Planning your yard garden entrance

Making plans

• Do draw a scaled plan on graph paper to decide the positioning of essential features.

• Do use fences, walls, trellis or shrubs to screen the garden from neighboring properties or the road.

• Do confirm your property line (with a surveyor if necessary) before erecting a new boundary, and check for council regulations.

• Do use bold plantings, strong focal points and sweeping curves to create the best impression.

• Don't have a complicated design. A simple layout is usually the most effective and the easiest to achieve.

This tropical entrance garden (above) is made colorful and memorable with an unusual mass planting of bromeliads and related tillandsias - even the trees are hung with them.

A vine-covered arch makes an authentic and charming entrance to a traditional cottage. This one uses potato vine (Solanum jasminoides), which is rarely without flowers.


Time saver
If you create a new front path from river stones or pebbles, bed them in concrete so that weeds cannot grow up in between. This saves you having to spend precious gardening time on weed control in the future.