Clare Foster's own front garden in Berkshire, with loose planting anchored around clipped spheres of silvery Teucrium fruticans
Front gardens are often overlooked, covered in tarmac for cars or swathed in paving for minimal maintenance. Yet these small spaces provide invaluable potential for extra planting, particularly in towns and cities, helping to reduce pollution, increase biodiversity and provide habitats for wildlife. The most important first step in any front garden is to ensure that your hard surfaces are permeable. Flooding is becoming an increasing problem as weather events become more extreme with global warming, and rainwater needs somewhere to go, so the more permeable surfaces and flower beds you can have in your garden the better. Plan a gravel driveway that you can soften round the edges with self-seeding plants such as poppies, fennel or valerian, or choose permeable block paving from a company such as Marshalls with space for flower beds all around. Any area of mixed planting will also improve the soil underneath, acting like a sponge to soak up run-off after heavy rain.
In terms of planting, choose tough, low maintenance plants that will give as much seasonal interest as possible. Plan a simple layout to give continuity, starting with structural shrubs. Frame a path or front door with yew spheres or a low hedge of lavender, and then infill with colourful seasonal planting: tulips and honesty for spring, geums and salvias for summer, and Japanese anemones for autumn. Add a low-growing grass such as Stipa tenuissima or Anemanthele lessoniana, and a climbing wisteria (or Hydrangea petiolaris for a north-facing facade), and you already have a scheme that will transform the front of your house.
Designer James
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