foundation plantings

 When my husband built our house 20 years ago, we deliberately worked around
any trees we could.  The only mature tree we had to remove was a
chokecherry.  I have a red cedar just feet from the front door that I limbed
up. I love the bark and it feels like the house with its cedar shakes is
wedded with the natural environment. Our house is on the water, but we are
somewhat obscured by more cedars which interfere with our water view.  We
like it that way!  Hard to take a picture of the house though!

I made foundation planting mistakes as well.  The English holly, which was
only a few feet tall when I planted it, sits 5' from the foundation.  A wee
bit too close you say?  It looked comical around here when I first planted.
All these little shrubs and this tall house!  If you looked at my Ilex
pictures, you saw that the plantings go past the roofline.  Luckily they
block the windows of my son's bedroom enough that he doesn't need a curtain.
There are no curtains in my house.  Even though on one side we have a
neighbor just 20' away, we situated the windows to give us privacy. It was
fun working on the design of the house as it could only be 30' wide and I
think 64' long.  I had to make interesting roof lines and diagonal walls
inside to break up the railroad car look. Those were fun times.

Chris
Long Island, NY
Zone 7a (Average min temp 50 - 00)

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