The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Small Home Landscaping

The most important part of the house is the doorway entrance. Start the planting there. If the house is on the Cape Cod style, or some edition of it, without any part projections other than perhaps the steps - it's a balanced front (architects call it a facade). A balanced facade calls for a balanced planting; that is, the same planting stretches out each side of the entrance.

Start by setting two low rounded plants each side of the door. If there is a step or two, set the plants so that they will just cover the edge of the steps. They will reach in further, of course, as they grow. Select the slower-growing ever-greens from the list, Mugho pine in the colder regions, Japanese yew, also extremely hardy, and boxwood in the moderate zones.

Begin foundation planting at the doorway entrance, the most important and prominent part of home.

Avoid the tall, spiry plant. Some form of a taller plant may be necessary near a very formal door or one that is rather distinctive to draw attention to it, if indeed such a door needs any such introduction. All you need to do is to emphasize the entrance as distinct from any other part of the facade and the more simple the planting the better.

But the balanced front, so typical of the Cape Cod, or some form of the Colonial, is absent from the modern house. Today the entrance is either placed at one end of the house, or somewhat off center, leaving more of the front on one side of the door than the other. One half of the house may be frame and the other brick, or stone veneer; the stone or brick side may be on straight simple lines, the other span-shaped. In some houses, a garage or bedroom may project ten or more feet, making it L-shaped. There are many interpretations of the ranch house; in some the picture window is enlarged to a point where it occupies a considerable section of the facade.

All these variations, of course, need a somewhat different plant arrangement. At the same time you can reduce most of the modern houses to a few simple lines and, except for some specialized structure, work out a formula that has a pretty safe application. Here's the way to approach the problem.