Sadly, as summer leaves us, we'll be drawing our landscaping Design Dilemmas to a close. Our gracious landscape expert and host of HGTV's Green Force, Carson Arthur, deserves some time off. On behalf of the blog and HGTV.ca I would like to extend a big thanks for all of his helpful suggestions and his steadfast commitment to you, our Style Sheet readers. We do hope to have him back in the spring however, so if you wish to continue sending us your Outdoor Design Dilemmas, we'd be happy to stockpile them.
This, our last (for this season only, I hope!) Dilemma with Carson, speaks to a common issue many rural home/cottage owners run into: high foundation and shallow soil due to bedrock. How to best soften the look of a high foundation? How shallow is too shallow to plant? Read on for Carson's suggestions!
From Judy V:
"My husband and I are well into the building of our new home but still working on the exterior. We were hoping that when we built our home that we would have been able to go deep enough to allow the foundation of the house to be lower, therefore walking off the porch onto the walk way. As you can see from my photo we were not able to do that and had to have steps to the front porch. Our property is very well treed which we like. My design question is this. How do we soften the look so the foundation does not look so high? Because of the trees and shade what type of plants and shrubs work best? Any help or advice would be great."
Carson suggests: Hello Judy,
I completely understand your issue. The builders probably hit bedrock which is often a problem for lots of cottage owners so this is not such an unusual problem.
The biggest challenge here aside from the shade caused by the surrounding trees is going to be the depth of the soil around the base of the house.
I'm going to suggest that you make sure that you have at least 3' of soil so that you can start to grow some shrubs and trees. If you don't have at least that much, then you need to start by raising the beds. Continue with the armour stone but bring in some larger pieces so that you can 'berm' the soil behind them.
Clockwise from the top: Amur Maple, Thundercloud Elder, Alpine Currant. Photos supplied by Carson Arthur.
Regarding shrub and tree selection, I recommend the following layout to optimize the windows and the stairs and to minimize the foundation gap:
- On the end corners of the porch, I'd start with Amur Maple clumps, probably one of the best fall colours available
- Just inside the maples, I'd work with a grouping of 3 Jeddeloh Dwarf hemlocks to ensure that you have winter interest
- To each side of the stairs, try an Alpine Currant paired with some of your favourite shade loving perennials
- Along the wall with the two windows, I'd plant 5 or 6 Thundercloud Elders which will fill in the entire section and work very well with the gray of the siding
Hope these selections helps solve some of your problems and make your home the show piece you’re looking for.
- Carson
Have you run into a similar problem?
ANNOUNCEMENT: Next week we welcome Cheryl Torrenueva of Restaurant Makeover and Home Heist as our by-weekly Design Dilemma guru! So if you've got a dilemma, take a photo and send it (in jpeg format) along with your question to stylesheet(@)hgtv(.)ca. (Don’t forget to take out the brackets when typing out email address.)
Previously on Design Dilemma: An Ugly House with no Front Door
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