Fire Safe Gardening

My street is not that busy, but like any other suburban drive, each house looks directly across at each other.  In our neighborhood the long warm spring tempts folks to leave front doors open to let in the evening breeze.  But not everyone likes to show off their evening habits to every passer-by who glances through the screen door as they stroll along the sidewalk.

The front garden exposed to passers by.

My neighbor came to me looking for a privacy solution to shield her front door from the street with a simple, colorful, and most importantly, drought tolerant solution.  My answer involves a elegant white trellis and a collection of some of my favorite garden plants.

The space I employed is directly in front of the entry, where the walk turns around the garage.  To this bare patch of tired lawn I envisioned a new curving flower bed where a 10 foot wide, 8 foot tall white trellis will act like a screen. The trellis, handcrafted from pressure treated timber and painted to

The new trellis and plantings completed.

match the house trim, will support an espallier of Ceanothus ‘Ray Hartman’.

I chose this tall evergreen shrub for it’s deep blue, fragrant spring flowers and leathery evergreen foliage.  It’s stems are supple enough to allow them to be spread across the trellis to form a living curtain all year.  Ceanothus are a native favorite which are hardy, drought tolerant and provide plenty of nectar and pollen to promote valuable pollinators.

Around the base of the trellis, I added a mix of drought tolerant, easy care, evergreen perennials.  They include a spreading carpet of Verbena ‘Homestead Purple’, spiky Yucca ‘Color Guard’, Gaillardia ‘Goblin’ with it’s pinwheel blooms, and Teuchrium x lucidrys, which provides tidy evergreen mounds topped with purple blooms.

At the far end of the trellis, the new bed is linked to existing plantings of gardenia, lagerstromia, and kniphofia.  I added Penstemon ‘Garnet’ and Phlomis lanata here.  Both have the heft of evergreen shrubs with also provide hummingbird friendly spikes of blooms all summer.

The new bed will include moving a lawn sprinkler and retro-fitting another to drip irrigation plus a water conserving mulch of river cobbles after the soil is improved with compost and organic material.

The over-all effect will link easily with the home, provide privacy, add color to the garden while promoting pollinators and conserving water.

Update: The Trellis is complete!  We had decided to tweek a few of the plant selections due to availability.  But the overall effect is great!  We added two antique cabinet doors from the homeowners collection of antiques.  We treated them with wood protector to help them resist the weather.  Adds just the right touch to this great little project!