How to Landscape for an Entry to an Old Home
Most of the houses considered old these days are large, elaborate Victorian or Edwardian types with porches and lots of lacy trim. Victorian tastes in landscaping varied widely, with some gardeners preferring the clipped and formal look, while others opted for splashy tropical plants or the more natural Gertrude Jekyll type flower borders. You can make your vintage home appear warm and welcoming by incorporating a little of all these styles into the entryway.
Place a wrought iron or picket fence, with an open gate, at the front of your property or along the driveway. Construct a path from that gate to your front door, using brick, flagstone, gravel or grass. Line the path with flower borders that curve to join similar beds running along the front of the porch.
Situate a few classic vines or climbing shrubs -- clematis, honeysuckle, jasmine, rose, wisteria -- near the porch railings. Plant the beds fronting the porch with a mix of clipped evergreens and free-form flowering shrubs of varied heights. Choose traditional evergreens such as boxwoods, junipers, pittosporums, privets and yews, for an authentic look.
Position small trees -- like crabapple, crape myrtle, dogwood, hawthorn and redbud -- wherever there are sharp edges to be softened, such as at the front corners of the house. Intersperse the trees and evergreens with equally time-honored flowering shrubs such as camellias, hydrangeas, lilacs, mock oranges and roses. Accent the flower beds with a few splashy tropicals such as caladiums, cannas, castor beans, coleuses and palms.
Plant the beds flanking the path with perennials such as daisies, heliotropes, lavenders, phloxes and pinks, supplemented with bulb-grown flowers appropriate to the season. Place lower-growing plants like alyssums, chamomiles, lobelias, thymes and violets along the front of the beds, where they can creep out onto the edges of the path.
Add flower boxes to your porch railings or front windows, and stock them with annuals such as nasturtiums, pelargoniums and petunias interspersed with dangling ivies. Set pots of similar flowers on the edges of the porch steps and a pair of decorative planters containing ivy topiaries on either side of the front door. Hang a few baskets of lush ferns and fuchsias under the porch roof.
- Fencing and gate
- Brick or paving stone
- Flowering vines
- Small trees
- Flowering shrubs
- Perennial, annual and tropical plants
- Flower boxes
- Hanging baskets
- Ivy topiaries
- Lush landscapes require lots of water. If you don't have much of that, opt for more drought-tolerant traditional plants such as plains types or succulents.
- The size of your flower borders should depend on how much space you have, though a traditional width is 6 to 8 feet. An arbor over the path, decked with climbing roses or other flowering vines, will also add a homey touch.
- Foundation planting wasn't actually as popular in the Victorian era as it is today, when we prefer to conceal our homes' bases. It is still best, however, to keep the shrubs fronting your house no higher than the porch railings to avoid covering up all that lovely trim under the porch roof.
- Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images