alt="Remember"/> Multitask and be flexible. Using your entire yard allows you to take advantage of different times of the day when one part or another of your landscape is at its best. If your backyard is baked on summer afternoons, you can retreat to the cool respite out front. If the under-eight crowd swarms over the play structure, perhaps you can move around to a side yard where you can discreetly keep an eye on the goings-on. A shady nook way in the back of the backyard can allow you to tune out the drone of a weed-whacker a few houses away. These sections break down the parts of your entire yard and give you some ideas to utilize them as potential living spaces.
Your front yard
Shield the front yard with walls of greenery or a privacy fence (flip to Chapter 6), and on weekend afternoons when the rest of the neighborhood is carousing in their backyards, you’ll have the front all to yourself.
If you think that’s too bold of a step (and it may well be for your neighborhood — or, as we keep cautioning, if you have an HOA), at least you can move some of your ornamental garden beds to the front instead of having a resource-gobbling, boring lawn. Give your home more curb appeal.
You may be surprised at how quickly a beautification copycat campaign can start up after the neighbors see you puttering among the flowers and butterflies.
Your backyard
Backyards are usually best for children’s play areas because you don’t want them to careen out or chase balls into the street. If you’re a veggie grower with kids, put your patch near the play area so you can keep one eye on them while you weed the zukes.
Your side yard
Some properties, particularly in housing tracts, have side yards. They’re often narrow, sometimes shady, and they’re usually overlooked as nothing more than a way to get from the front yard to the back or a place to stash the trash and recycling bins. Give yourself reason to linger by setting up a hammock or moving a bistro table and chair to the area.
If it’s sunny, your side yard can be the perfect place for a strawberry patch or a row of raspberry bushes. It can host a whimsical garden ornament of some kind or another (here’s the place for your pink flamingo or garden gnome), a small garden pool or fountain, a little herb garden, maybe — and it will become a destination and a sanctuary of its own instead of a waystation.
Walking through the space
You may already have thought about what friends and family intend to do in the yard — picnicking, socializing, growing tomatoes, playing, and so on — but you may also want to think about how you and your family move through your yard.
Your list of outdoor wants and needs — eating, playing, sitting — is a lot simpler to divvy up when spaces are already separate, thanks to the geography of the yard and house. Chances are, you already know where the best patch of lawn is for that pitch-and-catch area you need. You also know the most discreet place to stash the compost pile. You know which neighbor will hate having to see your dog’s kennel or run from their bedroom window and which one will sneak your pup a treat when they’re outside. You know where the sun beats down on late summer afternoons — perfect for an herb garden — and where the neighbor’s oak tree casts a cool pool of shade for those patio cookouts that you can’t wait to indulge in.
As you begin to get an idea of where the best places are for all the things on your wish list, stroll around and figure out the routes that will get you and others from one area to the next. As you begin fiddling with potential pathways, you may discover that they can make your garden seem bigger. Obscured by shrubs, ornamental grasses, or other tall plants, paths can double back, twist and turn, and run along for much longer than you may think in a limited space. (Chapter 7 is chock-full of information on designing and building pathways.)
Focusing on privacy
Even if your neighbors aren’t the busybody type, you may still find relief in building in privacy as you create your landscape plan. (Chapters 12 and 20 have ideas, including plant suggestions, for creating privacy.)
Here are some good ways to enclose and protect your yard or parts of it:
Tall hedges (see Chapter 12), and arbors (flip to Chapter 10) work wonders at making your yard your own space.
Trees are a natural for providing privacy, though if you install new ones, you’ll either have to invest in bigger, more expensive specimens or be patient. See Chapter 11 for all sorts of options and ideas.
Walls, fences, and even privacy screens help to keep your noise in and other noise out — so that you don’t have to keep shushing your kids or resenting the neighbor’s kid with his noisy car. (Turn to Chapter 6.)
Privacy structures define the boundaries of your landscape. Imagine decorating your living room if it had no walls. A little tricky to make it feel cozy, isn’t it? Outdoor living rooms work the same way. Walls make the furnishings — in this case, the plants and ornaments — look better by providing a backdrop. Put that dream fountain you invested in against a wall of lush greenery, and it becomes much more appealing than if the sidewalk, street, or a neighbor’s yard forms the backdrop.
Knowing when you’ll use your landscape
When dreaming up your ideal landscape, take into account the times of day and the times of
