Front Yard Landscaping for a Ranch House Without Hiding the Windows

Many ranch houses end up with the same front yard. The house is long and low, the yard is shallow, and the shrubs that went in along the foundation thirty years ago have grown up over the windowsills. You pull into the drive and walk past them, and a first-time visitor stops on the lawn and wonders which door to knock on. The usual fix makes it worse. A tall evergreen at each corner and a shade tree out in the lawn take the sun from a front yard only 35 feet deep.

This front yard landscaping plan for a ranch house is for a one-story brick ranch in central Maryland, zone 7a, with a front yard that faces south. A curved bluestone walk leads from the drive to the door. Two small trees stand at the edges of the yard, a narrow serviceberry by the drive and a fringetree at the corner, so the beds keep their sun. Evergreens you can keep below the windows line the house, and fifteen kinds of plants grow in blocks you can read from the street. Something flowers from April to frost, and the evergreens, grasses and peeling bark carry the yard through winter.

We built the plan as a real project in Plantyd and ran Plantyd's sun analysis on it at year one and year fifteen. With small trees, the beds keep their sun all the way to year fifteen. The sunny door was another matter, because it needed different plants from the ones we first put beside it. You can download the plan sheet near the bottom of the page.

Small trees keep the sun on the beds

Our first sketch of this yard had a black gum at the west corner and a full-size serviceberry at the drive. Black gum reaches forty or fifty feet, and a full-size serviceberry spreads fifteen feet or more. Once the trees were grown, a sun check left the coneflowers and switchgrass between them with two to four hours of midsummer sun. The serviceberry shaded them in the morning and the black gum in the afternoon. A yard this shallow has no room for a big canopy tree beside its sunniest bed.

So the corner has a fringetree instead. It stops at around twenty feet and covers itself in fragrant white fringe in May. The drive has a columnar serviceberry, eight feet wide. In the year-fifteen sun map above, the fringetree's shade stays in the southwest corner, and the beds by the house and the walk keep their sun. That shaded corner is where the shade plants go.

Sun plants belong by a south-facing door

Hellebores by the front door are a classic, and our first plan had a drift of them beside the stoop for flowers in February. Plantyd's sun analysis put every one of them in full sun. On a ranch that faces south, the entry beds get eight to thirteen hours of summer sun, and hellebores want shade.

So the hellebores became moss phlox, a low, mostly evergreen mat that likes all the sun it can get. Buy a blue form such as 'Emerald Blue' for lavender-blue flowers in April. You give up flowers in February for flowers in April. In winter, the inkberry under the windows and the pair of boxwoods at the stoop keep the entry green.

If your ranch faces north, the reverse is true. The entry beds sit in the house's shade, and hellebores are the right plant there again. Plantyd works this out for your own yard. You draw the house and the trees, and it calculates how many hours of sun each spot gets, now and as the trees grow. If you haven't checked your yard yet, start with how much sun your yard gets.

Keep the windows clear and the shrubs off the brick

The row under the windows is inkberry 'Shamrock', a native evergreen holly that grows to about four feet. If your sills are lower than that, shear it each spring to keep the glass clear. Each plant sits about three feet out from the wall, so it can reach full size without rubbing the brick. That spacing is half the shrub's width plus a foot, the rule explained in how far apart to plant trees and shrubs.

Two upright boxwoods frame the stoop, and three dwarf fothergilla round off the garage corner. Many ranch foundations still have burning bush and Japanese barberry, and both are on Maryland's invasive plant list. Fothergilla gives you the same red fall color, and inkberry the same low hedge, without seeding into the woods.

Make the walk wide enough for two

The walk is bluestone, four and a half feet wide. It curves from the drive to a landing six by eight feet at the door. Four feet is about the narrowest walk that lets two people walk side by side. The landing gives the storm door room to swing and gives a guest somewhere to stand.

The curve leads people from where they park to the door, so nobody cuts across the lawn. The narrow serviceberry marks the spot where the walk leaves the drive, so someone who has never visited knows where to go.

Each kind of plant grows in one or two blocks

'Rozanne' geranium fills the front of both sunny beds and ties them together, with violet-blue flowers from June to frost. A single row of catmint edges the walk. Coneflowers and three clumps of switchgrass hold the sunniest stretch of the crescent bed beside the walk. Fewer kinds in bigger blocks look calmer from the street, and they cost less to plant.

How the yard changes from year one to year fifteen

In the first summer the beds are mostly mulch with young plants dotted through them, and the whole yard is in full sun. Fill the gaps with annuals for a season or two rather than with extra shrubs. By year three the perennials have closed up and the shrubs look like shrubs.

By year fifteen the fringetree is full grown and its corner is in shade. That is where the Allegheny spurge goes. It is a pachysandra native to the Southeast, with mottled leaves. The fringetree grows slowly, so the spurge will sit in sun for its first several summers. Water it through every dry spell until the shade arrives.

The plant list: fifteen kinds, with the perennials bought small

The letters match the plan sheet. Every plant on the list is hardy from zone 5 through zone 8, so the plan works as drawn across the Mid-Atlantic. The sizes are what each plant reaches when grown. Buy the perennials small, in quarts or gallons, and they will catch up within a couple of seasons.

Planted this way, a long, low ranch still has clear windows in fifteen years, and nobody has to guess which door is the front.

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