The way to Landscape to an Entry to an Old Home
The majority of the homes considered old nowadays are big, elaborate Victorian or Edwardian sorts with porches and lots of lacy trim. Victorian tastes in landscaping varied widely, with some gardeners preferring the clipped and formal look, while others opted to get splashy tropical plants and also the more natural Gertrude Jekyll type flower borders. You are able to make your vintage home appear welcoming and warm by incorporating a little of all these styles into the entryway.
Place a wrought iron or picket fence, with an open gate, in the front of your own property or along the driveway. Assemble a path from that gate into your front door, using brick, flagstone, gravel or grass. Line the path together with flower borders that bend to join similar beds running along the front of the porch.
Situate a few classic vines or climbing shrubs — clematis, honeysuckle, jasmine, rose, wisteria — close to the porch railings. Plant the beds fronting the porch using a mixture of clipped evergreens and free-form flowering shrubs of diverse heights. Choose traditional evergreens like boxwoods, junipers, pittosporums, privets and yews, for an authentic look.
Position small trees — such as crabapple, crape myrtle, dogwood, hawthorn and redbud — wherever there are sharp edges to be softened, like in the front corners of the home. Intersperse the trees and evergreens with equally time-honored flowering shrubs like camellias, hydrangeas, lilacs, mock oranges and roses. Accent the flower beds with a few splashy tropicals like caladiums, cannas, castor beans, coleuses and hands.
Plant the beds flanking the path together with perennials like daisies, heliotropes, lavenders, phloxes and pinks, supplemented with bulb-grown flowers suitable to this season. Place lower-growing plants such as alyssums, chamomiles, lobelias, thymes and violets along the front of the beds, where they can creep out about the edges of the path.
Insert flower boxes into your own porch railings or front windows, and stock them with annuals like nasturtiums, pelargoniums and petunias interspersed with dangling ivies. Set pots of similar flowers on the edges of the porch steps and a set of decorative planters containing ivy topiaries on both sides of the front door. Hang a few baskets of lush ferns and fuchsias under the porch roof.