aka the sandwich that’s too big to bite and has the crunchy bread that scratches your gums.

I like my garden beds like I like my human grass at the Bad Bunny halftime show: tall, flowy, and living their best lives.

My front yard is many things right now, but it is not that.

While much of the US might approve, to my eyes it’s horrific. It’s short-cut grass. There’s one small circular bed where a tree used to be (now filled with hostas). The only redeeming feature is a large native Tilia americana (American basswood/linden).

From the sidewalk, the backdrop is a strong shade of old dog poop (the house), topped with an Old MacDonald red roof (EIEIOhh damn). From the house, the backdrop is street traffic.

It’s a pretty dismal garden sandwich.

But I am grateful for parameters. The front yard won’t just be about planting — it will also be about screening and painting. In other words: this is a big project.

Addressing the Backdrop

Since my dad once made my sisters and me scrape and repaint the siding of a house growing up, I feel empowered to do it again. Thankfully, much of my current house is brick, so it seems more manageable. And it cannot possibly be worse than the garage wall I scraped and repainted last year.

If it sounds like I’m talking myself into it, I am.

I’m motivating myself with a dark, rich green I’ll be finding on Farrow & Ball’s website. But I’ll be purchasing the Benjamin Moore equivalent. You’re welcome, wallet.

Screening. How tho?

I mother fucking hate arborvitae. I’m put off by Juniper’s spikiness. I am bored by Yew and Boxwood. I am willing to allow these as supporting characters but never as a whole hedgerow for screening. Otherwise, other options for an evergreen all-season hedgerow in Chicagoland are totally available if we want to spend $300 on a single dwarf white pine.

I’ll need to think outside the box(wood).

I once saw tall grasses used as a hedgerow to great effect in an episode of Gardener’s World. Then I saw Little Bluestem used similarly at the Lurie Garden in downtown Chicago. Thoughts brewing. Ideas forming. Also noting that grass seeds are cheap and easy to sow and grow.

Yes, grasses fade in fall. But they still look very classy and sturdy throughout winter - so they could potentially provide effective year-round screening. Since Chicagoland was once a prairie capital of the world (RIP), bonus points for tons of native options.

Ok, I’m doing it.

The plan(ish)

Y’all. Can I tell you how many times I’ve written down garden plans and didn’t follow them? Every single time. And we’re right on track for more of the same on this project. I made a drawing, ordered a ton of seeds, and saved a bunch of cardboard to no-dig start my beds.

But truth be told, I will probably start where it’s easiest and stop when I run out of cardboard.

That process will continue until it resembles something akin to a garden, perhaps even to my original plan. I realize this is inefficient. There will be no quick and glorious before and after. This will be years in the making.

But I know myself. If I turn this into a huge production, I will not enjoy it. And if I want to continue gardening (yes), it has to stay fun.

The Concept(ish)

That said, here’s the concept that will inevitably change (but I kind of hope it doesn’t):

Tall flowy grasses.

Lush green as the dominant color

Alluring hits of maroons and reds.

Shoots of lacy cream flowers.

I feel like this is starting to give martini-chic burlesque, but instead of on a stage, it’s in a meadow.

On that note, here’s the current plant list:

Scrophularia marilandica (Late figwort)
Hierochloe odorata (Sweetgrass)
Sanguisorba (Burnet)
Silene stellata (Starry campion)
Euphorbia corollata (Flowering spurge)
Geum aleppicum (Yellow avens)
Silene regia (Royal catchfly)
Andropogon Geradii (Big Bluestem)

These are all perennials (and mostly native).

This means it’ll take two to three years for this garden to really take off. If I don’t want measly bare beds for that long, I will need to supplement with annuals. For this, I’ll use what’s already in my seed box.

Layout. Be one with the plants.

For me, a garden is a transporting experience. It takes me out of real ‘capitalist/patriarchy’ life to ‘this is what we could have had’ life. For it to work, I need the experience to be immersable. I don’t want to stand at the edge and just look at it, I need to walk among it. The garden and I are friends, we should act like it.

There will be a path. It'll snake around the previously mentioned small circle, giving it purpose. Beds will flank each side of the path. The path will start as short grass; as it gets trodden on and turns to mud, I’ll come up with a different plan.

I’ll be tossing aside the old planting-in-layers scheme - short in the front, tall in the back. If I’m walking among the bed, there’s no real front or back, and that concept stops making sense.

I do want structure though, something grounding. It’s yet to be determined. But if I’m going naturalistic (which I am), I’m thinking maybe a clipped shrub or structural branches dotted throughout for an arresting contrast.

Seems like many details remain “to be decided.” But I’m getting to the "I'll figure it out later” point.

Rules?

I definitely feel like I’m throwing out some garden design rules and making up crap that may or may not work. Isn’t that the simultaneous bitch and delight of gardening, though? And even if we did follow the rules, inevitably something doesn’t work.

Unless we’re building a Chelsea Flower Show installation, what does garden design even mean?

Just like our homes, I think if we’re designing it right, we’re being deeply personal about it. Like if I madly loved horses, I’d be putting up a nauseating amount of horse pictures, statues, saddles, and horse shoes throughout my house (I do like horses, but not that much).

Similarly, if I want a garden I can hide in, I better make it tall. If I want to meet a bee while I’m in there, I better plant some pollen-rich flowers. If I don’t want to look at cars from my front window, I better have year-round density.

I could open a gardening book or scroll social media or watch Gardeners World for some ideas. And I might. But until someone publishes “How to Turn Your Basic Bro Front Yard into a Classy-Burlesque-Themed Natural Haven Where You can Privately Party with Bees and Hide from Late Stage Capitalism,” I’ll just have to write it myself.

The Front Yard