Digging in: What Are We Hiding? 

By Peter Wimberg

One of the greatest challenges in getting homeowners to rethink how they approach landscaping their front yard is dispelling the assumption that we must have evergreen shrubs along the front of the house. This belief is as ingrained in our collective landscaping subconscious as the need to mound mulch up tree trunks and prune shrubs into geometric shapes.

When the landscape was dominated by lawn, a few shrubs and a tree or two, there was little to add interest to the landscape. The shrubs, lined along the foundation like soldiers guarding the fort, had to look perfect year-round. There was little to look at, so the shrubs had to carry the landscape through the seasons. To further support the use of evergreens in the landscape is the proclamation that we need to hide the home’s foundation. So how are these hard and fast design rules that are meant to ensure our homes’ landscapes look their best, doing? Not wel…not well at all.

As I was walking around the neighborhood (my dogs guarantee I get to enjoy the local landscapes every day), I took a closer look at the front of the homes. Truth be told, most were quite nice. I didn’t see an exorbitant amount of exposed cement, cinderblock foundations or overly unsightly home attributes one would want to hide. What I did see was a lot of stressed, dead, diseased and poorly pruned evergreens, primarily boxwoods. Instead of noticing a nice yard, a beautiful home with unique, and perhaps historic architectural features, I noticed the poor shrubs. Even worse than the tired row of evergreen shrubs was the number of very small deciduous shrubs, tucked against the house. 

I wasn’t seeing an uptick in newly-planted shrubs; these shrubs were familiar sights on my daily excursions. The undersized shrubs, often barberries (another unfortunate shrub selection), did nothing to soften the view of the home. The plantings looked minuscule against the home’s façade, and the lawn, which seemed to be encroaching on them, made it look like they were backed up against a wall. Again, no shrubs would have been a far better option.

When will we learn that the landscape should not be in a constant battle with, or worse, separation from the home? It’s not a home and then a completely different thought process for a lawn and a foundation planting. It should be that we look at how we want to extend lines out from the building and how we want to direct the eye to a unique feature of the home while marrying the structure with the surrounding outdoor space. Chances are, with a successful landscape design, the front garden bed will not be made with a straight line, running parallel and four feet out from the front of the home. That is not a thoughtful use of space. We should be striving for curving beds that open spaces for groupings of shrubs offering interesting textures, movement and foliage, berries and flowers for seasonal color to create a view that’s interesting year-round.

The front landscape and the home should not be at odds with each other. The front landscape shouldn’t be an afterthought. We invest a great deal of time and resources into our homes, why do we continue to diminish such efforts with unimaginative and often unattractive landscaping?

Peter Wimberg is the president of Wimberg Landscaping, a full-service landscaping firm that has been in operation for more than 44 years. Peter is a strong proponent of planting with nature. The Wimberg office and its extensive pollinator gardens are located at 1354 US Route 50 in Milford, Ohio. For more on his gardening philosophy, go to wimberglandscaping/changing-the-landscape.