Posts
How to choose foundation plantings that suit your home
By Nina A. Koziol
For many homeowners, a house without an edging of greenery around the perimeter is like a painting without a frame. Throughout the Midwest there are countless home landscapes that typically flaunt a row of evergreens — usually junipers or yews — that were planted decades ago and now are often overgrown, sickly or sheared into tight little balls and cubes.
"It's like parsley around the turkey," says landscape architect Scott Ogden, who, with his wife Lauren Springer Ogden, wrote "Plant-Driven Design: Creating Gardens that Honor Plants, Place and Spirit" (Timber Press, 2008).
Ogden's family moved from Texas to south suburban Flossmoor during his high school years, and looking back now, he says, "I remember being shocked at the landscaping. In Texas, houses don't have basements so people don't hide the foundations the same way."
It hasn't always been fashionable for houses to don green skirts. Like lawns, foundation plantings are a relatively modern concept in residential landscape design.
Until the late-19th century, many physicians actively discouraged the use of foundation plants, warning that dark, damp shrubbery pressing against the house invited the dreaded scourge of tuberculosis. By 1870, the high stone and brick foundations of increasingly large Victorian homes were softened and cloaked with fragrant, showy shrubs that provided delicate, sweet-smelling breezes inside and out on warm summer days: Mock orange, summersweet, lilac, viburnum, roses and fothergilla were some of the popular shrubs planted under windows, at the corners of the house, and flanking doorways.
Then as now, the key is to keep plantings in scale with the home and choose lower-maintenance plants that will thrive in the available light, soil and moisture conditions.
Revamping that planting
Junipers planted more than 25 years ago — and clipped into a rolling wave of green — cover the entire front of Sharon Vojtek's town house in Palos Heights.
"They look tired, they're prickly and they collect every leaf and branch in the fall," Vojtek said. And they're slowly engulfing the window. In this instance, it's often easier to remove the shrubs — trunks, roots and all — and replant from scratch, says landscape designer Marcy Stewart-Pyziak of The Gardener's Tutor in Manhattan, Ill. "Plants don't last forever and if you get 20 or 30 years out of a planting around the house, that's pretty good."
A good place to start analyzing your home's landscape is from across the street. Consider replacing declining or overgrown shrubs with dwarf or slower-growing specimens that are more in scale with your house.
"From a design standpoint, a foundation planting can be part of a composition that extends right out into the lawn or up to the sidewalk," Ogden says. "You don't have to do the ‘line-'em-up-and-shoot-them' kind of thing. The [light] exposure creates a lot of planting opportunities."
On the north side of the house, Ogden suggests using plants that appreciate the extra shade and cool temperatures. In the Chicago area, that could include hydrangeas, ferns, hostas and boxwood.
"On the east exposure, plants like roses, which enjoy protection from the hot afternoon sun, might be an alternative," he said.
On south- and west-facing exposures, ornamental grasses, witch hazel, viburnum, butterfly bush and sun-loving perennials will offer multi-season color.
Keeping it green
Many homeowners are not eager to part with their evergreen foundation plants because they want some color during winter. Picking slow-growing replacement plants with interesting needles can sometimes help solve that problem.
"The most common error is to plant too much, too close to the house and too close to each other," says Rich Eyre of Rich's Foxwillow Pines Nursery (richsfoxwillowpines.com) in Woodstock. "Dwarf conifers (evergreens) extend the life of the planting bed because the growth rates are slower than the species and there is less maintenance and pruning needed."
Two of his favorites for full sun include Picea pungens ‘St. Mary's Broom', a flat, low-growing blue spruce that grows about 1 foot in 10 years, and Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Lemon Thread', which grows about 3 feet in 10 years and produces bright yellow foliage on graceful, drooping branches.
"In a shaded spot that gets morning sun, you can grow ‘Jeddeloh' hemlock (Tsuga canadensis ‘Jeddeloh')," Eyre says. It's another bright green spreading mound that also grows about three feet in a decade.
There are environmental considerations as well.
"I expect any landscape elements that deserve a place in our living environment to deliver some level of real performance and benefits," says landscape architect Marcus de la fleur (delafleur.com) of Chicago. "The whole concept of foundation planting — or any other pure decorating scheme of planting — makes my neck hair stand up. People would never buy a car with only two or three wheels just because it's pretty, but that is what they are doing with their landscapes."
He notes that homeowners should think about landscape treatments that could help with moisture management around foundation and basement walls rather than simply selecting plants on merits of their looks alone.
Moisture-loving plants, such as hydrangea, Siberian iris and astilbe and some native plants work well in planting beds where the downspout drains, Stewart-Pyziak says. Her native choices include sweetspire (Itea virginica), elderberry (Sambucus), turtlehead (Chelone) and spicebush (Lindera benzoin).
"In areas that have morning sun and afternoon shade, hydrangeas do very well and look good when planted in groups of three or more," she says. Depending on the style of a home, she may use Annabelle hydrangeas and rugosa roses around entrances to evoke a cottage garden feeling. Around midcentury modern homes, she opts for ornamental grasses, including the native prairie dropseed, which she combines with perennials and low-growing shrubs.
Scott Ogden also adds a more subjective consideration when choosing the plants that surround your home.
"Plants should mean something to you or you'll never have a relationship with that place," Ogden says. "Consider using plants that have a special meaning, like grandma's lilac, peony or a clump of iris, and think about how to incorporate those kinds of plants into the planting."
© 2010 Nina A. Koziol and Chicago Tribune
No comments:
Post a Comment