Archive for No Lawn Front Yards – Page 6

Montavilla Bungalow Landscape Design for Entry

Posted by Carol

· January 10, 2018

Montavilla Bungalow Landscape Design for Entry

This NE Portland bungalow landscape design project was a joy. My charming client had a new home that was beautifully updated on the inside but the landscape was a blank canvas and a bit rough. It needed a landscape design to address new walks, driveway and create strong presence. The large houses on either side dwarfed this sweet house. Look at the great lines of the porch!! I loved this house at first sight.

Client wish list

New driveway, low maintenance plantings, no lawn front yard, low water plantings and lots of colorful long season plants.

Landscape designer view

Everything, including front walk and driveway, needed to be carefully designed to enhance function and curb appeal. The proportions of the driveway and front walk required updating because life has changed a lot since 1940. Middle class homes in the Montavilla neighborhood had cramped narrow walkways and no pedestrian access to the front door from the driveway. People parked their one car in the driveway and entered their home through a side door. Usually the man of the house came in and hung his coat and hat on a peg on the basement wall and came in to the house via the kitchen. We are talking “Father Knows Best” era here. NE Portland Montavilla neighborhood after Landscape Design in a Day

Portland Residential Landscape Design in Montavilla Neighborhood

Erysimum – wallflower stands above rockery wall and flowers for 2 months

I felt the house needed to be integrated into its land, that it was cut off and floating. We needed multiple planting levels supported by an informal rockery style wall. The levels are softened by the plantings which keeps the whole landscape integrated and inviting. Here is a designers’ trick, planting the area in front of the wall is inviting and keeps the wall from feeling like a barrier.

Wall plantings

Erysinium – Wallflower ‘Wenlock Beauty’ on the right, Sedum ‘Purple Emperor‘ on the left and Thymus Praecox – Red Creeping Thyme in foreground.

Driveways

I’m very picky about driveways. They need the right proportions to be a functionally usable space but still fit into the landscape not dominate it. I want to make it comfortable to get in and out of the car with groceries, kids and pets without stepping into mulch or plantings. I hate having to negotiate through awkward uncomfortable spaces.

Client Comments

“I hired Carol to create a design for my front yard and driveway replacement and to check in and work with the contractors during the installation process. Carol recommended Donna Burdick’s company D & J Landscape Contracting to implement the plan and I’m glad I chose them as well. Donna and Carol have worked together for years and speak a common language which made for a seamless experience. Carol is very flexible and can work with wishes of any level of detail. I had mostly vague, general ideas and preferences. She was able to take those and come up with something that I loved as soon as I saw the first rough layout.” Denise L.

Plants for Montavilla Bungalow Landscape Design for Entry

Daphne transatlantica ‘Summer Ice’

Spring Heather – Erica carnea ‘Adrianne Duncan’

Summer Heather with Daphne behind

Summer Heather – Calluna vulgaris ‘Mrs Ron Green’

Erysimum ‘Wenlocks Beauty’ – Wallflower

Echinacea – Cone Flower

Bergenia ‘Baby Doll’

Hebe albicans ‘Sussex Carpet’-cannot rave enough about this evergreen plant!

Heuchera ‘Sugar Berry’

Sedum ‘Voo Doo’

Hen and Chicks in Portland landscape design

Hens and Chicks in winter

Sempervivum-Hens and Chicks ‘Royal Ruby’ and ‘Carmen’

Salvia officinalis ‘May Night’

Vaccinium ‘Sunshine Blue’ Blueberry

Carex morrowii – Sedge Grass ‘Ice Dance’

Designers favorite Hebe a. 'Sussex Carpet' for Portland landscape designs

Designers favorite Hebe for Portland landscape designs

The parking strip tree is Parrotia persica – Persian Ironwood and the Gingko trees are ‘Jade Butterfly’. I selected a dwarf tree so the colorful sun loving plants under the trees will thrive.

Here is another no lawn entry landscape design for a N.E. Portland bungalow.

In need of a new and inviting look for your front yard that you can maintain on your own? I’d love to create the perfect design for you and your Portland Bungalow or new modern infill home. Take a look at our contact page to learn more.

Landscape Design: Carol Lindsay, Landscape Design in a Day

Landscape Installation: D and J Landscape Contractors

Concrete Contractor: Kerry Becker Concrete Company

Categories : Before and Afters, Customer Testimonials, Dramatic Flowers, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, No Lawn Front Yards

Tags : boulders, color in the garden, curb appeal, dramatic flowers, driveway, drought tolerant plantings, garden design with stone, Hardscape Design, long blooming flowers, low maintenance plantings, low water plantings, No Lawn, plants to attract birds

Outdoor Pee Pad for Dogs – A Landscape Designer’s Solution

Posted by Carol

· November 1, 2017

Making Your Small Landscaping Space Dog Friendly

I live on a floating home and when my dog has to go pee or poop, the parking lot is a long ways away. My perfect solution to living on the river with a dog, is synthetic lawn on my small garden balcony. I have the advantage over most people with a deck or balcony because we designed the house to have a small roof garden with real soil. It was easy to add the synthetic lawn over the existing soil. Not only was it easy, when my dog pees on her synthetic lawn, the rain rinses it into the soil so it doesn’t smell. In the summer when there is no rain I rinse the grass using a garden hose. As you can see Daizzie likes to lay on her grass so it is used for more than an outdoor pee pad. I enjoy sitting out there with her or drinking coffee from my outdoor sofa.

When she poops on her synthetic lawn it is easy to pick up unless she has diarrhea and then I do need to rinse with my garden hose. The dog poop always goes in the garbage because I don’t want to add nitrogen to the river, I mean come on, just because it’s dog poop doesn’t mean it isn’t raw sewage.

Portland Landscape Design dog pee lawn Another solution is a raised bed for grass. My client Sherry has small dogs and no lawn except for this tiny patch. She just replaces the grass in her raised bed occasionally.

Portland is a city that is very dog friendly. As a Portland landscape designer I have lots of wonderful opportunities to create dog friendly landscape designs. I consider it one of my best job benefits.

If you are interested in dog friendly landscaping, contact us for more information.

Categories : Dog and Cat Friendly Gardens, Garden Tips, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, No lawn back yard, No Lawn Front Yards, Synthetic Lawn and Dogs

Tags : designing for the dog, dog friendly, dog friendly gardens, dog friendly lawns, landscape for dogs, No Lawn, synthetic lawn

Portland Landscape Designer and River Life

Posted by Carol

· September 7, 2017

Portland Landscape Designers floating home

After Bob transforms the single story floating house and boat tender.

As a Portland landscape designer I’m in and out of 2 or 3 homes a week. It’s fun to see how people live so I figure it’s only fair to share how I live and many people are curious about living in a floating home. I can also brag about my partner Bob’s amazing design/build skills by sharing the before and after photos.

Weather

There are a lot of wonderful things about living on the water but watching the river and the weather play together is the best. Most of the time they play nicely but sometimes, like last winters snow, was quite challenging. Too much snow on one side of the house creates a tip and after a day or two of the eggs cooking on one side of the pan everyone gets a little crabby including our cat Cracker Jack.

The best part is that everything in the sky, clouds, sunrise colors, and geese heading south is duplicated in the water. This includes the eclipse in August of 2017. There’s a photo that got away. The wind typically doesn’t rock the house, usually it’s a boater going by too fast creating a wake that rocks the house, but when we have gusts and white caps, I swear I can feel the soul of the wind. Weather is intimate down on the water.

Wildlife

We have a resident blue heron who likes to scare people at dusk by flying low and silent until he is just overhead of an unsuspecting landscape designer trudging down the dock toward home. He makes that low gruff and very loud Heron squack. This is followed by another loud noise or two as I retrieve my belongings from where I threw them when I was startled out of my revere. So far I’ve never tossed my car keys in the water but its been a close thing. Car keys go in ones’ pocket upon departure from the car.

We have regular visits by Stellar sea lions especially when the salmon are running. They are curious and a bit snoopy. No photos but great stories of sea lions stealing from fisher folk in boats and on the bank.

Portland Landscape Designer moves to the river

Before floating home re-design and remodel, a sweet house waiting to become our home

I’ve enjoyed our old goose couple for many years now but haven’t been able to get a hold of her eggs for artistic flights of fancy for a few years. We have otters who mate under our house every late spring. This ritual goes on for about 5 days. It is not quiet. We have bats and mud swallows and they have a schedule for coming in the spring and leaving in late summer or fall. The diving birds come in mid fall and stay for a good part of winter. There are two kinds of owls and a particular owl couple who sit on each end of the marina and talk half the night. Their hoots are mostly pleasant sounding. There is quite a menagerie and I feel so close to nature here.

Practicalities of River Life

Yes, we schlep our groceries and everything else down to our floating home with a rolling cart. One lives very close to ones’ neighbors down here but so far its been a happy chummy place when you want chums and plenty of privacy when you don’t. I’ve met amazing and dearly memorable people.

Our Blue Heron is a poser.

Once we get home we don’t want to leave so most of the time we don’t. Why would we leave to go somewhere when we can be here?

Checking flotation.

Portland landscape designers' view of fall fisherman in red boat

My view in fall.

Growing greens above ground

Felix and Oscar are not pleased with their eggs.

Best of all I have a wonderful view of Sauvie Island and the river. I’m sure the river has a very positive influence on my life to include my Portland landscape designs.

Floating Homes with snow

Categories : Designers Journal, No lawn back yard, No Lawn Front Yards

Boulders Create Opportunity in Portland Landscape Designs

Posted by Carol

· June 28, 2017

Bright blue Navel Wort Omphaloides cappadocia graces this stacked boulder wall in NW Portland's Willamette Heights.

Bright blue Navel Wort – Omphaloides cappadocia ‘Cherry Ingram’ graces this dry stacked boulder wall in NW Portlands’ Willamette Heights. Clients love this plant!

Boulders create opportunity in Portland landscape designs.

As a Portland landscape designer I love boulders. They are so versatile and especially helpful with complex small urban properties. New construction properties in the city are always on difficult lots now unless they are a tear down. The lots are either very narrow, an unusual shape or steep. The easy lots were built on years ago. They are a good challenge for experienced designers. Clients are often completely baffled about their options.

Usable space

One of the big issues with these properties is creating usable space for my clients. A pretty landscape that can’t be used for entertaining even 4 adults is not functional in my opinion. Boulders help the designer create level, functional and usable areas. Boulders also bring nature into urban environments and add visual drama to the views from the home. A well placed boulder brings a sigh of relief to me, it’s hard to explain but I think it is the touch of nature that I feel.

Designer directed boulder placement for this new construction home in NW Portland.

I loved directing the boulder placement and designing the stairs for this Willamette Heights home in NW Portland.

Boulders retain the hillsides to allow the designer to carve out interesting walkways, stairs and planting areas above them. The spaces between the boulders create planting pockets which when thoughtfully planted result in layers of softening greenery. Planting the pockets creates another way to balance the proportions of hard surface to plant material. I love being able to use plants that are fussy about drainage in boulder crevices that I cannot use without copious soil preparation in flat properties. The bonus of being able to stand and tend the low maintenance plantings cannot be praised enough as my older clients will attest to.

This water feature with a large drilled Montana Mud boulder has a dry return so it is safe for a front yard with no child proof fence.

Water

Boulders and water are natural partners and I love to create simple low-maintenance water features using drilled rock and echo chambers. It’s an easy way to offset traffic noise and provides water for birds, bees and possibly your dog too. With a dry return instead of a high maintenance pond there is no mud so Fido won’t get to roll in the mud and bring it in to share w your sofa or carpet.

Proportional curb appeal

When the front yard is small we need strong visual impact to offset tall facades and large driveways. There is little plantable space and often the maximum hardscape allowed by the city or county. We need to be visually bold to offset this situation. Raising the soil with a few well placed boulders and adding complementary dramatic plant material can give us the impact we need.

Japanese Maple – Acer Palmatum ‘Shindeshojo’ in Westmoreland neighborhood SE Portland Landscape Design in a Day.

Boulders solve soil problems

Here’s an example….Planting a hot colored foliage Japanese maples up in a boulder planter create excellent drainage and helps avoid the dreaded verticillium wilt which is a good example of solving multiple problems with one solution. Flat lots with heavy clay soil can severely limit the selection of plant material that will survive. Supporting the raised soil with boulders gives me a wider selection of plants that will thrive without fuss. It’s not as easy to be dramatic with a limited plant palette.

NW Native Sword fern – Polystichum munitum has upright fronds in sun and horizontal low fronds in shade.

NW Natural Style

Boulders work beautifully with nw natural landscape style but it is easy to use them in modern landscape design too. The caricature of modern design can be harsh, bleak and boring. Paths, patios, entries and retaining walls must be carefully shaped and proportioned. Boulders bring in the relief of nature made versus man made and create an inviting atmosphere.

Read more about hillside landscape design.

Categories : Design Basics, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, No Lawn Front Yards

Tags : boulder wall, boulders, difficult small gardens, Hillside gardens, Hillside landscape, retaining walls, rockery boulder wall, steep properties

Lawn Do Over for Portland Landscapes

Posted by Carol

· August 10, 2016

Drought Tolerant, Synthetic & No Lawns Landscaping

Landscape Design in a Day's newly installed drought tolerant RTF grass.

Landscape Design in a Day’s newly installed RTF grass with dry stream bed.

This is the year for rethinking the lawn. As a Portland landscape designer many of my new clients want to make big changes in their landscapes. I am recommending clients replace their old lawns with new and improved grass varieties.

My Lake Oswego clients, George and Marcia, contacted me completely discouraged about their front yard. I met them in the fall after our particularly hot and horrid summer of 2015. They had spent their entire summer watering and watering their lawn. It wasn’t dead on the October day that I came to their home but as you can see it was quite unattractive.

Uplands Neighborhood of Lake Oswego before drought tolerant lawn.

Damaged Lake Oswego lawn

They decided it was time to hire a designer and start over with their landscape. It is a typical Lake Oswego landscape with heavy clay soil, fir trees nearby with thirsty roots, and drainage problems.

Before we even started the landscape design process, I was able to share information about a new lawn grass that uses less water and is more durable than the grass (perennial rye grass blends) we have been using for the last 30 years. Working closely with Kevin Schindler of Autumn Leaf Landscaping Inc. we replaced their old lawn with Rhizomatous Tall Fescue (RTF) grass and designed a naturalistic dry stream bed that also solves the drainage problems. Solving the drainage problems also enhances the health of the grass. Even RTF grass doesn’t do well in a boggy winter soil. George and Marcia are very pleased with the appearance and performance of the new grass. They love their new dry stream bed and how it has pulled together the entire front yard, giving it a dramatic focal point.

They are no longer slaves to watering with drought tolerant lawn.

Installation day at George and Marcia’s Lake Oswego home.

This year several of my clients have taken out their old grass and installed RTF. From a distance it looks like any lawn, in fact it looks more uniform because it grows so thickly that it tends to crowd out weed grasses much better than our perennial rye grass does. My Lake Oswego clients especially appreciate the fact that RTF tolerates more sun and heat and if they did decide to let it go dormant, it will come back beautifully. RTF can even handle a south facing lawn with reflected heat from a sidewalk. This is the most difficult place to successfully grow grass so Portland landscape professionals are embracing this new product.

It is available as a roll out turf product (sod) and as seed. Kuenzi Turf & Nursery

After front lawn of drought tolerant landscaping in Rose City Park.

Rose City Park Neighborhood

No grass lawn for drought tolerant landscaping.

West Portland Park Neighborhood

Other clients want no lawn designs, thinking it will be lower maintenance. No lawn will mean lower water usage but replacing a lawn with paths and plants does not promise low maintenance. Even the fairly new minimalist style using 90% round river rock and 10% plants isn’t as low maintenance as you think. Someone has to blow dust and debris out of the river rock frequently to prevent weeds from building up. Many clients simply don’t want to mow any lawn and are fine with the first two years of extensive weeding that is needed to get a no lawn front yard established. For a lot of people, however, weeding is the least favorite gardening chore.

Synthetic Lawn Installed in front yard for drought tolerant landscaping.

Newly installed synthetic lawn in Parkrose Heights neighborhood

Other clients are installing synthetic lawn. Before you sneer at the idea of fake grass (which I did when I first heard about it), check out these photos of my Southeast Portland clients Bob and Norma Bleid. They gave themselves a retirement gift, front and back synthetic lawn. No water, no chemicals, no fertilizer; it is the ultimate low maintenance landscape lawn.

Early fall is a particularly good time to install a new lawn or landscape. With a good irrigation system landscapes can be installed any time of the year. As a Portland landscape designer I am not fond of July or August installations, I know my clients will be “nervous nellys” seeing their plants’ leaves droop, scorch and burn in the summer sun. The fall rains typically do a beautiful job of providing the moisture needed to get plants (including grass) well established. This eliminates the stress and worry of summer planting.

If you are interested in having your landscaping updated, redesigned or help with a plan – contact us for more information.

Categories : Before and Afters, Fall Gardening, Garden Tips, Gardening Green, Low Maintenance Landscape Examples, New Improved Plants, No Lawn Front Yards, Summer Garden Tips, Synthetic Lawn and Dogs

Tags : drainage problems, drought tolerant grass, dry stream bed, landscape drainage, low watering, mid century modern style, No Lawn, no lawn front yard, synthetic lawn, xeriscape plantings

Archive for No Lawn Front Yards – Page 6

Montavilla Bungalow Landscape Design for Entry

Montavilla Bungalow Landscape Design for Entry

Client wish list

Landscape designer view

Wall plantings

Driveways

Client Comments

Plants for Montavilla Bungalow Landscape Design for Entry

Outdoor Pee Pad for Dogs – A Landscape Designer’s Solution

Making Your Small Landscaping Space Dog Friendly

Portland Landscape Designer and River Life

Weather

Wildlife

Practicalities of River Life

Boulders Create Opportunity in Portland Landscape Designs

Boulders create opportunity in Portland landscape designs.

Usable space

Water

Proportional curb appeal

Boulders solve soil problems

NW Natural Style

Lawn Do Over for Portland Landscapes

Drought Tolerant, Synthetic & No Lawns Landscaping

Categories

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