Give it full to part sun and acid, well-drained soil. Prune it, if necessary, after it finishes blooming. This highly improved, glossy-leafed boxwood slowly grows into a tidy muffin about 4 feet tall and wide. It does well in the ground or containers and is much more pest-resistant than English or American boxwood. It likes full to part sun and well-drained soil. A good choice for people living in the milder parts of the South, this small, thin-leafed evergreen grows 2 to 3 feet tall and wide.
Showy red flowers that attract pollinators appear atop the foliage in summer and fall. Give it full sun and well-drained soil. Many people hate nandina and if you're one of them, maybe this new kind will change your mind. It also doesn't bloom or produce toxic berries, so you don't have to fret about poisoning those dear cedar waxwings. New foliage emerges bright red.
I give Charlotte landscape architect Jay Sifford constant grief about planting swaths of 'Everillo' carex on every single one of his jobs, but it's easy to see why he does. This mounding grass-like perennial glows bright chartreuse yellow all year. Growing 12 to 18 inches tall and wide, it's great for lining paths, illuminating shady areas, growing in containers, and mixing with blue, orange, deep green, or burgundy plants.
It likes part sun to shade, takes some drought, and deer don't like it. Glorioski, do I love this plant! Growing about three feet tall and wide, this graceful evergreen boasts soft-textured foliage reminiscent of bamboo that's great for combining with coarser plants like hydrangeas. Pretty yellow flowers crown the shrub in winter. It thrives in part sun or shade in moist, well-drained soil. Plug it into a border or grow it in a container.
Tolerant of wind, sandy soil, drought, and salt spray, this compact evergreen is great for the beach, but thrives in suburbia too. Unlike other forms of pittosporum that get huge, 'Mojo' reaches only three feet tall and wide, perfect for planting under windows. It combines handsome, variegated foliage with sweetly fragrant spring flowers.
Give it sun and well-drained soil. Deer turn up their noses at it. It can be difficult to predict exactly the heights that plants will achieve when mature, and shrubs that start the same size when planted may differ by many feet in a few years. Or, one shrub may succumb to the disease, leaving a lonely, out-of-place partner on the other side of the layout. In this example, the dark green spruce tree on the left is already slightly too large to serve as an effective "bookend" for its counterpart on the right.
Careful, repeated pruning may be necessary to maintain the precision of symmetrical foundation plantings, and when a replacement is necessary, be prepared to pay a premium price to install a large, mature specimen to match its opposite. Symmetry is an eye-grabbing foundation planting strategy, but it is difficult to maintain.
Shrubbery can be used for screening out eyesores, such as electrical boxes, natural gas meters, or air conditioning compressors. Although you can't see it in this well-designed example, azaleas , yews and euonymus shrubs are used here hide several utility features on the foundation wall.
These homeowners have kept all the plantings low and at the same height to keep the attractive windows visible from the outside, as well as to preserve the view from indoors. But although the shape and size of the shrubs are somewhat monotonous, there is variety in the color, with evergreen yews providing deep greens, euonymus providing light variegated greens, and azaleas providing bronze foliage that will turn red in autumn.
And the azaleas will also add colorful flowers to the display in spring. Foundation planting is a general strategy for making transitions between lawn and home, but they also can be used strategically to hide specific features. The "less is more" approach in this example may seem too spartan to some viewers, but it is also consistent with the very simple colonial Cape Cod style of this home.
Although this foundation bed will become fuller as it matures, it will always be a simple, clean approach that does not detract from the spare architectural style of the home. When designing a foundation planting, take your cue from the architectural style of the home, choosing shrub species, shapes, and arrangements that are consistent with the look of the residence.
In landscape design, the term negative space refers to the visual spaces that remain when you take out the positive spaces —the actual shrubs or other objects placed within the larger space. In the context of foundation plantings, it means that empty spaces around individual shrubs or trees should be considered as an aspect of the design. Foundation plantings can be designed so they are very dense—solid groupings of shrubs and other plantings with no spaces in between—or they can be designed so that there is negative space between or around the shrubs.
In this example, notice how the foundation planting extends out from the main planting area in a peninsula of colorful low-growing shrubs. This design works because of the empty, negative space around this jutting segment of foundation bed. Because of the negative space, the shrubs and small Japanese maple trees closest to the viewer's eye seem to flow out from the brick wall and into the lawn like a colorful glacier.
When planning a foundation bed, make sure to consider the empty, negative space as a design element. In this example, the foundation planting has been designed to include both evergreen and deciduous flowering shrubs—in this case, yews and azaleas. This landscape is shown in spring when the azaleas bloom in bright reds that complement the colors of the brick and wooden shutters in the house. A small tree adds visual interest by injecting a vertical element into the horizontal design.
The inclusion of flowering shrubs introduces seasonal variety into a foundation planting design that is anchored by year-round dark green colors of the yews.
Good foundation plantings are often anchored by evergreen trees and shrubs, with flowering shrubs added for seasonal variety. The material you use to mulch should be considered a part of the design, chosen for its impact on the overall look of the landscape. Mulches should be chosen for their color and texture, but they also serve a practical function in controlling weeds. Organic mulches, such as compost, also help feed foundation plants. In this example, the homeowner has chosen a white stone to cover the ground around the plants, offering a visual blend with the white siding of the house.
Crushed stone and gravel "mulches" are not to everyone's liking, but they can work well in some landscapes. Other choices include shredded wood, bark chips, cocoa-bean mulch, or even synthetic materials, such as recycled rubber mulch. Whitestone, for example, tends to frame and highlight whatever is planted within it, while shredded wood and bark chips tend to recede into the background without drawing attention.
Make sure to consider the impact of the mulch you use to surround the shrubs and trees in your foundation planting. Vary the colors in a foundation bed to achieve visual interest. Even if you are using nothing but low-maintenance evergreen shrubs, remember that there are many shades of green, ranging from the almost black color of yews to the silver-blue of spruce and juniper shrubs.
This newly planted foundation will take a few years to reach maturity, but one day the blue-colored junipers and gold-colored false cypress ' Gold Mops ' will help create an easy-maintenance foundation bed that still has good color variety.
Strive for color variations in the foliage of your foundation shrubs. The foundation of the home itself is where most of the attention goes, but the same strategies can be used on other landscape features, such as lamp posts, mail-box posts, or utility features set away from the house.
Detached garages, sheds, gazebos, patios and decks are other places to consider the use of foundation shrubs. In this example, a large, stark lamp post is softened with some small shrubs planted around the base. Foundation shrubs can be used many places in a landscape—wherever you want to soften the look of a man-made structure. The designer of this foundation bed had the right idea: Climbing rambler rose bushes can be used as foundation shrubs to inject a vertical element.
A variety of other flowering vines could also be used, such as clematis, climbing hydrangeas, and jasmine. The best plants will be those that require training onto a trellis. Avoid true clinging vines, which can be invasive and even damage the brick or siding on your home. And trellises themselves can be interesting and attractive design elements.
Flowering climbers set behind foundation shrubs and trained upward on trellises create a delightful visual statement. Foundation beds offer a great place to use spring-flowering bulbs, such as tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and crocus.
In this example, the foundation planting is set behind a retaining wall that lifts it to a great viewing height. This very young foundation bed will look marvelous in a few years, with spring bulbs peeking up in the early spring, then vanishing as other perennials fill in as spring gives way to summer.
Note that this foundation bed uses very few shrubs—it is a foundation bed for a true flower-gardening enthusiast. For flower-gardeners, the foundation beds offer a great place to pursue a beloved hobby. Spring bulbs and other flowering plants often work very effectively in foundation beds.
Many foundations have sloped areas, such as homes with walk-out basements or tuck-under garages. Slopes offer some challenges for foundation plantings since they can be hard to maintain and the soil tends to get very dry. Low, creeping evergreen shrubs often work quite well in these locations. Included in this example are false cypress 'Gold Mops' and mugo pine. Good plant selection can be critical in sloped foundation plantings. There are also 'prostrate pines' with the same low habit that are just as hardy.
And, like me, the authors of the article rave about junipers, noting that there are literally hundreds of varieties with a low growing spreading habit that do well in most parts of the country. Now: what about the 'volume' issue? The traditional advice on layering a landscape is to have the smallest plants in the front and the tallest ones closest to the house, so you can see the progression of plants, but the taller the plant, the further it needs to be positioned away from the house; ideally following that 'half of the full final width plus a foot' rule.
And we don't know how much room this landscape has. So I'm going to try and pretend to be a landscape designer—with the warning that you should talk with a real one or research your choices carefully before proceeding. Then we can add 'volume' with a few 'specimen' plants in front of that. Depending on the width of the area, one to three dramatic plants installed with a good amount of space between them would look spectacular.
I think weeping cherries are fabulous for this, and it would be a great way to show off a couple of ornamental grasses. But again, not in a tight row. You want to be able to appreciate the great structure of these specimen plants. And see that great little evergreen hedge behind them. And of course, don't plant anything close to a water line or sewer pipe.
And make sure there are no underground utilities before you dig. Shrubs Alive! Don't Miss Out! Oops, there seems to be an error, please re-enter your email address.
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