What Is A Foundation Planting?

To put it quite simply, foundation plantings are the plants that get planted along the foundation of the house. Foundation plants were traditionally used as screens to hide raised concrete foundations on a home. In addition to providing great screens, they add beauty and style to a home!

Some home designers no longer feel the need for foundation plantings since new construction rarely shows an exposed concrete foundation. My biggest pushback on this would be that a long continuous stretch of vinyl siding is certainly less attractive than having landscaping around it. Shrubs soften hard corners and lines on a home’s foundation, making them asthteticly more pleasing. Most homeowners would rather walk up to their front door and be greeted by a beautiful garden bed than vinyl siding. Additionally, a garden bed around the foundation of a home separates the lawn from the house, protecting your siding from getting destroyed by a weed-wacker or lawn mower.

Take for example the two homes pictured below. The first house has no foundation planting, while the second house (which also has a raised porch), has beautiful foundation planting along with a nice stone border edge.

The foundation plants on the blue house above have no shrubs covering the view of the porch or obstructing any street view of the house. Meanwhile, the yellow house has the concrete foundation completely exposed and looks unappealing.

The foundation planting is essential for new construction, or doing a landscape transformation on older homes. Typically when customers call us for a landscape renovation, the current landscaping has grown much too big and is blocking the homeowner’s view from the door or back patio. This tends to happen when regular landscape maintenance hasn’t been done in a few years. We can either salvage the existing landscaping by a hardcore pruning, or we can remove the shrubs completely and start new.

Are you interested in a landscaping redesign? Contact us today and we’ll come out for an in person estimate to discuss a plan!