East Vancouver Front Garden

East Vancouver Front Garden
2017 | Site 1100 sq ft | Design by Stephen Stewart | Construction by Carrot Top Gardens

A grade change in a garden usually presents an opportunity for beauty. In this garden the few steps down from the city sidewalk allowed for seizing the moment with a dry stacked wall using a mix of small boulders and different sizes of locally sourced basalt wallstone. The clients wanted the front garden to feel somewhat enclosed but not ‘walled off’ with a ubiquitous cedar hedge. A line of breezy tall grasses (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Forester’) provides a little privacy to the east.

In the shade of the house under the Japanese maple (Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’) the combination of Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’, Viburnum davidii, Carex car. ‘The Beatles’, Dryopteris wallichiana, Polystichum polyblepharum and Helleborus ‘Ivory Prince’ give interest most of the year round. Away from the shadow of the house, ornamental grasses Sesleria caerulea, Miscanthus sin. ‘Flamingo’, Imperata cylindrica ‘Red Baron’ and Festuca glauca ‘Elijah Blue’ mingle with the shrubs Arbutus unedo ‘Compacta’, Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Munchkin’, Podocarpus Lawrence ‘Red Tips’ and Cercis canadensis ‘Ruby Falls’.