This is the second of three articles on how we redesigned our front entrance garden to take advantage of the existing space, and to set the entrance off as a show piece, and not just another front door.
The Front Entrance Patio Garden
This first picture was taken in November 1999, standing at the corner of our driveway at the garage. From this picture you can get a good idea of the crowding of the sidewalk and the foundatin planting, and how the uninviting the sidewalk was as it stretched to the front entrance from the driveway. It sure didn't look like anything to write home about when we first moved in last fall. There's nothing I hate worse than walking along a sidewalk and being scraped by the shrubs on a cold, wet day.
As you can see with the second photo, we have made some improvements since that first picture. We moved the walk out by about 3 or 4 feet, put black plastic under it to fight off weeds, and put granite dust between the stones to stabilze them. In addition, since the front steps were a very broad 12 feet long with a wide entrance, we added a front patio of flat sidewalk stone to absorb some of the vastness of the space. A small bench, our fox, and a short flag-stone walk from the circle driveway to the patio has been included on the left to give more definition to the picture.
The difference between the first picture and the second is very visible. This work was all done in the late winter. However, even when we took a break for spring and summer, we knew at the time that we did it, that it was an uncompleted task.
This picture is how the Front Patio looked when we finished this spring. The next picture is of our continuation of the project in August to enhance the patio garden.
The objective of the patio background part of the garden is to close off that corner of the garden from the open spaces created as the lawn rolls down a steep hill. Closing off the space is part of my effort to continue the maintance of an intimacy with the entire front lawn and gardens. The circle driveway part of the garden that I described in last week's article closes off well. But unfortunately this one does not.
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