A profile photo of Brent Lineberry

Brent Lineberry

Web and app developer. Coffee, beer, and running, in any order.

2026 Landscape Project: The Front Entry

This year’s landscape project is our front entry. By the end of this year, I hope to have a new path to the front door, a sitting area, a fresh planting bed, and a start on sunlight maps.

This year’s landscape project is our front entry. It currently looks like this

A photo of the front entry area. Steps from the front door go along the front of the house, hidden by large shrubs. The bed the shrubs are in curves out from the house with some additional perennials and a rock border. A narrow swath of grass is in front of that bed, with the driveway to the right.

The stairs go to a walkway that goes along the front of the house to the driveway. Our side door is a mere six feet or so from this point. That means anyone going to our front door basically passes our side door on the way.

Eventually, Megan would like our front steps to go straight out from the house instead of sideways along the front, but that’s a significant project. In the meantime, I’d like to make a path from the bottom of the steps into the front yard, curving to the driveway. Something like this

The same photo of the site, but faded and crudely drawn lines delineate a path from the front steps into the front yard, curving to the drive way. Crudely drawn chairs and table are near the house, and between the new path and chairs are indicators of various plants and shrubs, with flowers lining the new path.

My goals with this change are to

  • have a way to the front door that isn’t so ridiculously close to the side door
  • convert the old walkway into a sitting area
  • create a planting bed between the new path and the old walkway
  • move my herbs to the new bed
  • plant flowers for cutting in the bed
  • fill the rest of the bed with native plants
  • do all this embracing impermanence with the knowledge that the path will shift when we reconfigure the front steps in the future

I’m thinking of the project in two phases. I think it will take two years’ worth of planting budget, too. Phase one (2026) is to prepare the space and phase two (2027) is planting the space.

My plan for this year is to

  1. Late winter/early spring: move the shrubs. The camellia, loropetalum, and tea olive are too tall. I want to be able to sit at the top and see to the street. Hopefully I can transplant them to other parts of our yard, but they might be too big to dig up without killing, and our lot might be too tree-rooty to dig a holes large enough for them. We’ll see.
  2. As the perennials emerge, move them to containers. They might be suitable to plant back into this space, or I might move them to other areas.
  3. Install the new path. I intend to try a simple mulched path with large stepping pavers first. By foregoing any kind of crushed stone base, I hope to have good, plant-able soil when the path moves.
  4. Adjust any grading in the new planting bed and sheet mulch it.
  5. Move a couple of patio chairs and a small table to the old walkway.
  6. Once everything is structurally done, start mapping the sunlight in the bed.

By the end of this year, I hope to have the new path, a sitting area, a fresh planting bed, and a start on sunlight maps.