Out My Front Door

 

I love the views and the wildlife interactions that I get right outside my own front door. Watching the trees turn color this week in the front was just one more reminder of how important it is to me to put the plants I love where I can see them the most.

This week's view: Viburnum prunifolium (purple)
with the orange foliage of serviceberry (Amelanchier)

I've written before about considering that your front yard can be every much a part of your habitat garden. You can read that post here. For me, the front yard is the part of my yard that I see the most. My back yard is entirely natural and feels like you just wandered into a woodland, so I use my front yard to create organized beds of native perennials and shrubs.

My birdbath and hummingbird feeders are in the front and I pop out daily to check on them. I use the driveway as an informal potting area, walk along the sidewalk to get the mail, and often go out to check on what’s blooming and what bugs are using the plants.

In the spring, shrubs like native azaleas, viburnums, mountain laurel, blueberries, and serviceberry bloom above the coreopsis, columbine, penstemon, bluebells, trillium, and pussytoes.

A butterfly on the azalea on the front corner of the house

In the summer, I have St. Johns wort, summersweet, pagoda dogwood, sundrops, spiderwort, coneflower, black-eyed Susan, milkweed, hibiscus, partridge pea, cardinal flower, and mountain mint. It is a joy to watch both adults and juveniles enjoy the plants.

Cloudless sulphur on partridge pea

Cloudless sulphur on cardinal flower

In the fall, the asters run wild while sunflowers, turtlehead, boneset, and blue mistflower rise above them. Every moment out my front door is a joy to me. Make your front yard one of your happy spots too!

The bumblebees adore the fall asters