The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Small Home Landscaping
The borders along the path should be widened to two feet. Low, rather than high. zinnias should be used or petunias which will fall over the edges of the concrete and cover it. The concrete path is too wide for the entrance and too prominent. The glaring whiteness should be darkened and the stones standing on end removed. Tulips and pansies in spring would start the season's display.
Street or community decorations in the form of wall or pillar ornaments or lawn effects are usually given more latitude because of the flavor they impart to the community.
There are too many things to look at here and too much competition. The taxus hedge between the brick pillars is good. When it thickens up it will give a good effect, but the dense flowers will interfere with the foliage at the base of the hedge. These should be low bedding plants. Besides, the soil will be bare in winter.
Flower beds along each path to the house would be more appropriate. Again, we have too many plants. The corner planting, presumably designed to keep persons from cutting across the grass, fails in its purpose. It is too far back. The grass edge must be continually cut, the soil cultivated to stop weeds. The barberry hedge which surrounds it on the one side seems unnecessary. Next to this is a Japanese Maple which will be injured by the lawn mower unless the soil is kept open around it. A blue spruce with a large round bed and bare soil occupies the center with another spruce at the house corner. Both of these will attain a large size.
Individual homes should be landscaped as individuals—and not all alike, as so very many do. Particularly, where architecture in certain neighborhood tends to be similar, landscaping is the only means available of expressing your individuality. Equally important, it is a method of maintaining or raising property values and the appearance of the community.
The houses in this community are all planted alike. The open lawns are dotted with shrubs, evergreens, spruce—the latter a sixty-foot tree.
Worst of all are the plane trees. These can attain a height of over seventy feet and a spread of fifty feet. The lawns will, in time, be completely in the shade. The grass will thin out, the ground will become bare and dusty. The trees should be on the planting strip at the curb.
In this lock arrangement, the locks are set improperly. Natural rock formations have the strata or lines in the rock running horizontally, these stand on end. The two rocks on the left show the strata or lines.
A rock garden here is not a bad idea but the rocks should not be as prominent, but should rather merge with the bank and follow a pattern along the slope.
A background planting of low evergreen shrubs would help; mountain laurel, for example, would be very suitable. Also, dwarf evergreens among the rocks would relieve the flatness and add winter interest.
