Imagining A Front Yard Conifer Garden With Miegakaure - February 2024

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a pretty lengthy garden diary post that outlined some of the inspiration and design ideas that I've been cataloging for the front yard.  I also posted this conifer inspo of three blue junipers (upright) in a mixed perennial bed. 

What would it look like?  Ideally...something like this house.  But, that's not realistic - just yet.  

In that post, I talked about doing a 'phase 1', but doing it with an eye for the entire design.  What's the key, defining characteristic of the 'entire design'?  I think it is centered on three things:

1. A path.
2. A bern.
3. ...and some miegakure.

I was out front - taking the garbage cans out - this past week and because there was some frost on the front lawn, I thought I could (sort-of) shuffle my feet through the grass and leave a mark of what feels natural in terms of a front-yard path.  See below for my winding, curved (potential) garden path.  It starts closer to the driveway, winds *behind* the Saucer Magnolia tree and terminates at the front service walk.

The footsteps-in-frost is a little hard-to-see, so here (below) is a slightly annotated version of that path:

That (I think) provides the 'line' that a path could/would follow, but as I mentioned above...a key piece of this is trying to carve off a 'phase 1' that could be a stand-alone planting of young plants which allows for the eventual creation of the path.  

When you combine the three components (front yard conifers + sidewalk garden starting point + eventual path), I can see something like this (landscape schematic) below - with the green-shaded areas being what is already planted, the maroon-shaded area being the 'phase 1' area and the bright-green lines being that 'eventual path':

That maroon-shaded part has some hard-surface in it, like this example below (originally posted here):

What else needs to be thought through? 

The berm and location.

The location and amount of both intermediate and final grass/lawn/turf.

The path materials - pavers vs gravel vs steppers.

The location and use of this upright blue conifer + Stachys perennials in a mixed bed.

The key conifers to create that 'hide and reveal' at the curves in the path.

The variety and locations of Japanese Maples and that Northern Lights Dawn Redwood.

The perennials that we start with down by the sidewalk.