Front Landscaping for a Colonial Home

Walkways

• A straight walkway in the front of the house, lined up with the house's center entrance, highlights the house's symmetry and square lines. A concrete sidewalk works well. For a more historic look, consider laying a brick sidewalk like those found in Colonial Williamsburg. A curved walkway softens the house's vertical architecture. Use a less formal material like pea gravel or crushed oyster shells, or try setting pieces of fieldstone or concrete pavers far enough apart to plant grass or herbs like creeping thyme between them.

Foundation Plants

• Formal landscapes that highlight your home's architecture might consist of foundation plants, shrubs and bushes, equal in number and type, on either side of the front steps. Shrubs are squared off to enhance the home's architecture. The foundation plants you choose depend on your geographic location, but some common species are boxwood, holly and juniper, which can be traced to the landscaping of the colonial homes in Williamsburg in the 1700s. A mix of green plants and those that change color with the seasons will add texture to your landscape. A more casual approach to choosing shrubs is to select some with a softer, wilder aspect that you won't prune to geometric shapes, but will instead allow to grow more naturally. You may consider choosing different species rather than matching varieties. Flowering bushes like hydrangeas, rhododendron and forsythia will soften the home's rectangular shape. Shrubs and bushes can also be used in gardens scattered around your yard, as well as directly in front of the house.

Flowers

• Once you have laid your walkways and planted your foundation plants, it is time to fill in with flowers. A mix of perennials and annuals will ensure that your house is highlighted by blooms for many months and, in warmer climates, all year long. Add flowers to a formal bed that highlight the shrubs and bushes either by choosing complementary or contrasting colors. Place them an equal distance apart and arrange them between and in front of the foundation plants for a more formal and manicured appearance. Complement a more casual landscape design with banks of flowers. Layer them in height, with the tallest in front of the foundation plants and the lowest bordering the walkways or bricks or stones defining other gardens in the yard.

Walls and Fences

• A traditional center-entrance colonial home might be bordered by a stone wall evoking those built by early settlers with the rocks they collected when clearing their fields. Another type of fence that is commonly associated with colonial architecture is the split-rail fence. Originally used to keep livestock from wandering away, these fence styles lend an historic feel to your colonial home.