Landscape Plans // Part I

Landscaping plans for the house are finally coming together and today, I thought I'd share a bit about the direction we're taking with our planting scheme.

I previously posted about the decorative wood screen we recently installed out in front of our house. This was the final obstacle standing between us and a fully landscaped yard. Now that it's in, planting can finally commence! We've spent the better part of two years planning out the types of plants we'd want to use, taking notes and pictures while driving neighborhoods, staying at hotels and dining at restaurants where we noticed designs we'd want to incorporate (do you do this too?). We decided long ago that we'd want to use a modern mix of Desert and Mediterranean varities and set out to design a plan that incorporated many of our favorites.

We'll anchor the front garden bed with some edgier desert favorites- natives of Mexico and The Canary Islands. Also used will be a variety of Ocotillo, a tall, thorny plant spotted and loved during one of our earliest trips to Palm Springs.  We're planning to place that just in front of the wood screen to draw visual interest upward toward our address plaque. Another variety you don't see here, but probably know more commonly is the giant Blue Agave (Agave Americana) that we plan to spotlight as well.

Then, we'll fill in around these plants with others seen more typically in Mediterranean styled gardens- free flowing golden grasses, the silver foliage of lavender and blue hues of fescue and flax lilies. We'll also draw on the deep pinks of a succulent called Echeveria 'Afterglow', a trend continued into the back garden as well.

Our plan above is still a little fluid at the moment and may ultimately be impacted by budget (isn't everything?). It also looks like a lot of plants - and it is. But the bed itself is almost 40 feet long in it's entirety, which will give us lots of room to work in. When all is said and done, it will be finished off with some spotlighting and some decomposed granite- a finish that will look polished from the street and will be easily raked during Fall when the Maple trees lining our block discard their leaves.

I'll share more about backyard garden plans in Part II.