Favorite outdoor spaces usually have two things in common: comfy seating and a little screening. The front yard at Leni and Fred Wiener’s lacked both. Add in heavy shade and the traffic of their New Rochelle, New York, neighborhood, and it’s no surprise the couple went decades without using the space. But when a nor’easter took out a few old trees, they seized the chance to start over.
Before
“The yard went from total shade to full sun,” says Leni, who realized she now had a perfect site for the naturalistic garden she’d always wanted. Robert Welsch, a Tarrytown, New York–based landscape designer, pushed Leni’s vision even further. His design—a smaller lawn with a circular gravel seating area, exuberant borders, and a low fence—gave the space purpose and privacy as well as beauty.
When he suggested extending the house’s front landing to tie it into the garden, Leni was inspired to design a new portico and an art-glass transom and sidelights. A charcoal-gray roof followed, along with a darker paint palette that shows off the plantings. “The backyard is more secluded, but the front is more peaceful,” says Leni. “When we close that gate, the space becomes ours. It’s where we go to relax.”
Pro Tip: Robert Welsch, the Tarrytown, New York–based landscape designer behind the project, shares his go-to material choice for projects like this one: “I use three-quarter-inch crushed stone for patios and walks because it doesn’t slip underfoot.”
One of Welsch’s signature touches in the garden: he converted a decorative urn into a fountain by drilling a hole in the bottom and inserting a pump inside. It runs day and night, yielding the soothing sound of flowing water—an easy way to add ambient sound that helps mask street noise.
Garden Room: The Plan
A patio with seating, shrub-based plantings, and a fence for privacy turned an uninspired front yard into an enclosed garden room.
- Installed a gravel seating area with chairs, a focal-point sculpture, and a curved stepping-stone path to the driveway.
- Traded a tired concrete walk for a rustic path of irregular flagstones.
- Reshaped the portico and extended the landing into the garden.
- Lined the reduced lawn area with beds of flowering shrubs and easy-care perennials, such as astilbe and heuchera.
- Shielded the house from the street with a natural-wood fence engulfed by rows of dogwoods, hydrangeas, and daylilies.
Matching Portico and Door Arch
The white portico echoes the arch of the new transom and pops against the gray siding. Paint (siding): Sherwin-Willliams’s Gibraltar
A glass artisan in the neighborhood handcrafted a custom transom and matching sidelights for the remodeled entryway. Art-Glass: Giacomo’s Stained Glass
Street-Facing Floral Fence
‘Limelight’ hydrangeas, Ivory Halo dogwoods, and daylilies soften the street side of the fence.
Shrubs Screen The Driveway
More shrubs screen the driveway, while the sculpture, made by a Connecticut metalworker from RF Steelwork, commands attention in the quiet space.
Pro advice: “I use three-quarter-inch crushed stone for patios and walks because it doesn’t slip underfoot.” —Robert Welsch, landscape designer, Tarrytown, N.Y.
Year-Round Yard Border
Hydrangeas and dogwoods backed by doublefile viburnum make a showy border year-round.
Carefree Garden Beauty
Shrubs give this garden its lush, carefree beauty. Here, a flowering ‘Limelight’ hydrangea mingles with the cream-rimmed foliage of an Ivory Halo dogwood.
Street Buffer Plantings
A Japanese maple underplanted with doublefile viburnum, hydrangeas, and ‘Francee’ hosta buffers the yard from the street.
Flagstone and Crushed-Stone Surfaces
Flagstone stepping-stones leading to the driveway provide an easier-to-navigate surface in a crushed-stone patio. They are also easier to keep clear of snow come winter.
Building a flagstone-and-crushed-stone surface that holds up over time starts below the surface. As detailed in This Old House Magazine, a long-wearing walkway rests atop a compacted, 6-inch-thick base of unwashed, 2-inch-diameter modified stone, with a 1- to 2-inch-thick layer of masonry sand sandwiched between the stone layers to make it easier to level the slabs and prevent them from rocking.
Adirondack Garden Seating
This pair of Adirondack chairs serve as an invitation to enjoy the garden.
Colorful Window Dressings
Window boxes offer pockets of color and texture. In this planting, the plum foliage of ‘Silver Streak’ heuchera plays off purple petunias and red calibrachoa blooms.
Pro Tip: This Old House landscape contractor Roger Cook recommends prepping the box before planting: “Be sure your box has drainage holes, through the liner and the box itself, then layer gravel on the bottom to keep soil from clogging them. Use container mix, which combines pH-balanced soil with peat moss, composted bark, and perlite, an aerator. Then add slow-release granular fertilizer to give plants a jump start.”
Urn Turned Garden Fountain
Landscape designer Robert Welsch converted this urn into a fountain by drilling a hole in the bottom and inserting a pump inside. It runs day and night, yielding the soothing sound of flowing water.
The conversion is surprisingly simple. As detailed in This Old House Magazine, you slip the bubbler’s cord through slits cut into two rubber plugs (a sink stopper and toilet flush valve seat disk work well), thread the cord through the urn’s drainage hole, then squeeze a bead of silicone caulk around the edges of each stopper to create a watertight seal. After 30 minutes of drying time, place the bubbler in the bottom of the urn and fill with water.
