A face lift to the front yard; need plant recommendations

[miamicuse]

I apologize in advance for the excessively long post, but I want some plant recommendations as well as show some pictures of my front yard landscaping face lift.

This is a vacation rental property in south Florida that I want to improve it's curb appeal, and to experiment with a few landscaping ideas.  Learned a few lessons along the way.

Here are the pictures of the front yard in it’s original existing state. A narrow concrete walkway in the middle leading to the front door, lawn to the right, and a large patch of bald space to the left where grass don’t grow under the oak tree.

Below is the drawing of the area. There is the bigger oak to the left of the walkway, and two queen palms to the right side, and I want to lay something out to tie all these together and give it some “structure”.

If I do it with plants it will require a lot of layering, and will need to give it some time.  Being that this is a vacation rental property, I will not be there every day and I can't really wait for things to fill in over time.  So I opted to do something a bit drastic, the down side of course it will have hard edges and not an organic look.

What I end up with a set of wood borders (inside and outside borders) around the tree to the left. Another pair of borders will be on the right side of the walkway, going north then east, ending in a “FIGURE 8” shape surrounding the two queen palms. On the four corners of the walkway, the borders will be widened to create four planter sections. In other words, the oak tree and the concrete walkway will be framed by a pair of straight line borders and the two queen palms will be framed by some curved borders.  In between these pairs of borders where you see the light blue shaded areas are to be medium size river rocks or pea gravels, “flowing” into the figure 8 “pond” with the two palms. The “yellow” shaded areas are to be planted and mulched.

The straight line borders I decided to use 4X4 PT lumber, and I wasn't sure what I can use for the curved peanut shape figure 8 around the queen palms.  But I went to work anyways and figured I will figure things out along the way.  This is kind of a brief journey with pictures.

The execution is fairly straight forward, nothing too challenging except for some rain delays, and in the middle of it I decided to redo the water line from meter to house LOL.

The borders are 4×4 lumber secured to the ground with 36″ long 3/4″ rebars. I spent a bit of time staking the outline out, because I know the perimeter where I want to set these borders will have tree roots that I need to deal with, and I want to minimize cutting into that. After some back and forth adjustments, I was able to find the needed elevation to set these borders with minimum root damages.  Here are some pictures showing what it looked like after the borders were laid down and secured one evening.

Then I stained the wood borders.

The pair of wood borders ends at the two queen palms, and I have to transition to a curved border.  I experimented with some wood edging but did not like the look at all.

I then got some queen cut old reclaimed Chicago bricks, and set a curved border in mortar.

Then I bought in some pea gravels, after laying down some weed fabric between the pairs of wood borders I filled in the stones.

I also bought four 6x16 concrete blocks, and painted them white.  I put them in the middle of the enlarged corners of the borders, and I want to plant something in each of the four concrete planters.  Ideally they will be the same plant but three of them are in a lot of shade and one corner is in quite a bit of sun.  I don't want something thorny or too wide to interfere with someone walking up the walkway.  Any suggestions?  Would Raphis excelsa work there?

Now, around the big oak trees, I have some philo and ferns, but I am also toying with the idea of putting a dozen or so bromeliads around the base of the tree.  Thoughts?

At the same time with all the digging I was also laying down new sprinkler lines and suddenly, I made a mistake and broke the main water line to the house.  So I went off to do a different project, which was to replace the entire water line between the meter and the house, not really a fun project to undertake, especially after all the digging and lifting I went through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[miamicuse]

Just thought I will try again to see anyone has suggestions for the 4 planters with different sun/shade.

Will lady palms be an option?  Or something else.  Does not have to be palms.

[kinzyjr]

In the shade, Lady Palms (Rhapis excelsa) are an option.  Non-palms - how about cordylines => Hawaiian Ti?

[iDesign]

As a Californian, I'm not qualified to recommend specific plants, but here's a quick & dirty mockup of one possible layout for the front.

- The area immediately in front of the house might look nice with Lady Palms & Ti?
- Maybe put something tall & skinny that can take some sun (Ptychosperma elegans?) on the front right.
- Then maybe a clumping palm (Dypsis lutescens?)  on the far left to provide some balance (and possible screening of the garage area)? 

Not sure what to do with the other three planters... my gut feel is mid-size tropical plants, but there might be other nice options.

For bromeliads, if sun is a major issue you could do Aechmea blanchetiana, but those require a lot of maintenance. If you can find them, Alcantarea 'Julietta' is a nice statement bromeliad that lasts a really long time, and can take some sun. I dropped a photo of a Julietta in the image next to the Areca palms.

Hope there's something helpful in there from a design perspective.

[Merlyn]

It may be a little late, but do you have any lighting on the path or around the house?  That adds a lot of instant curb appeal.

Since it's a rental property I assume you won't be there on a daily basis.  As such I wouldn't suggest anything super rare/expensive in the spots.  Maybe a pair of Bottle palms up front in the sun?  For visitors from the Frozen Tundra (anywhere much North of Florida) things like Bottles and Coconuts scream "VACATION!!!"  So do the bigger Alcantarea, as Stacey suggested.

[miamicuse]

On 12/26/2021 at 11:18 PM, iDesign said:

As a Californian, I'm not qualified to recommend specific plants, but here's a quick & dirty mockup of one possible layout for the front.

- The area immediately in front of the house might look nice with Lady Palms & Ti?
- Maybe put something tall & skinny that can take some sun (Ptychosperma elegans?) on the front right.
- Then maybe a clumping palm (Dypsis lutescens?)  on the far left to provide some balance (and possible screening of the garage area)? 

Not sure what to do with the other three planters... my gut feel is mid-size tropical plants, but there might be other nice options.

For bromeliads, if sun is a major issue you could do Aechmea blanchetiana, but those require a lot of maintenance. If you can find them, Alcantarea 'Julietta' is a nice statement bromeliad that lasts a really long time, and can take some sun. I dropped a photo of a Julietta in the image next to the Areca palms.

Hope there's something helpful in there from a design perspective.

That's incredible that you can immerse your design into my picture and it looks so realistic, thank you!

I might take up some of your ideas.  However, because of the four square pockets are symmetrical with each other adjacent to the walkway, I have it stuck in my head that these four areas need to have the same type of plant.  This may be why I am having so much trouble settling on anything because they are subjected to different light conditions.

So far what I have done is I put about 20 bromeliads around the tree.  I can't use bromeliads along the walkway where there is traffic.  Ptychosperma elegans in the front left/right planters to give some height, and may be lady palms in the rear left/right planters where it's more shade and that will keep a lower height under the eave and soften the concrete wall?

[miamicuse]

On 12/27/2021 at 9:13 AM, Merlyn said:

It may be a little late, but do you have any lighting on the path or around the house?  That adds a lot of instant curb appeal.

Since it's a rental property I assume you won't be there on a daily basis.  As such I wouldn't suggest anything super rare/expensive in the spots.  Maybe a pair of Bottle palms up front in the sun?  For visitors from the Frozen Tundra (anywhere much North of Florida) things like Bottles and Coconuts scream "VACATION!!!"  So do the bigger Alcantarea, as Stacey suggested.

I don't have much lighting other than a motion activated security lights at each corner and a wall sconce by the front door.

I tried some solar path lights two years ago, put one every five feet along each side of the path.  Problem is they don't last, and when I say last they would bake in the sun all day and come night time they stay lit for 2 hours then nothing even advertised as "LAST ALL NIGHT" lamps LOL.

[Merlyn]

10 hours ago, miamicuse said:

I don't have much lighting other than a motion activated security lights at each corner and a wall sconce by the front door.

I tried some solar path lights two years ago, put one every five feet along each side of the path.  Problem is they don't last, and when I say last they would bake in the sun all day and come night time they stay lit for 2 hours then nothing even advertised as "LAST ALL NIGHT" lamps LOL.

Yeah the solar things are still mostly useless.  LEDs have made them work better, but no one wants to pay for a good battery and charging circuit, much less a decently efficient solar panel.  I could design an efficient boost/buck switcher for a lithium battery, and it would absolutely run all night from a 3" x 3" solar panel...but it would probably retail for $50 per light. 

Running a low voltage light setup is easy, at least compared to everything you've already done!  Just get a timer/transformer setup and snake a couple of lines under the concrete on each side of the walkway.  If you are in sand you can just use one of those fiberglass "fishing" rods for running wires down inside walls.  I installed incandescent fixtures about 5 years ago, before LEDs became standard.  I just replaced the bulbs with 1W 100 lumen 2700-3000k "warm white" LED bulbs from Amazon.  I'd honestly be better off with 0.5W warm white LED, because the 1W LEDs are slightly brighter than 10W incandescent.  Anyway, now you can get a pretty good low power LED kit in the 3000k or lower range pretty cheap.  Just keep in mind that some kits say "incandescent equivalent" and shop by lumens.  A 50-80 lumen pathway light is pretty bright at night.

[iDesign]

On 1/1/2022 at 7:53 PM, miamicuse said:

I might take up some of your ideas.  However, because of the four square pockets are symmetrical with each other adjacent to the walkway, I have it stuck in my head that these four areas need to have the same type of plant...

I personally wouldn't make all four the same plant. While I love "balance", having four of the exact same plant in the corners would be a little too "matchy match" in my mind. The other issue is that even if you found a plant that would thrive in everything from full sun to shade, the growth rates would be different (so they wouldn't be as matching as you hoped). Here's some quick & dirty mockups for fun...

1) All four are small bushy plant...

2) All four are tall skinny palm...

3) Two in back are bushy plant / Two in front are tall skinny palm.
Much better, but still a bit on the "matchy match" side for my taste... and no guarantee the two front palms will grow similarly due to different lighting. Could work though.

4) Two in back are bushy / Tall skinny palm on front right / Something totally different behind mailbox (ideally not blocking the picture window)...

5) Same as above, but with something tall & "clumping" on the far left (optional... just feels a little more balanced to me).

There are of course no right/wrong answers... that's just what I'd personally favor in your situation. Have fun!

[miamicuse]

wow amazing graphics!  I wish the physical landscape changes can be made as quickly as the graphics changes hahaha.

I like option (3) the best!