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Down with Moustaches: Rethinking front-of-the-house landscaping.

© Carol Wallace

Obviously, some unwritten law somewhere says that you must plant a row of shrubs in a line in front of your house. You see it everywhere--and those few people who dare to buck the trend are looked at strangely and referred to as rebels.

Well--I'm rebelling. I am tired of seeing every house on every block in America wearing a moustache of evergreens!

At our house it is a moustache of yews. Dreary, green, requiring constant trimming, full of poisonous berries that benefit no one. For a major highlight, there is one rhododendron roseum elegans at the corner. There is one exactly like it at the corner of every moustache on the block--and all through the city. Somewhat like a stain of raspberry dribbling from the corners of the mouth.

Aside from being boring, what's wrong with this? Well--for one thing, it's high maintenance. To look acceptable, green hedges need a lot of trimming. And most people trim them wrong. They seem to like the look of a wide top tapering to a narrow base, which means the sun never reaches the poor shrubs feet, and eventually it gets all bare and leggy down there. Hedges should be narrow at the top, wider at the bottom, so they get a nice sun bath all over.

But even if they are trimmed right they are still--well--boring. Staid. Static.

Last summer I made my poor husband remove every single yew from the side of the house. I haven't yet been able to convince him to do the front, as he says landscaping that will be his retirement project. But it's a start.

And what am I going to do in the nice bare spot he created? Well--I'll stick with a few evergreens, but not a line of conifers. I would prefer something that had seasonal interest, color, texture, contrast and scent, the way other parts of the yard--the parts we call gardens--have. Why shouldn't the front and side areas of the house also be thought of as gardens?

I will begin with rhododendrons, carefully chosen to bloom at the same time--a sort of "gasp!' effect will be required of all passers-by when they are in bloom. At least one of my rhodos will be fragrant, and that one will be close to the side door, so that every time I leave the house I'll have wonderful aromas assaulting my nostrils.

Between the rhodos and lower to the ground I will plant evergreen shrubs--only not in green. To offset the deep shiny green of the rhodos' large leaves I will choose something in chartreuses or golds, with a fine texture. Something ground hugging and light textured like some junipers or dwarf chamaecyparus. I haven't decided what, yet--I'll have to look at what's affordable at the nursery this spring.

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