Welcome or Stay Away!  What Does Your Front Yard Say? 

Since Ancient Greece, the “portico” or front porch has always been a significant symbol of transition from a community outdoor and social space into the intimate indoor space of your home. It is an opportunity to create an image of elegance and warmth to welcome your guests and maybe encourage neighbors to do the same.

These front yard meeting and greeting spaces can set the vibe of your home and be welcoming or can run guests away quickly if awkward or unkempt front yards and entryways. This can be an overwhelming task at times here in Central Florida where summer heat is hot, humid and brutal with the sometimes challenging soil conditions and water restrictions. You may feel like your options are limited and why bother.  But it’s not that hard!

5 Simple Florida Landscaping ideas or tips

to remember when designing your gorgeous welcoming area:

1) Create levels with different size pots to add depth and interest.
2) Design for visibility with a variety of color, texture, and form.
3) Direct view to front entry with focal plants.
4) Dress up driveways and always accent with lighting, stone or wood.
5) Get creative with larger spaces and create pathways to tucked away gardens and intimate areas.

Need Plant Ideas!

Most newly constructed home sites have very little shade while older homes may sometimes have an overabundance because of ancient old tree canopies. Here are some easy Florida landscaping ideas for the front of the house that allow you to embrace our Florida environment and keep your front areas warm, bright, colorful and tolerant of our hot Florida weather. Here are some examples.

For full sun areas, some examples of some great landscaping options are:

African Iris, Stokes Astor, Twin Flower Agave, Magnolia, Purple Love Grass and Pineapple Guava. These plants are sure to add some color and texture to your front space to provide impact and warm.

For shady areas try Azaleas, Bromeliads, Camellias, Ferns, and Gardenias.

Don’t forget my four favorites to add into the mix as well. You can find out what those are in my article Four Great Plants to Make Your Florida Landscape Design Beautiful.  By The Way – as a shameless plug and as an Orlando landscape supply company, We carry many of these plants

For more general over all look ideas, check out this slideshow from HGTV.

Use these Florida Landscaping Ideas and combine them with your vision of what “Welcome” means to you, you can truly create your own design as a personal invitation into your home that will be complimented and remembered by all that visit year after year.

1)  WEEDS

While grass and weeds can coexist to give you a nice green look, it is not usually the most pleasing appearance for a lawn. Typically weeds will grow faster and out of scale to the lawn. Many weeds also have a broadleaf look and can be a big reason why your lawn looks ugly! Healthy lawns generally take care of many weed problems by crowding them out. Weeds germinate at different times of the year and at different rates. The spring and early summer are when most of them start to grow. Weak grass or small areas of exposed soil are ideal spots for them to take hold and start attacking your lawn. Be sure to use a weed treatment early in the season. If your yard is overrun by weeds you can still save it by treating the weeds and fertilizing your grass. Make sure you have a healthy ph balance in your soil. This will help your sod grow healthy and strong and push the weeds out. You can get your soil tested for FREE at Leu Gardens in Orlando.

2) TOO MUCH SHADE

Although some are shade tolerant, most Florida grasses like and need the sun. Between your house or other structures and mature trees, your grass or sod may not actually be getting a full day sun. A full day of sun is more than 6 hours of direct sunlight. So that couple hours of sunshine you get under the tree in the morning when the sun is rising is probably not enough. While there are some grass varieties that handle some shade, they tend to be weaker, grow slower, less able to handle foot traffic and can allow weeds to take over if you’re not using a weed preventative. If the shade is an issue, make sure you have a shade tolerant grass or perhaps find a different type of ground cover for those areas. Mulch, rocks or gardens with plants, like jasmine, that stay beautiful with little requirement for light.

3) FOOT TRAFFIC

Even though some turfs are designed for play spaces and foot traffic more than others, the reality is that wet grass and primarily the soil does not tolerate foot traffic well. So on all those rainy Florida afternoons as people walk across your yard or your playing sports on it, the soil is getting compacted making roots difficult to grow. Aside from that, when the soil is soft, it is easier for individual blades of grass to be pulled out with wear and tear. If the grass is really dry, foot traffic can break blades that will turn brown and can stunt growth.

4) DOGS

We all love our canine companions, but they have to go out regardless of weather so there is no way to avoid them trampling out into the soft wet soil. Typically I see the worst destruction during the summer with Florida’s famous rainy season. Dogs generally follow a routine and their nails can wear a bald path into the soil on wet days quickly. Pattern behavior also has those spots were dogs like to do their business. Even on dry days dog urine is one of the worst stressors on your grass. It burns out the grass and eventually creates dead blank spots in the lawn.

5) LACK OF WATER

Besides sun, the other most important thing that grass needs to grow to be lush & green is WATER. While we all want to be conscious of the environment and not water their lawn every day, some supplemental water may be necessary at times. During those hot Florida days, water deprived areas, as well as new sod need additional water to survive. One of the most common water deprived, as well as sun-deprived areas are under trees. Trees not only absorb much of the water that reaches the ground, they block a good portion of the rain from even reaching the ground. This is a major contributor as to why grass naturally does not do well in those spaces, so if we are going to force something where it naturally does not do well, it will likely need some additional help, in this case in the form of water. Another thing to look at is water run-off. If your yard is on a slope the water maybe just running downhill faster than the soil can absorb it. If you want to know more about watering your landscape check out my article,”Don’t let the Summer Sizzle Kill Your Landscape”