The evolution of the front garden

I spent some time looking back at the evolution of my front garden this week.  I've previously reviewed the development of the back garden, the north side garden, and the south side garden.  As the front garden was one of our most ambitious efforts, it seemed time to get to that.  As no garden is ever "done," there will undoubtedly be further changes to every area as time passes, some significant but many not; however, this review is a chance to look at what we accomplished, as well as an opportunity to evaluate the need for future changes.  This review only covers the area of the front garden directly surrounding the house.  The area on the other side of the driveway adjacent to the garage was renovated on an entirely separate schedule.

The front garden underwent relatively few changes during the first few years we lived here.  I was heavily involved in family affairs for three years.  Meanwhile, my husband was working full-time for the first two years after we moved in, and then was embroiled in family matters of his own for another year and a half or so. 

I pulled this photo off the internet from a prior real estate listing.  As I believe the dog belonged not to the gentleman we bought the property from but to the couple who owned the property before him, I'm guessing that this photo dates back to sometime in 2008.

We acquired the property in December 2010 but this photo of the front garden was taken by my brother just before Christmas in 2011

I took this photo on November 30, 2013 for one of my earliest wide shots posts.  As you can see from it and the prior 2 photos, there was a LOT of lawn.

I did some work in the back and north side gardens by myself in 2012 and 2013 but I needed my husband's help with jobs that required more heavy lifting than I could handle on my own so major changes had to wait awhile.  When time permitted, he helped me with the south side garden in 2013 but we didn't knuckle down to tackle the front garden until 2014.

We thought we'd make things easy on ourselves and hired a crew to strip the sod.  That task was completed in mid-September.

However, stripping the top couple of inches didn't really get rid of the grass roots.  We ended up digging most of the area ourselves in stages over a 2-month period.  As the Magnolia's tree roots were close to the surface, we created a circle around the tree, later filling it with wood mulch rather than trying to plant anything there.

We bought the same flagstone we'd used elsewhere and laid a pathway around the tree, connecting the south-side path to the front walkway in November

After adding top soil trucked on-site and other soil amendments, I replanted the area shown here in late November and early December.  Some but not all of the original plants are still in place, including Echium 'Star of Madeira', Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream', Leptospermum 'Copper Glow', Lomandra longifolia 'Breeze', and Phormium 'Maori Queen'.  The Festuca Iid installed in both the foreground and in the area beyond the Magnolia was eventually removed, as was the Arctotis 'Pink Sugar' when the spot became too shady for it.

I used many of the same plants in smaller number in the area on the north side of the walkway.  The Arctotis 'Pink Sugar' in this bed remains to this day.  The most back-breaking aspect of my planting effort involved adding plugs of creeping thyme around each and every flagstone in both areas.

During 2015, the new plants settled in.  I continued to tweak the planting scheme but we made no major changes.

This wide shot of the front garden was taken on March 30, 2015

This photo, taken June 30, 2015, shows the front garden from the south end looking north.  The Grevillea 'Superb' I'd planted in November 2013 (in shadow on the right) was already gaining in size.  I'd filled in the area in the foreground on the left with rooted cuttings of Pelargonium tomentosum.  While a bit of that remains, Acacia cognata 'Cousin Itt' eventually took over the majority of the space.

This photo, taken in late December 2015, shows the addition of the bench surrounding the Magnolia, which my husband built for me as a Christmas gift

In 2016, it became apparent that the Ceanothus hedge along the moderate front-facing slope was deteriorating.  We started cutting it back, only to end up removing all the remaining shrubs.

The Ceanothus hedge, shown here in a 2013 photo, came with the garden.  It sat atop the stacked stone wall running along the front slope less than 3 feet from the Xylosma hedge that ran along the front of the property adjacent to the street.  It struck me as odd from the time we moved in.

In October 2016, what was left of the hedge looked terrible

We removed it later that month

We brought in stone to hold the soil along the sloped area and I replanted it using succulents in December

This photo looking across the main area of the front garden was taken on December 30, 2016

In 2017 and 2018, the plants themselves did all the heavy lifting.

This photo was taken from the same angle as the one above on September 30, 2017

This photo taken in early October 2017 shows the development of the succulent bed planted in December 2016 (viewed from the south looking north)

This photo was taken in late September 2018

Very little got done in the garden in 2019 as both my husband and I were preoccupied with our interior home remodel.

The area lining the stone pathway on the south side of the front garden was choking in clover in April 2019.  I think the clover came in with either the top soil or the mulch I added in the area.

Beginning in late June 2019, our driveway was occupied by a storage pod and a porta-potty for several months, as well as lumber and other construction related materials

Among other things, a gas leak was discovered during construction, which required digging a trench through the garden and along the chimney on the north side

This earlier photo, taken in June 2018, shows the area  affected by the gas line problem.  The construction crew was able to save the rose and the Phormium but the succulents had to be replaced.

In 2020 and 2021, the pandemic changed life for all of us.  My husband and I stayed close to home most of the time and I focused on small jobs in the garden I could manage without buying a lot of new plants, like the renovation of the area near our lath house.  I made no significant changes to the front garden, focusing instead on general maintenance.

My husband bought me 2 more half-barrels for the area between the Magnolia and the stone path as a birthday present in 2021.  If I remember correctly, he bought me the other 3 barrels for my birthday in 2020.

Cleanup in this area involved cutting back the Sesleria 'Greenlee's Hybrid' that had encroached along the path and laying cement bricks as a barrier to prevent the same grass from taking over the bed on the left.  The bricks came out of the backyard patio when we pushed out the wall to enlarge the kitchen in 2019.

This photo, taken in late September 2021, shows a garden that's on the verge of becoming unruly.  Among other things, the 2 Leptospermum 'Copper Glow' had grown into behemoths. 

The only visible change between the photo above and the one below, taken in early January this year, is that I pruned the two out-of-control Leptospermum 'Copper Glow'.

Additional pruning is needed, most notably in dealing with the over-sized Coleonema 'Sunset Gold' shrubs.  The Echium 'Star of Madeira' may also need to be replaced this year or next as it becomes more and more woody and I'm increasingly concerned that Leucadendron 'Safari Goldstrike' (added in 2016) may be too tall for its spot.  Tweaking on a smaller scale, of course, will continue indefinitely.

All material © 2012-2022 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party