A retired couple with plantings that had become overgrown and difficult to manage came to us looking for a nature-friendly reset. Their goals included a wide variety of flowers and textures, plus added privacy for the back and side yard. In the back, a removed leyland cypress hedge left zero privacy to the HOA playground and a neighboring house bordering the backyard. When the client engaged us, they already planned for a fence, but wanted us to transform it from a sterile barrier into a diverse mixed border full of blooms, colors, and textures that could be enjoyed from their deck or at ground level in the lawn.

Along the driveway, we replaced two overgrown Chinese hollies with Taylor Eastern Redcedar, which better fit the 3' bed space. For the new front foundation, we mixed Color Guard Yucca and Pink Muhly Grass. This creates a beautiful textural contrast between the wider sharp yucca leaf blades and the fine muhly grass. The grasses also capture light beautifully and add movement swaying gently on a breezy day. The left side has a wide variety of low-growing flowers including Stokes Aster, Butterfly Weed, and Moonbeam Threadleaf Coreopsis, while the right is simpler with yucca, grasses and a few flowers enclosed by a low shrub border.

To add screening between the front and side yard, we flanked the opening with a redbud and American beautyberry on the left and a peach tree / mixed shrubs on the right.

Further into the side yard, an old vegetable garden was overrun with mint and aggressive vines. We used a mix of competitive plants - beautyberry, short-toothed mountain mint, red bee balm, wild bee balm, rough goldenrod - to duke it out with what we couldn't remove and hold each other in check.

For long-term weed control, we planted Texas sedge / Purple Love Grass as living mulch in the front foundation and Cherokee Sedge / Slender Wood Oats in the side mixed shrub planting. 14" deep metal edging keeps bermuda grass from reinvading the front foundation beds.

For the border along the new fence in the back, we started by creating a welcoming and natural bedline with a rounded shape that flows from the park entrance planting around a crape myrtle and then in a long sweeping arc all the way to the front yard. A good rounded line makes it feel perfectly natural to walk the perimeter of garden beds, while pushing the grass beyond the shade of the tree canopy to sunnier areas where it will do better.

On a small section of the property across a drainage ditch, they wanted an entrance from the neighborhood park for their daughter's family who live nearby. We leaned into the wet/dry conditions with dwarf Winterberry Holly, Buttonbush, River Oats and Cherokee Sedge.

We focused on creating structure with shrubs and trees. Due to the length of the fence, we wanted to find the right balance between diversity and repetition. In the middle 75%, we used repeating groupings of St Johnswort, Arrowwood Viburnum, Red Chokeberry, Rabbiteye Blueberry and Possumhaw viburnum. To screen a large neighboring house on the far right, we used a suckering Sassafras and American Fringe Tree.

The front half was filled with mostly 1-3' tall perennials planted through Texas sedge, Purple Love Grass and smaller amounts of Little Bluestem to provide support to taller perennials prone to flopping. Blooms will run from Eastern Columbine in spring to Aromatic Aster in October.

The biggest pre-installation adjustment was reducing screening in the middle of the back fence border. After several conversations, we realized they were more concerned with mature Sweetbay Magnolias blocking the sunrise while sitting in the lawn. So we replaced three sweetbays with one dwarf Little Girl Magnolia (Anne) and shorter upright shrubs.

During installation, we discovered regraded areas lacking topsoil and overly compacted. We added 3" of high organic matter topsoil and then used a broadfork to decompact and lightly mix the layers.