How to Improve Your Landscaping

Watch gardening expert P. Allen Smith as he gives great advice and simple tips on how you can improve your landscaping

How to Improve Your Landscaping Hi this is my design studio where we take pictures you send to me, and we look at what all the possibilities might be with regard the changing the landscape. Now here we have the Mitchell’s house that our concern really a handsome house, so why don't we start with the colors that we see here. I can see the shutters are showing a little ware and it could use some paint, so one thought would be to echo the shutters or the color of the shutters with the shingle colors. I would go with a really nice dark tone like take this shutter, the shutter collar right here make it a little darker then a trim color and do the shutters in that—sort of color family because their fading to almost a purplish color here. The other thing that I would do is maybe think about painting these felts over here the same color so you get this monochromatic color scheme going on with the house. Now a few things that I would correct you see you’ve got some dark purple leaf plants here, they look like more like that, they could be barbarian I'm not really sure. And then you got the short truce going along as well and those colors I don't think really resonate that well with the brick. I would go with one or the other in this case has a definite line toward this purple leaf plant because it works so well with the brick color. And I would do away with all of these short truce plants, they look like they might they—one of the maybe lime line ground expiry as one of the short truce color spirals is. Now the other things is I get rid of this shrub at least move it so it doesn’t block this window so those are some changes that I would make immediately. Now let’s talk about some improvements we could do with the planting and creating a more inviting entry to this beautiful house. Now what I like to do is think about framing the house first and one of my favorite plans to use is a river barge and what I’d like for you to explore is the idea of making a large bed here let it come across the front and sleep around like this. I cannot really tell what’s going on this end but think about some multi truck river birch. Maybe two plants here that would grow up I love the bark of the river birch and I think that the exfoliating bark of the birch will go well with the color steam of the house. And I would do the same thing down here on this end planting two river birch like that what should really frame the house beautifully. Then I would come in and under pant it across here with a low growing zileah and then break it up a little bit with another grouping that would come around underneath the river birch. And then a ground cover just coming up to the wall, leaving some pockets for color bring the ground cover like that, would use this for seasonal color or pocket here, pocket under here and maybe even a pocket of it right here. And you can accents that color with a large container here a large container here and maybe one in this corner like that and one at put a bench like there. And then under this lets go back to the our shrubs for just a moment I would feel this entire bed with draft gardenias. They do very well on zone eight so you wont have any problems with those and looks like out have got a create mark all growing here I like that plant I think it’s a little large for this demand space you have from here to here. It’s okay to leave it you want a leg it up really high and make sure the canapé comes up like this and the same way with this one where it comes up like that. So just be aware their going to get quite large, I don't know what color those are looks something maybe sort of a hot pink. You might think about switching to white the sort of cool the whole composition down so be gorgeous on the summer. Hoe this ideas are helpful to you and good luck with your project. Would you like to see you home featured and a make over like you just saw on the last segment if so, just go to pallensmith.com/virtualmakeover and send me of photograph of your house. If your house is selected it would be featured in the future episode of my public television series P. Allen’s Smith Garden home distributed by American public television. Also on my website you will find great tips on gardening recipe and videos. Just check out pallensmith.com.