Landscaping – The Front of Our House
In December of 2003,
having grown out of our condo on Halstead St.,
we bought a house in the suburb of Naperville.
Our condo, in the northeastern corner of a six flat, had a secluded rooftop deck with a view of the Chicago skyline and had spoiled us with respect to outdoor spaces – we needed something with a degree of privacy and a nice view…we did NOT want to be looking at someone else’s back yard! So, when we found a place that backed onto a retention pond, we pounced.
The pond behind the house:
The house in the spring after we bought it.
As you can see, it was a very ordinary house on the outside.
Fortunately, we loved the inside of the house as much as the pond: it was very well laid out with a room off the kitchen that I could use as a studio, 4 upstairs bedrooms (one of which KC could use as an office), 4.5 bathrooms, and a full finished basement with a ‘guest suite’ for the overnight visitors we knew we’d have, an exercise room (or 6th bedroom) that could be used as a wine cellar, and a media room.
(Press here for pictures of the interior.)
It also had gorgeous views of the pond and the various birds that visit it – ducks, geese, egrets, and a loon (some of the houses on the pond do not have a view of it). We moved in on December 4, 2003.
The previous owners had taken superb care of the house but, built in 1987, it WAS 16 years old and although everything was in working order when we bought it we knew that many things would need to be replaced. I THOUGHT the first thing we redid would be the kitchen which had an electric cook top and Formica counters. I NEVER imagined that the outside of the house would become the focus of our renovating efforts because the exterior appearance had never been an issue. I didn’t love the outside of the house but I didn’t hate it either (except for the front door, which I didn’t care for). It was a non-issue for me. The inside – creating a comfortable, inviting, and workable living space – was my primary concern.
So it surprised me, that first summer, when KC suggested that we replace all the windows. Yes, some of them were drafty and the mechanisms were stiff but we rarely opened them so I never gave them a second thought. KC was right, though, to keep our energy costs under control, now that we had a much larger space to heat/cool, it made sense.
We decided to replace the front door, too, after KC read an article in Consumer Reports which said the front door was one of the best investments a homeowner could make as it was the first thing a prospective buyer saw. I also realized that by replacing the windows I could have grids installed in them, something I’d always wanted.
In November of 2004 Illinois Energy Windows and Siding replaced all 39 Lincoln windows with Worthington.
The front of the house in the fall, right before the windows were replaced:
And the following spring, with the new door and windows:
The following spring, when I suggested that we replace the burning bushes in the front that were obscuring our now gorgeous front door (and didn’t get enough sun to turn them red in the fall), KC surprised me again by suggesting that in addition to replacing the bushes we redo the front stoop and walkway and add retaining walls around the beds.
It took me a while but I finally found a contractor with the same sensibilities that we had. In addition to replacing the stoop and sidewalk, he suggested we remove all the evergreens, which were overgrown, and the birch in the middle, to open up the front of the house. He also offered to grade the land so that the rainfall would drain away from the house.
The old sidewalk:
Chris Nikolas of Sod Off Scape Shapers started work on July 14th 2005.
First they removed the birch and burning bushes:
Then the evergreens:
Then, they laid down a foundation of gravel:
Over that went a layer of sand:
And then, finally, the bricks:
Because the old stoop was part of the foundation and we didn’t want to remove it, the new stoop was built OVER the old one! The size of the old stoop and the curvature of the bricks we chose forced us to make the new stoop bigger than we’d intended to. Then, because the new stoop was so big, we had to increase the size of the walkway to keep it in proportion. We ended up with much more brickwork than we had intended to but we LOVED the way it looked!
The new stoop:
The new walkway:
And the new retaining walls:
The next step was to replace the plants and I was very apprehensive about this.
Press here for pictures of the deck on our Halsted St. condo
KC wanted color. I didn’t want anything ‘high maintenance’ but I also didn’t want anything boring or monochromatic and I was afraid the two were mutually exclusive. By now, though, it was early September and the nurseries didn’t have much available so Chris did what he could. I wasn’t thrilled with the way it looked, everything seemed to be the same size and shape – round – and there wasn’t much color difference either, but KC convinced me to wait see what it looked like the following spring.
The plants in the retained beds:
The plants along the walkway:
The grass starting to grow on the newly graded lawn:
The perfect pots Chris found for us for the stoop
(notice how badly the house needs paint….
and the rusty light fixtures….more on that later):
The following spring, the beds looked a lot better than they had the previous fall, but I still wasn’t thrilled with them. I wanted lush diversity and I didn’t have it. I put in lots and lots of annuals to try and add color, rearranged some of the smaller plants and brought in a few new ones. By the end of the year I liked it better but it still wasn’t crazy about it.
Spring 2006:
In this shot you can see the light fixtures we put in to coordinate with the new door:
Fall 2006:
In the spring of 2006, after we replaced the back deck with a patio (press here for pictures of the new patio) , we decided to have the exterior of the house painted. Actually, we got an unbelievable deal from a student who, with two colleagues, did the entire job for under $2000, so we couldn’t afford NOT To do it, given the way the paint looked. The color turned out much lighter than I expected but I like it. The BEST part of the new paint job, though, was the garage: it was now dark red to match the new front door! Here are some after shots:
The following year, 2007, I actually did a lot of gardening because I still didn’t like the way the landscaping looked, but I was frustrated by the amount of work the garden took, resented it, and did it begrudgingly. So much of what I did died, or was eaten by rabbits, that I was discouraged as well and didn’t take many pictures. I was trying, desperately, to create height – both in front and in back – without spending money on expensive bushes.
A few shots of the front in the spring:
And in the summer:
At the end of the year, in October of 2007, when the local nurseries were offering half-price deals on all their bushes, I convinced KC to let me add a few. In the front, I replaced the dying mugo pine with an azalea, and put a black lace sambucus just off center in the magnolia bed. I couldn’t wait for spring to come, to see what they’d look like….
WOW!
Spring 2008 was GLORIOUS!
We had a relatively mild winter with few thaw freeze cycles and in April we were inundated with rain. So, at the beginning of May, the garden was popping! The creeping jenny ground cover I’d tested as a possible replacement for mulch – which is notorious in many ways (it infected our maples with a root fungus) – was taking off and its light green color set off everything growing around it. KC asked me to add more and I did.
First, a picture of the new azalea, in bloom on April 27 :
Here are some pictures of the front taken on May 8, 2008:
And a whole bunch taken during June and July:
The first to bloom were the Husker Red Penstemom:
The annuals:
Next to bloom are the little wine cup lilies :
Followed quickly by the big daddy hosta :
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As the lilies and hosta wind down, the black eyed susans open up :
Some views of the whole front of the house:
In a few weeks, the Lemon Queen will bloom, then the sedum, and finally the toad lilies. I am looking for other late blooming lilies to intersperse with the little wine cups so that we’ll have flowers in August.
I am REALLY happy with the front of the house now except for one thing. I would like to replace one of the boxwoods – the one in front of the dining room window -- with a dwarf blue spruce, and will do so this fall, when they’re on sale. I planted some boston ivy this spring which is doing well and will create some additional height without obscuring the windows (a security hazard), in a year or two.
My goal, eventually, is to have a secluded garden as lush as the deck of our Halsted St. Condo:
The deck of our Halsted St. condo
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Last Revised: July 21, 2008
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