I am not professional, but you can see my house that I designed and landscaped by clicking on my page.
I would definitely use some climbing vines that grow big in your area and look interesting year round to plant in the front of your house to break up the large areas of brick.
If you like swings, then a swing chair would be fun and nice to have on your porch.
I would plan to enlarge the porch area on the front and add levels to break up the current very high and steep look you have. I would also build some different level planters for the same purpose around the front entrance.
I would not try to fix the architectural issues you have by just planting some large trees in front. The climbing vines will do much better job and leave your front more open thus more welcoming.

Well, I'd be for both trees and vines: Why not both? There is certainly enough room across the front to integrate both.

But I really like the notion of tall deciduous trees on the two corners, somewhat out from the house; you could then cut a curved line out of the sod around them, running from the goldenthreads bed out towards street--only maybe a third of the way out--in a sort of kidney bean shape, leaving enough room out from the tree's base to re-plant some of the goldenthreads. This done on both sides would form an enclosed feeling to the front of the house, and for the porch; and, would soften the edges of the house. However, I'm not a pro.

I did want to mention Michael Dirr's Encyclopedia of Hardy Trees and Shrubs, which you can probably get from a library. It would give you many photos of possibilities, and is a great book in any case.

And, I look forward to hearing Andrew's suggestions, as well.

Karen

Here is a link that might be useful: Dirr's Encyclopedia of Hardy Trees & Shrubs

Just for sport I am going to take a stab at guessing what laag would possibly suggest to help lower the house and make it more visually comfortable.

The stairs to the porch need to be redone. They need to be re-oriented so that there is a landing and right hand turn that brings people up to the porch in front of the door not the center of the house. The railings could be painted a darker color to eliminate the accentuation of height they create with the white posts but may not be neccesary since you have added a rising horizontal line with the step re-do.

A short brick faced planter box can be added to the left side of the house next to the porch to help balance and level the house with the higher driveway side elevation and provide a visual stepdown from the very high porch.

Now you can ice the cake?

ilima

I know that professionals here do not like the mock-ups but for homeowners it is sometimes easier to see where words might not convey all that is meant, so as such I made two simple mockups:
This is the original - for easier comparison:
{{gwi:48972}}
here are the climbers and small raised beds in front of the steps
{{gwi:48973}}
here are the climbers with the raised bed the whole length of the house.
{{gwi:48974}}

Again, please forgive the crude implementation but it might help the OP to visualize some of the ideas offered :)

Short , sweet and to the point - this is an architectural problem , not a landscape architectural problem.
Any landscape work is going to be simply window dressing or at best an applique , it will not address the real problem at hand, which is scale, proportion and site placement of the architecture.

Some landscape architectural work via grading and augmentation of the exterior architecture will assist but it really doesn't holistically address the full scope of this problem.

right up front i'll admit that i could never do this for a living because i have peculiar (most likely nonexistent) taste & lack tact; but you asked, so here ya go:

play up the endearingly hulking crackerboxiness of the house you've built. think ultra-minimal. immediately strip off the eensy pseudo-shutters & federalist door doodads & play up the smooth swathe of brick (please tell me it's real brick). if i can't talk you out of having new columns & a new railing & new steps & a new front door custom-made out of matching metal, then at least paint them all the same dark shade so they're not leaping out at you.

then for plantings, do something simple & largish & sculptural, like a line of enormous, well-spaced, manicured shrubs or maybe some huge edward gorey-esque urns. rent edward scissorhands for inspiration.

or else you're just going to have to buy up the surrounding lots & move the whole house way back off the street, because your mcmansion desperately needs more yard.

sorry. it's raining & i ran out of freezypops & i'm cranky.

pinkmountain,

All I did was share. That is what this is forum is all about, right? You take it, or you leave it. It is no less rediculous than the bandaid approach. It is just one opinion.

The house does not look like an inexpensive one. I would expect that the investment is worth protecting. It might not be for the camarolady, but there are lots of other people that could make this same mistake who would rather not. Those people might like to know what they can do to avoid a mess like this. I'm not loaded with cash, so I can not run out and do everything that needs to be done to my house. But, I am certainly not going to spend money on "broken pieces" of it, until I fix them. That is what you are all telling her to do. In the end, she will still have the same problem and may decide to invest in fixing it. If and when that happens, all the window dressing becomes wasted money. She will not only have to spend money to take out things that will be in the way and spend money to fix the real problem, but then have spend to re-ice the cake when it is all done.

This is about design. Design does not end with a plant list. It used to end with a plant list for me at one time, just like it does with a lot of you. I have learned to look at other things as possible solutions rather than just plants by experience and going back to school. Some of you might not be interested in that, but my guess is that some of you are.

This is a landscape design forum, not a plant recommendation forum. Why is it that when things go beyond plant recommendations, paint, and bamboo matting there is an immediate negative reaction? I believe that a lot of people that would like to develop knowledge in landscape design would like to know what they can do to affect situations that are part of the landscape rather than ignoring them. It is one thing to not know how to do things and another to not want to know how to do things. There is a certain element that wants to fight anyone who goes past the scope that they can handle. I've said it a million times - people view anyone with less knowledge than themselves as lowballers and those with more as snobby over excessive pompous jerks. We declare our self perception when we point those out.

So, here it is:

My recommendation is pink bushes. Lots of small pink bushes. Don't get big ones because the little ones will grow at the same rate, cost less, and all have even proportion to the other little plants when they all grow up together even when you plant them in different years. Plant them far apart using the maximum mature size described in Dirr's book or they will be too crowded. The house will look great.
Now she is all set.

laag,

These questions are truly, honestly, for my own selfish education. You said:

It is not way above the porch, but it is 4 and a half feet or so above the bottom of the steps compared to the familiar 2'. Anything that I can do to get that passerby to reference a grade much closer to that of the door is going to add to his comfort level. That becomes a goal.

What do you mean by reference a grade much closer to that of the door? I'm not educated about referencing grades. Can you help? From the next paragraph, it sounds like you mean grounding the house, but I'd like to understand what structural change would be a way to get the passerby to do that?

Other traditional means of grounding a house, with or without the use of plants, should be considered. Can you offer some examples in this instance of both with and without plants?

The proximity of the garage and driveway including their elevations has to be dealt with too. How? What's not right about these, and what solutions might work?

Sorry if my questions are tedious, but I'm here to learn.

Laag, SOOOOO well said. But...since I'm one of the ones who truly wants to learn the design part, what are some of the things you WOULD do? Karen's questions are excellent. So often I read statements like these and I don't understand but I'm afraid to ask. I learn best by seeing problems, thinking on the problem, discussing the problem, then seeing some solutions and WHY the solutions worked. (Yes, I realize there is no ONE solution to any situation.)

Frank Lloyd Wright once said that a surgeon was more fortunate than an architect because he could bury his mistakes, whereas the only option for an architect was to grow a vine up over it.
We have had some discussion here recently about fitting the house to the landscape or fitting the immediate landscape to the surroundings and here we have an example of what happens when this is totally ignored. To build a house that disrespects the landscape and then to expect the landscape to change to accomodate the house is not very bright.
Having said that I would suggest adding white marble steps that go the full width of the four pillars down three and then a landing then continue with steps and filling in the arc from the bottom step to the house wings by adding a retaining wall. Put in a wide walk of white stone chips to the post box and there you have it. The planting will seem more obvious after this done.

Laag is always much more elegant while at the same time being 'to the point' than I , so I await his answer.

In the mean time Karen, one way to reference a grade much closer to that of the door is by creating a landing, often times at midpoint or somewhere inbetween the actual grade at the soil level and the front door.
In some instances a 'perron' as it is called is required by code to break up a long set of stairs to provide a place of rest. I believe in our county of Marin it is required after a rise of 12 feet .

To address your next question about providing an example of how one might achieve grounding a house with a high finished interior grade, I have posted a photo over on the gallery forum that shows how we accomplished this on a house that we did the exterior architectural design on in Carmel Valley.

Here is a link that might be useful:

OK, the reason I posted what I posted is because I couldn't quite catch the drift of what you all were saying so I thought maybe camarodreamer might be in the same boat. After pondering it a bit and reading the additional posts, I think I may have it. Camerodreamer asked for "finishing touches" to decorate the exterior of her home, but there are some "landscape" issues that make it difficult. The landscape stuff comes into play when you take a larger view of the house that takes the home's architecture, setting and the lay of the land of the surroundings into consideration. Right now camerodreamer has paid a bunch of money for some nice plants that do dress up the facade of her home, but don't address the larger, structural issues. Plus she has to work with her DH. I don't know about him, but my dad has a terrible time "getting" the big picture. He deals with individual elements, stubbornly so. So my mom struggles to integrate these incongruous things he gets into, both inside and outside. For example, he bought a beautiful blown glass vase/sculpture for the house, but it was ultra modern and the rest of the stuff in the house was victorian antique. The piece itself was beautiful, but in the house it looked awful because of the incongruity. I don't know for sure if camaro is dealing with this same kind of problem, but her comments in her original post about the "unique" and sweet foundtain her DH got her for an aniversary gift hint at that. This is what I meant by "sentimental items." :-) Certainly camero can dress up the house visually with nice stuff for the porch and next to the house. Nothing wrong with that and it won't hurt. But it seems to me from thinking on this that she also has to consider some additional big ticket items that address the way the house is "grounded" in the site, if you will. This could include redoing the front entrance, putting in some large raised bed planters, or planting large trees. And she's got to do all this in coordination with DH. Is that a good assessment?

OK, here's my .02 of advice on that then. I would suggest going to a larger city and trying to find a good landscape designer who will draw up a landscape plan that can be phased in over the years. Then you and hubby will not be trying to haggle all this out among yourselves, you'll have the benefits of a trained professional who can help you avoid throwing more money at the house and still not solve the problems. How to find someone like this I do not know, because a lot of landscapers are more like "plant decorators" and also some are just basically salespeople who have a set product they sell to almost anybody regardless. Also, the best people usually don't do "small jobs" which is what I found, and a "small" job is under 5 grand, which for a lot of folks is not "small." So you may have to look around for quite a while. Again, you want someone who will deal with the site and structural elements, not give you a list of plants. In fact the last thing you need from the professional is a list of plants. Mich's picture is just gorgeous! INK's post is also doable in the long run, great ideas! Save this post and negotiage a little bit at a time. When you're driving around, take some pics of similar homes and keep a notebook.

Now, if it were me and I couldn't either find or afford or get my husband to agree to hiring someone to create a plan and a front entrance redo, I would spend the big bucks on planting some big trees. Don't put the trees in a spot right in front of the house where you may want to someday redo the porch around, but that still leaves you plenty of space. You have a grand home with a grand porch on a hill that probably has sweeping views. Plant yourself something grand to look at. Also something to shade the house in the summer and protect it in the winter. General rule for that is evergreens on the north, deciduous on the south side. I dunno all the grand tree possibilities for your zone, but some that come to mind that grow relatively quickly and are hardy and easy care are yet looking somewhat grand are red maple, tulip poplar, white pine, pin oak, norway spruce and red oak. Those are ones you can commonly find around and the average nursery. If it were me, I'd plant a some of those along with magnolia and basswood/american linden. I'd plant the trees on the edges of my property and on the sides of my house to shade it. How and where to site them I can't say very well, that's why I frequent this board.

None of this is going to hurt in the long run if you want to redo the front entrance to the home. Meanwhile, it seems to me that there may be some other less drastic things that you might do that will make the house look "grounded" such as some of the suggestions here. I think the advice to plant large plants and in large groups instead of a little bit of this and that are good guidelines. Bear in mind this is my advice if you and hubby don't want to go the route of investing in further large scale changes to the home.

As for myself, I first tried the "decorate the behemouth" route with the large, ill-conceived deck on the back of my house, but found out no matter what I tried it was just going to be throwing good money after bad and not solve the problem. So this spring I tore off the deck and put in an expensive patio. It's been a major pain and a serious drain on my finances, but it has solved the problem and created a potentially (if I can ever get it finished) very pleasant space to hang out, as compared to my hot, stark, cage-like deck.

I do think reading janandalan's post might be helpful as well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Too much color-texture, variety, etc.

About the expense,

The whole problem is described as starting by a reaction to the possibility of the garage getting flooded. I suspect that the protection of the investment in the camaros and that makes some sense. The camaros may be worth tens of thousands, but the house is a bigger investment. We all need a house for a home, but we can not overlook it as an investment. The return on the investment may not be realized for quite some time, but it has to be considered. The difference in the selling price of that house as is with some vines and pines vs. the price fixed properly will more than cover the investment in this case (probably enough to buy another vintage camaro).

If you look at Michelle's picture and break it down there are several things happening that help. By terracing it did two three things right off the bat. It brought the reference grade closer to the floor elevation and created another reference grade between that and the ground. It brought mass out in front of the house making it not look top heavy. It added horizontal lines down low which settles it some more. The heavy stone work out weighs the mass of the house making it look light in comparison - it moved the center of gravity that our subconscious reads.

The terrace wall to the right does not come way out from the corner of the middle portion of the house. That let her put a tree that goes from the ground up to soften that corner. Had that tree been above even a short wall, it would have been less effective.

The terrace wall on the right goes beyond the corner of the house. That broadens the base, but it also allows a plant to break that outside corner of the house.

Now how much of that is architecture and how much is landscape architecture? Frank Lloyd Wright would have gone that far, but a lot of architects are not in their element outside of the foundation.

How important are those specific plant selections? The form is more important than the species or variety. I believe that the plants were selected by their form first rather than color or texture. The experienced designer processes form, color, texture, cultural condition to a plant selection so quickly that she does not consciously realize that she does all of that. But, you can be assured that it is exactly what goes on with every plant choice. I do not believe for one second, that a plant list is ever made by a high level experienced going into a design as is so often the way many people want to start on this forum.

How "designers" can skip talking about plants in terms of form, size, color, texture, and other design qualities, and instead go straight to specific varieties when trying to solve design issues with people 4 hardiness zones away is beyond me. It does not demonstrate any knowledge of design, just a love for particular plants. Love is a feeling. Problems are solved through reasoning, not feelings.

So can we apply any of this to Camaro's problem after the fact that it is already built? Think concepts, not materials and Michelle's clients budget. How about some modular wall blocks if stone is out of budget? How about some fill in the right places for that matter? How about applying some of this with photoshop?

ANTICI.............say it.............PATION

You know we are all waiting for your possible solutions to this problem. Why think for ourselves when we have the internet?

ilima

I just realized that this is sorta where I entered this forum a few months ago laughing. The solution to all landscape problems is pretty pink flowering bushes. I have a client for whom that is an unshakeable fact.

ilima

Look at the picture of the front steps in the thread "Why does this look crooked?". There looks to me to be at least 6 steps, possibly seven, going up to that front door. A bit of grading, subtle retaining (not expensive), and a landing between steps sure makes it hard to notice that the finished floor is also way up there. And look how close that driveway is the the front door.

I think that is a good example of tackling a smaller, but similar problem on a budget that is much more familiar to most of us. And most of us probably never noticed how high up that floor was because it worked.

I think it is easy to miss things when they work.

I just back online and found all of these follow-ups. Some of them I follow some of them I don't. First let me say that I knew of the architectural problems as soon as the house was built. I can not afford to make drastic architectural changes to the home but want to enhance what I already have.

Now, I want to know what is wrong with doing mock ups? I truly like them because I don't have the imagination to make your words come to life.

Queenie

Mock ups are fine. Substituting the idea that if you can fit it in a picture, you can fit it in reality is where the problem is. Someond can enhance the photo of your house showing 14 steps and still having it look like it lands at the same place in your lawn. We both know that would be inaccurate.

As a display tool for concepts or to illustrate what has already been measured to work in the field, it is a great tool.

When a person who does not know what they are doing can cut and past pieces of other landscapes in front of their own house, they mislead themselves or their clients. These people never seem to know who they are.

The mock ups above are ones that can be built, although they do not help the problem at hand very much in my opinion.

PS. I am the leading complainer about photoimaging - mostly due to the number of web based "design" companies who know nothing about design and everything about cut and paste. You seldom will find one that shows how the actual built work came out. Any guesses why?

Thanks to Michelle and laag for the help. As usual, Michelle, the sample you offered was beautiful; and, I get how the terraced walls and their plantings served to ground. And your discussion, laag, of the functions served by her various design elements was enlightening.

I do, however, remain stupid on a couple of terms: [I think a big part of my problem as far as extracting lessons from threads goes is one of landscape architectural terminology. I wish there was a glossary I could use!] When you say,

It brought the reference grade closer to the floor elevation and created another reference grade between that and the ground....

..can you give me a simple definition of "reference grade"? I may know what it implies from what you wrote, but I'd so like to know what the term means. Is it like 'horizontal planes which take the eye from one level to another'?

And for you or Michelle, a simple definition of "high finished interior grade"? Is this the level of the interior floor of the house?

Karen, who's feeling dumb, but in "how-am-I-supposed-to-learn-if-I-don't-ask?" mode.

This is just fascinating. I could not see the step and entry problem myself, except as it being a little weird, just the large mass of house and the bare corners. But I also think this thread points out that it will be possible, even likely, for this homeowner to SPEND AS MUCH on landscaping solutions as on re-doing the steps. That is, if one uses big plants, hires workers, even hires some landscape design, since the camaros have asked for advice and support in the actual olant details as well as the big picture. So at root, as is often the case, is probably not simply budget issues, but moving away from a pre-conceived viewpoint to seeing things with different eyes.

Whereas, if a step and entryway solution can be found and employed, then instead of "forgiving the trees for being young", you would be able to forgive the house for being not-fully dressed, because the naked house will be more beautiful. Otherwise, most of the landscape solutions are not dressing, but kind of hiding the house behind foliage.

This is so cool whether or not the poster takes this approach. It will be fun to look at my own house and others in my area and again see, what works and why using this new idea. Again, what is of further interest to me would be more about ways in which one could reign in costs while achieving the architectural solution--laag started some on that too.

Thanks to many on this post. Michelle for showing me something that works - I need the visual; Laag for telling me why it works, and Karen for asking the right questions. Like Karen, I want to learn - and while some posters might feel a bit skewered in the process, many of us reading are learning a lot from posts like this.

Well, I was going to stay out of this discussion. I might suggest to Karen that she is not helping the situation. Lagg has done an excellent job of presenting the basics of the the 'problem'. But the questioner has plainly stated that she sees the problem, has few dollars to attempt a correction and wants to know how to spend her limited dollars on plants that would mask the obvious mistakes.

For what it is worth, Queenie, here are a few thoughts.
1. Consider changing the trim color to a quieter color. The stark white emphasizes everything that is wrong.
2. Search area nurseries for a multi-trunked, tall growing, white blooming magnolia that will branch outward giving a broad appearance. Plant this in the middle of the lawn opposite the center point between the left hand window and left hand side of the porch. This 'shape' will help to anchor the house.
3. I note some other trees planted by the driveway and front yard corners but can't tell what they are. Will they be tall shade trees like maples? This would make a difference in your planning as that would be all, plus the magnolia, needed as they mature. Your foundation planting is still young and as it grows you may have a different perspective on the situation. Changing the trim color is at the top of my list.

camarodreamer: One thing about this forum...often threads take off and become very educational to the rest of the forum members, but do not help out the original poster very much. Hopefully there are some pieces in here that help you. BTW, what is that at the top of your fountain?

Thanks Andrew and Michelle for the discussion and examples. I am not sure exactly how I can apply them to my house which is on a cement slab such that the interior grade is only a few inches above ground level, but it is interesting to learn.

- Brent

Here is a question: how many dolllars do you have to spend? You might rightly say, "It depends," but currently I have no idea whether we are thinking of how to best spend $100, $500, $1000, etc and how much impact is wanted. So of course on a hypotheticial forum situation we are frequently talking "as little as possible" without knowing realistic budget plans. Further, is it a budget that is limited this year, but would be bigger if saved up for 2 years? This is an issue for me frequently--I myself am sometimes lured into low cost yearly expenditures of partial fixes and find out that after 5 yrs I have spent as much as the "unaffordable" solution I rejected. Also I myself have no idea about the cost of construction of landing, steps--some thousands certainly.

Darker paint is certainly an attractive solution primarily because it may be appropriate regardless of any added solutions. Then it lets you see how much is accomplished just by that. However I would still take some time to ponder these several avenues and see how much each costs before one finds that $500 here, $500 there has disappeared and no better off.

Queenie, you would be the one to know or consider whether over time you will come to discern certain design issues as problems and then feel as though your fix-it money could have been better spent.

Well, Nandina, ouch. At the point I wrote my initial questions to Laag, camaro hadn't responded for two days. I figured her silence might mean she wasn't positive about the architectural changes, and wasn't sure if we'd hear from her again. As you know, it is not at all uncommon for posters to come here with a question which gets approached in ways the poster did not want to hear. And occasionally when such posters disappear, some of us enjoy learning from what's been written, even if it doesn't match the OP's agenda. If I may quote you, yourself:

When asking a question on this Forum, listen to the replies carefully. The answers, however disliked, when studied carefully might lead to an 'inner' garden.

Maybe your comment that Laag did an excellent job of presenting the basics of the the 'problem' merely meant to put that part of the discussion to bed on camaro's behalf, but its tone stuck in my craw like What's the matter, don't you get it by now???

Camaro, I'm truly sorry if my hijacking of your thread for my own learning purposes was insensitive to you. I respect your right to choose whatever you want for your property, and my questions were not meant to cast aspersions on your goals. They simply represent one of several perspectives from which lurkers and regulars here view any given thread which gets started.

If Laag or Michelle is willing to answer my last off-thread 'definitional' questions--truly, no missives wanted--perhaps a private email would be the best way.

Karen

The term 'grade' in landscape and architectural terms means the height of the surface .
It is used as a topography term.

Lets say that you live in a two story house with a basement.
I am going to assign a DATUM point , which is a control number to your first floor. All measurements from here to eternity are going to be referenced off of this definitive number.
You will see this writen on your set of plans as FF +100. - it means Finished Floor height is 100.
Your first floor is at elevation 100.

Your second floor is 8 feet above the first floor so it's elevation is 108. FF 108.

Your basement is 10 feet below the first floor. So your basement's elevation is FF 90.

Why FF , or finished floor height ?
Because when your contractor is building your house he needs to know what the Finished Floor height is going to be so he can make the mathematical adjustments for his substructure.

- Basic carpentry - You have floor joists ( those 2x6 boards that hold up your floor ) then ontop of your floor joists there is 3/4 inch plywood, then ontop of that there is either carpet + pad ( 1 " ) , tile 1, 5 " ) , linoleum (.25 " ) or hardwood ( .75 inch) .

When your carpenter knows your finished FF( finished floor height ) he can set his substructure elements at the correct grade .

When I received the architectural set of plans for the house I worked on in Carmel Valley ( the photo sample) I looked on the plans and saw that my FF at the front door was at elevation 100.
Then I looked at the topography plan and noticed that the front door sat at dirt level elevation 92.

That told me that there was 8 feet of air space between the dirt below and the new front door elevation.

From there I could accurately design a set of stairs that would bridge the elevation at the dirt level ( 92 ) to the FF elevation ( 100 )

If anyone has a set of architectural plans you will notice that there are a bunch of different numbers and terms .

Say that someone is going to build a retaining wall but the architect did not include an cross sectional elevation drawing.
Even without a cross sectional elevation view any one could figure out the heights of the retaining walls if they knew a few standard architectural abbreviations.

Example.

An L shaped retaining wall.
Next to the wall this is written:

TW . 99.0
BW 98.0

translation - top of wall is at elevation 99.0
the bottom of the wall is at elvation 98.0
This tells me the wall is one foot tall.

nifty huh ?

Dang, Michelle, you're a smart tart. Thank you so much. Exactly what I needed, and given your explanation I don't even feel like a dolt for asking. I wish I'd asked this long ago.

If yer ever up for it, I'll buy you a couple of margaritas at Chili's!

What I meant by reference grade was what your mind uses to reference the height of something. By adding terracing, the eye will often see the difference between the elevation of the top of the wall to the floor rather than the grade at the bottom of the wall.

There are two Karens that have posted (and on many other recent threads) Karen (kmikelson) and Karin (KarinL).

And once again, this thread has taught me some wonderful concepts that have revolutionized my thinking. I'm glad it wasn't taken offlist. And even if Camaro can't utilize the ideas here, it IS valid to discuss it because it is the true solution to her problem. She will have to deal with it sooner or later and the more educated she is on the problem, the better able she will be to make the proper decisions for her.

And I do think this is an example of "a penny saved is a pound foolish". If funds are limited (and whose aren't), it's all the more reason to put every penny toward a good solution rather than on camouflage. The solution has many parts and I think it's more cost effective to begin working on those that lead toward fixing the problem rather than doing things that merely cover up.

Thanks, laag.

I am still here trying to process the posts! Most of the ideas, I can not afford to do in the near future especially that dh has turned down 5 job offers in the past two weeks. Who knows when he will get the one he can't turn down?

I am going to try to address some of the smaller issues and will repost when I get them done!

Thanks
Queenie

Queenie: It is great that you seem to have absorbed the responses. Some people drop in to ask for help and then get all mad when the responses are not exactly what they want to do.

BTW, the mockup post by AEGIS500 is interesting. In that picture your house does not look so tall. Obviously it would be very expensive to install trees of that size, but for a few hundred dollars you could add a few smaller conifers or deciduous trees. Some trees would also shield you somewhat from the road. Right now your house looks like the focal point for people driving up your road.
- Brent

Brent, it probably is a focal point on our street however dh will never agree to that many trees directly in front of the house. Do you think when the Maples that are planted out from the corners grow, it will give any relief?

Thanks
Queenie

No, they are not going to cut the cheeze.

Another Question, my boss suggested some Bradford Pear Trees that flower? Is that something that would feel out the front of the house?

Queenie

Bradford pear trees are AWFUL. Overplanted, weak-wooded, and now on exotic invasive "watch" lists all over the eastern seaboard. Plus, I personally think they look like huge tampons stuck in the lawn when in bloom. And, no, they wouldn't help the situation. Bradford pears aren't a bandage. They're just more blight.

Short term, change your trim color and consider adding some more specimen shade trees to your front yard (and I mean nice trees like oaks, sycamore, black gum etc.). Longer term, wait for what you have there already to do a little more maturing and consider an investment in changing your front steps as discussed extensively above.

You may want to search around for info on Bradford Pear Trees. They have a reputation for growing to be wonderful specimens in 20 years and then splitting in half.

- Brent

"Plus, I personally think they look like huge tampons stuck in the lawn when in bloom'

Now that's a visual thought I rather not see.

Queenie--
In your first photo -- what are those big tall trees in the background? If they are healthy and well-suited to your climate, maybe some-a-dem would eventually grow to be in scale with your house.

I've been looking at your photos and one of the things that really puzzles me is the relationship of the front door to the windows. From outdoors, it looks like the windows are at the floor level. Do you go up or down some stairs once entering the house? Just puzzled, no advice.

My 2 cents on the conifers: nix! An invasion of conehead aliens only emphasizes the rocketship-about-to-take-off quality of the house. (I'm praying you have a sense of humor, forgive me.) Round and spreading canopies will be more effective in my view, such as Nandina's magnolia idea.

I'm trying to imagine your trim painted either very dark forest green or black, and I think it might help tone down some of the verticality, but I can't be sure.

Well, whenever you get frustrated, just go for a spin in that cool car.

Queenie, you are indeed being a real peach about all this stuff coming at you, and you sound like you're kind of between a rock and a hard place, what with hubby, the pocket book, the cars, and the house. And not able to do much physical work at the moment.

It seems to me that the most value from this thread so far has been the diagnostic angle, that is to say, you now know (and so do those of us who are spectating) the name of the problem: your reference grade is too high.

Now for treatment.

Let's remember that we're not trying to cure cancer here. I think it is important to recognize that you do have the right to "do nothing." It's not likely to be popular here on the forum, but you don't have to address this problem at all. Your family and several more may lead perfectly happy and fulfilled lives in this house with it looking exactly as it now does. Especially since there is some landscaping growing in which will improve things at least a titch. It would be nice to build a series of terraces and rejig your front steps and porch, but as homeowners we all know there are some things we are never going to get around to. That's not a crime.

But if want to do something, then you need have some overriding principles by which to decide what to do. Then you can divide the work, and even the planning, into smaller chunks that you can bite off and chew in the conditions life throws at you.

The advice has gone from porch furniture and window boxes to mature trees out front. To accept or reject each option, you need to consider it not only with respect to your own tolerance for maintenance work (as in, will I get up on an extension ladder to train this vine up the house?) but also with respect to those overall principles. (I remember now you didn't even know how to plant a vine...)

I'm making some amateurish guesses here as to what those principles are and how you could apply them. Your own conclusions may be quite different, and others will no doubt correct me if I have the principles wrong.

You've now been referred to two of Janandalan's threads but I'm going to refer you to a third in case you haven't read it, showing her neighbour's house. In that thread some people have pointed out that the house is grounded in part by the surrounding trees as opposed to by the foundation planting. This suggests that you want trees that will grow big, and that you want them beside the house and not in front of it. It's not screening that you want from those trees, but rather you want to dwarf your house with them. That should keep DH happy, yes? And, you've already got some trees growing just where you want them, and you can add more as you can afford it. Sequential planting means you've always got some big ones left when (as inevitably seems to happen) one becomes TOO big and has to be removed.

So that would be principle number one: dwarf the house by growing bigger stuff around it.

If I understand correctly, principle number two, relating to the issue of the reference grade, is to move the visual weight of the house downward and/or obscure the actual grade of the ground. Where I live there are a lot of houses that have a high reference grade (I used to think they just sat up high...), and a lot of them have, funnily enough, treatments similar to the mock-ups that were done for you on the Home Dec forum: something visually arresting across the front yard with enough tallish plant material and horizontal continuity that it simultaneously obscures the exact ground level of the house and creates visual weight below the front door level. Some of the houses in my area look pretty darn good with that treatment.

You have a natural spot for a rock garden or rock wall with a planting along the top of it where your front slope takes an extra dip. You could run it across the yard with a little staircase at the mailbox down which you would sashay to get the mail, and to which a sidewalk from the door might, or might not, ultimately go.

Support your local young entrepreneurs when you can afford it, and get those boys to do the grunt work for you.

Here is a link that might be useful: My neighbour's well anchored house thread

mary md7 i have to say that is the funniest thing i have heard in a long, long time thanks for the laugh ;~)

Queenie, I'm a newbie and mostly lurk on this forum to learn (and that's a curve that is mighty damn steep), but I just want to add my two cents about Bradford pear trees.

My 'new' neighborhood is filled with them. Blooming with my glasses off, the area looks great for exactly three weeks in the spring. The rest of the year, it looks crappy. It has non-interesting leaves, a boring shape and ugly little fruit for the spring and summer, and winter is not any better.

I have one in the front of my yard that I can't rip out because of HOA rules. I posted here awhile back about a replacement idea, but now it seems like it has to be damaged, diseased or hurting my house in order to remove it. I would rip the thing out by it's lungs if I was allowed to.

Look at the long term for trees, not the short term. Get what works and will thrive in your landscape over the long term, versus a quick fix.

Totally JMO.

*back to lurk mode and praying for a tiny ice storm this winter that will kill ONLY my tree*

smom,
frequent string trimmimg around the bark of that tree might 'accidently' girdle that tree and kill it. ;-)

Gosh, that would be terrible! ;)

Grow a very vigorous clematis or two up it??

PLUS, Bradford pears stink when they bloom. And those little fruits are hard and hurt your feet when you walk barefoot on your driveway. Evil tree.

Camarodreamer you may have lost interest given these last several rather tangential comments, but I hope you are reading other threads on this forum. The one about foundation plantings started by INK, the one about the high finished floor started by Laag, and a few others are quite relevant and may be helpful to you.

The trees that I just viewed in a previous thread are goingto get way to big and end up hidding the house,. I would suggest using Birch or Myrtles. Where are you located at?

smom40,

I'd agree with cantstopgardening, just weed wack a little too close to the tree in a circle. You might even follow up with some roundup sprayed on the area you cut, just in case you missed any "weeds".

Also, WAY back in this thread Brent_In_NoVA mentioned how NoVa would like to seperate itself from the rest of "the Commonwealth". I know he was joking but, personally having lived in southwest virginia, I'd rather live surrounded by the mountain wildflowers and rusted cars than in the traffic and sprawl that NoVa is known by. One of the sad things about the the new houses being built, it actually that they have no sense of place. If camarodreamer67 had not told us that she lived in Southwest VA I'd have no way of knowing by the archetechure or the landscaping.

My one single piece of advice would be to help restore a sense of place to your home and landscape. Consider using a native plant or two, or drive around some of the older nice houses and consider integrating some of the features you find and enjoy. I'm not saying you need a tractor tire planter or fake goose, but I'm willing to be there are things in older areas that make your town special and they are worth noticing.

Wow - sometimes the answer is way, way, more than you can process! I think SayPoint has the right idea. Make your porch inviting with a nice bench and planters. Maybe then develop an interest in gardening. Or not... But at least you'll have a welcoming front enty.

But now I'm going to go back and re-read the extensive remarks - they're fascinating, but wow!