Beginner Gardening: Newbie with NO idea!!, 1 by michelleinAL

michelleinAL wrote:
Hey Jersey girl!

HERE'S A LIST OF SOME PLANTS YOU MIGHT LIKE.

You might consider planting the two arborvitae to the far left and right of your house and letting them grow to their full height. This will give the house and "established" look and act as a frame for both the house and garden. It will also leave you with Winter interest. You might consider planting a mix of shrubs in overlap pattern (large in back row, medium next and spaced in front of the gaps between the back row), and lowmounding or perennial/annuals (flowers) to the front. You could have a garden with nothing but shrubs and bushes and still have a huge variety of color w/out a lot of work every year or an ugly winter garden.
There are also many shrubs and bushes - both deciduous (lose leaves in the winter) and evergrean (do not lose leaves but are NOT arborvitae) that flower in the spring or have beautiful fall color, *also look for leaf color variety - some are purple, blueish, variegated (mutlicolored):
Burning Bush (Euonymus) (turns blazing red in fall),
Barberry
Clethra (smells great, deer resistant, attracts butterflies),
hydrangeas
rhododendrons
Weigela,
Potentilla (Gold Drop),
Redtwig Dogwood (awesome for winter interest - the branches are an deep orange/red!),
Cottoneaster (evergreen),
Bollywood Azalea rhododendron (evergreen)
Other types of "evergreen":
Sungold Cypress (Gorgeous golden color, waterfall effect, great mixed in w. deciduous plants)

ABOUT ROSES:
Knockout roses are gorgeous and almost impossible to kill (as I can attest to). They are usually a "hot" red borderline hot pink and EASY. Some can grow pretty big, but you can prune them - or look for smaller variety like Double Knockout. A good rule of thumb when looking for a smaller variety: if the label says "good as container plant" it usually stays pretty compact.
You could have a separate smaller "English" garden bed where you can plant all the variety of colors you want and not have it detract from your home in the Winter (down here there's a lot of circular gardens in the middle of the lawn, either with large stones as border or small boxwoods as border, then all the crazy variety of flowers you could imagine in the middle...) You could put your roses in there :-)

CHECK OUT GREENWOOD NURSERY'S WEBSITE. http://www.landsteward.com
Under the tab "landscape ideas" you can click what you need (ie foundation planting) and they will give you a list of plants that are good for that. They also have a Landscape Design 101 tab with lots of great info.

Remember gardesn don't have to be straight lines (more natural if they're not) or confined to foundation planting. You could run a constant garden all around your yard perimeter, with gaps for entryways from sidewalk, driveway, backyard. (Imagine a big grass oval in the middle, and all the edges plants...) This can be informal, formal, natural... It's all up to you! And you don't have to do it all at once. Start with you foundation planting, then dream up the rest - growing from your house to your sidewalk, as the years progress!

HOPE THIS HELPS!

Ps - Attached this pic bc it made me think of your house...