Front garden design ideas

Hi,

I would like to change my front garden but have absolutely no idea where to start ...

Any idea would be more than welcome!

Thank you

 

Hi Olivier, For low maintenance, I'd suggest getting rid of the grass.
It's a lovely looking house, and suggests a cottage-garden style planting. Lavenders, Hebes, Cistus and Rosemary would form a good evergreen basis and hardy geraniums, Vinca minor, Stachys lanata and Sedum and / or Euphorbias are all tough, reliable plants with varied foliage and flowers.

 

@noisette47 thank you !

I will google that in order to get photos, but if you have examples I could look at, let me know.

Something I can't understand though, is how a cottage garden can be less maintenance than grass ?

Thank you

 

Grass is hard work. Apart from regular mowing, it also fills up with dandelions at the first opportunity, and becomes a sloppy muddy mess if anyone walks on it after a lot of rain.

I don't know all of the plants that noisette47 listed, but I know most of them. They are all very low maintenance, pretty much look after themselves, and make life difficult for weeds because they block sunlight from reaching the ground.

Cistus, or Broom, is brilliant. It flowers profusely for a long period and grows quite quickly. I've seen it used for boundary hedges to great effect. Rosemary and lavender are both very low maintence, and very fragrant, and of course you can use rosemary in the kitchen too. Its about a quid for a little bunch in the supermarkets, which is crazy when you consider how easy it is to grow and look after. There's a house near me that has been stood empty for at least 3 years that I know of, and certainly nobody has been looking after the garden. It has the most amazing rosemary bush in it that stands about 4 ft tall and is spilling over the garden wall. Its brilliant.

 

Sorry not to have replied before, Olivier, been busy in the garden! As Clueless says, keeping grass looking good is a fair bit of work, which increases in proportion to the size of the area decreasing, probably because a small area of lawn doesn't seem to demand regular maintenance. If you want to keep the grass, could I suggest making it a definite shape, whether circle, oval, rectangle or square? While it's more formal it also looks more 'intended', rather than just some green stuff to fill in a gap Then, your plants take over the role of filling the remaining spaces, but far more interestingly than grass.
Here are a couple of photos which show the value of planting for foliage effect, with the flowers as a bonus. The first one (if they come out in the right order) is in deep shade under mature pine trees, the second in a sunny south-facing border.

 

Hi there!
As others have suggested, I would get rid of the grass altogether. Lots of little bits of grass, so fiddly to mow, a huge amount of edging to do, to keep it looking smart, etc.

I would be tempted to go cottage garden-y, and I have also developed a love of brick paths. You have definitely got a brick "feature" going with the style of house, so I would pick this up with brick paths to work across your now grass-free, deep flower borders. These could be curvy, or angular, or even a bit of both, should you wish!
The paths would serve a dual purpose - to link the design of the garden into the house style (I'd probably go with curvy paths, as a contrast to the 'half-timber' straight lines, but thats a v personal choice) and would also allow you easy access to the plants for maintenance. Shrubs, roses, woody herbs, lavenders, would all look lovely against the background of the house, and would encourage people to stop, look and sniff on their way in.

 

Thank you all for your advices.
Cottage garden is on it's way ... Will post photos of the progress.

 

Step 1 ...
Removing all the blue bells (tons and tons) and removing the grass (takes ages).

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