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Make A Good First Impression: Landscape Your Driveway
By | July 3, 2008
Is your driveway landscaped? It should be.
This includes the driveway itself, as well as the design elements on both sides. All sorts of materials from softscape options to hardscape are available to make your driveway attractive.
Make A Good Entrance
As the entrance to your home, the driveway should not be neglected. It can either be a scar on the other landscaping around the home or it can add depth to the entire look of your home. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on it either. You can be creative and choose attractive features, and have a very low cost landscape that is welcoming.
Make sure that you take everything into account before choosing your elements. For example, if you are looking for minimal work, do not plant a flower bush at the end of your driveway where the plants can be ruined by those in your neighborhood. Instead, use an attractive fence or a rock garden.
Another important aspect is the footpath to the home. Do not use any design elements that will be in the way of the normal foot traffic. You don’t want to visitors going out of their way, or worse, trampling your plants to reach your door.
Hardscape Choice
You have many options — common ones include walls and fences, which can add distinction and accent your driveway. A small fence can add character and color to the landscape. Use hanging baskets or lanterns on the fence for more charm.
A large rock can be especially interesting, particularly when it has multiple colors. You can plant grasses and small flowers in the cracks of stones to create even more decorative looks.
Softscape Choices
On a limited budget, just landscaping along the sides of the driveway is an excellent option. It will cost little, yet add lots of beauty to your landscape design.
As for softscape options appropriate to driveway areas, many things will work, such as a flower bed or groundcover along the driveway. This will create a border that is interesting and separates the lawn from the actual driveway.
Ornamental trees and shrubs can do the same thing along the edge of the driveway. Shrubs can be cut to become topiary, which will add even more design elements to the look of the driveway landscape.
Another thing to consider is the curved driveway. If your driveway has a curve in it, a great idea is to add a focal point — something to make a statement. For example, you can have a beautiful tree, a flower bed, or a rock garden there. Whatever it is it should be beautiful because the curve will focus attention at that point of your driveway. You can use water gardens, a wishing well, as well as many other types of elements to enhance this area and have it look amazing.
Doing these landscaping operations can completely transform the entrance to your home. In a simple, affordable way, you can add character and depth to your landscape design around your driveway.
About the Author
Visit Home Landscaping to learn more. Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer, visit his website at Articles for authors
Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact and the links live. -
Why We Like the Green Giant Arborvitae So Much For Landscapes of Solebury Pa.
Our farm, Highland Hill Farm, is located in solid clay. We therefore like plants that grow well in dense, heavy, rather impermeable, NOT well-drained soils. One of the arborvitae, the Green Giant, the Western Red cedar Tree, or botanically, the Thuja Plicata, is our favorite. Here is why: The hardiness zone the Green Giant Arbor vita tolerates is from zone 5 to zone 8. That’s where extreme cold temperatures get down to a temperate level of about 15 or 20 degrees in the winter (Zone 8), but also as low as a frigid level of 15 or 20 degrees BELOW zero (zone 5). Green giants are evergreens, being cedars. Their rapid growth rates can in ideal conditions reach 3 feet per year. Site requirements for the Green Giant Arbor vita are sun to partial shade, moist well drained soil preferred (but still does well in clay), and protection from wind, at lest when young. The Green Giant is a beautiful tree. It has an aesthetically fine form. It’s conical, being narrow to broadly pyramidal, reaching from 50 feet to 80 feet in height in southeastern Pennsylvania. The width at the base of the cone is usually about 15 feet to 20 feet. The leaves are rich green making graceful foliage. Green Giants make a superb privacy screen. They keep their foliage color year ’round, great for brightening bleak gray winter days with snow on the ground. The cinnamon bright red bark when young turn rich russet brown with time crating a strong contrast with the needle leaves. Green Giants’ flowers, their fruit are pretty little light brown half-inch female cones. (Just so you know, Green giants are females, so its okay to call the cones pretty.) The Green Giant is also a wonderful shade tree, casting a dark, dense shade. The wood is strong too, once the tree is beyond its youth.
This is an arbor vita that should outlive even your grandchildren. There are Green Giants out west documented to be over 300 years old. Just don’t plant these too close to the ocean, or roads in areas where there’s a lot of salt used for snow removal. If you get over 100 inches of snowfall and more per year, no roadside Arbor vita planting where salt is used, PLEASE. The greatest soldier of ancient Greece in the Trojan war had his one little weak spot, what proved to be a fatal flaw, and the “Achilles Heel” for Green Giant Arborvitae is hypersensitivity to salt.
About the Author
Bill raises Green Giant Arborvitae on his 250 acre farm in Fountainville Pa. This farm is in the heart of Bucks County near Doylestown. He usually has samples on display at his nursery that you are welcome to visit. His web site is http://www.seedlingsrus.com
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