it would be a great opportunity to develop a shade garden. All other areas of our yard get at least partial sun, so we really can’t plant anything that needs filling
Flower beds in front yard, raised flower beds in front of house, front of house flower beds, flowers for flower beds in front of house, landscape flower beds in front of house, pictures of front yard flower beds, small flower beds in front of house, raised flower beds front of house, front of the house flower beds, simple flower beds front house, flower beds in front of house ideas, planting flower beds in front of house