Front Yard Plantings Show Off A House

Placing plants at doorways is a rather simple matter. In most cases where the front door is flush with the face of the house the entrance planting can consist simply of one plant on either side of the doorway.

Where the doorway projects out a foot or two, or even four or five feet, and a stoop intervenes before the step is reached, a situation arises where three plants might be used. If, of course, only one were used, it should be a rather large one.

Climbing Roses and Vines

Climbing roses and vines can be grown over doorways or on blank wall spaces of houses, but you must use discretion. It is best to place them over doorways that include lattice work. Another good place for a climbing rose is on the corner of a garage (Fig. 213), or between a garage and a house where there is not enough room for a specimen plant.

When using such a plant it is well to attach it to a trellis that is fastened with hinges. This makes it easy to lower the vine when it is necessary to paint the house.

Termite Danger

In areas where termites are prevalent it has sometimes happened that, although a house was constructed so as to be termite-proof, later the owner attached a wooden trellis that had its base sunk in the soil. Termites then entered the wooden base, worked up through the trellis wood, and finally entered the house where the trellis was nailed to it. Watch out that you do not bring about this sort of disaster.

Unbalanced Facade

Now that we have covered corner and entrance plantings, we can tackle bigger things. Take the sort of house which, viewed from the front, seems much heavier and more important at one end than at the other. In such a case, try to balance the appearance of the house by putting a heavier mass planting of some sort at the end of the house that is weak in architectural weight. This is another situation in which we employ the occult balance described earlier.

Balanced Facade

To set off a perfectly balanced facade use a perfectly balanced landscape planting.

However, you will find houses where the main section has a balanced facade, but a wing or some other construction detail has been set back a little from the main section. In such cases, the balanced section should be treated as one unit and landscaped with a balanced planting, and the remainder should be handled by itself as a second part.

Locating trees for such a building is highly important; they should be arranged as though the house were completely balanced; that is, you should try to focus the observer’s attention on that part of the house which is completely balanced as planned by the architect.

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