Preliminary landscape design help

I'm glad you're having fun with it, osso because I knew you would come up with some great ideas.

The guys are still here working so I still can't get photos of my destroyed areas.

I have (approx.) measurements!



The porch is 13.5 with 6 feet covered and 2 feed uncovered.

Now I'll get photos downloaded and posted....

Smaller than I was guessing. Still, I'm not off the idea. Not that I expect you to go for it. To test this and other ideas out, consider laying down hoses where the lines might go - hoses, or yellow rope or, whatever. (Can be easier to work with than chalk lines...)

I'm almost embarrased to post these photos. We just got back from vacation and started tearing stuff apart. It usually doesn't look this bad....

The front of the house..



The house side of the courtyard. We will be digging in a fire escape from the basement but it won't be huge -- it will be right under the window..



The front porch...



Looking south...



Looking northish...

Yes, it isn't a huge yard but it's decent sized.

Mo is growing up so our needs a few years down the road will be different from what they are now. Plus, we'll be able to take advantage of the backyard relatively soon and it's starting to look pretty nice.

Doesn't look bad to me. I've always loved your house, so reminiscent of my aunt's. I would work with plants at the face of the house - but circulation is first to consider.

On Butrflynet's take on (my words) if you 'lose' the fin wall(s), I can see a pergola instead, but I didn't look at the link. I prefer keeping them. Any pergola/arbor I'd build to work with your house would be very expensive and probably would involve keeping some of the wall, however small a part, or replacing a part, and you already have existing walls in place, for no dollars.

On size, my first house of my own was a supposed 40' foot lot, but I measured it as 39. My last one, a house on a lot with another half lot, was 75'. My present one, I can only snort. What that means to me re my sketch is that the stone paver circle area may be too small to work as I thought. But, that could morph, will toy with it, but not until morning.

Since youre in a warm area , Id plant one or three crepe myrtles (All tonto or some other darker bright color, then Id surround the walkway from the driveway to the courtyard by ornamental grasses that provid privacy but dont screen the house. Id keep the crepe myrtle as the "bones " of your landscapeplanting and Id carefully strip the lower leaves so that itd create a rising mass of bare branches that coalesce into te leaf and flower heds. Grasses make it soft.

I love Tudors they are so Arts n Crafts yet they dont have to follow thos prescriptive AnC type plantings that are sculpted.
I like a bit o chaos and tight plantings.

Id let the hardscape let you know what It wants to do with a decent planting> Therefore, IF itd be me, Id lay the plants (Grasses and Crepe myrtles, and some ground covers ), THEN Id lay in a complementary hardscape.

Im talking outta my ass here but we didnt get an idea for our stonewalled patio until AFTER we planted some trees and made glades and "quiet" spots.

Loving this discussion! Landscaping is still kicking my butt, though I'm very interested in it. And I love boomer's house, and it has some similarities (shady yard, similar-ish house though mine is more of a weird pastiche). And actual osso drawings to boot!!! I've been waiting for that for like 10 years! (They don't disappoint.)

Aaack - that's scotchtaping tracing paper over the monitor screen (no, the tape not on the screen) and copying with a fat sharpy at a weird angle. Super sloppy - but then most beginning sketches in the firms I worked in/had were fast and sloppy.. and numerous.

I've been staring at your front door, Boom, and wondering if you would want to raise the porch to the level of the landing right in front of the door, and then put another landing in just under the door threshold - which would involve then two steps to leave the porch, which you might not want but could be nice/good looking. What is that black thing behind the stuff on the porch and under the second window? (Just wondering if it is some function that shouldn't be covered).

Have been re-thinking a bit, but my brain isn't in gear yet (it's before noon) - more later.

I like some chaos too! Some of the house around here have those "cottage gardens" and I drool over them.

Crepe myrtle are a nice suggestion, and I like them trimmed up just as you suggested! I'm not sure how well they do here but I recall them from Texas/Oklahoma. Just about anything grows here.

I've always thought you'd lay out your hardscape first and then plant around it. I'm thinking the porch/courtyard area might be a container garden -- the pots give some height and help with privacy.

Landscaping is not my forte, for sure. Luckily I have a friend/neighbor with a lucious yard that is going to help me with plant selection. She has the coolest/most unusual things in her yard so I know I won't end up with the cookie-cutter style that predominates my neighborhood.

Raising the level of the porch is a topic that has come up several times.

I'm worried that if we raise it that it will wreck the proportion of the arches so I'm leaning towards leaving it as is.

The black thing is a basement window. We're pretty certain that it will be filled in and the remainder intergrated into the front of the house.

You're right, I agree with you re raising it and the arches. (I'd just been look from the porch to the door.)

On chaos, I happen to like controlled chaos..

on Crape myrtles, a lot of them previously planted in LA had fungus trouble. But new hybrids/varieties have come to the fore with less of that problem. As usual, I'd talk with one or two of the best respected nurseries, and possibly the arboretum people in Portland. I used to talk with the LA arboretum, but, as a designer, and maybe they had an especially helpful staff.

And yes, hardscape, circulation first.


Adds, that looks to me like two risers from the outer landing to the porch, so I'd call it two steps, which is good - one step is harder for the distracted eye to see when walking from the high level.

Changed my mind, see it's one riser. The basement thing fooled me.

I did some browsing of Tudor home front yard landscapes and noticed that many of them have the characteristic meandering walkway from the door to the street.

Here are some that caught my eye because they seemed to have some features that you've been talking about for yours.

Some good variety there on the Tudors.

I've two more sketches that are different. Will scan and post in a bit.

Meantime, the measurements come out as sort of 1/10" but only on a few of them.

I'm back to confusion whether to raise the porch, given that I mistook the number of steps before, and that the bit with the basement thing would eventually read out.

Be nice if your contractor could draw an elevation to scale so you could make an aesthetic judgement. Or maybe you could mock up where the porch would end up..

I already said one advantage of two steps but there are more. The drop from the door not so in-you-face, and the present situation is somewhat dangerous for your guests; and there would be the luxury of an exterior broad shelf to heighten some of your container planting. The early photo visual is confusing though. Luxurious steps are a continuing treat, plus safer.

I see I forgot to add the 28' frontage.
Oh, and the 1/10 scale was estimate re Boom's original drawing, not much to do with whatever turned out on my scans.

Some more (guess that's it):



Well, on that one, I get rid of that S on the curves and the squareness near the proposed concrete pad.




No idea why one image is smaller. Still learning scanning.

All of those landscapes are WAY to sterile for me. Eventually I'd like to do it as an overplanted cottage garden, something riotous. But that's 10 years down the road.

I do like curvy paths and will probably want to retain that feature of my current path -- just in a slightly different location.