Forays into the front yard
By
Amy McDowell
The 100-foot tall honeylocust in my in-laws’
front yard was the tallest tree in their neighborhood. It had a trunk nearly 4
feet wide. It stood on the corner of their front yard and shaded their
two-bedroom cottage for all of the 15 years they had lived there. Leafing out
golden yellow in spring, it filled the sky with a light green canopy of dappled
shade during the summer and showered the ground in the fall as tiny golden
leaflets fluttered down like confetti. A wren house mounted on the side hosted
a dainty couple and a new brood of hatchlings each season.
Then an October ice storm eight years ago brought
the honeylocust crashing down in a shattered wreck of jagged wood and leaf
litter.
Although devastated, my in-laws took little
time to grieve. Ever anxious to keep a tidy yard, they sprang into action. They
bagged leaves and twigs and piled branches on the curb for city yard waste
pickup, hired one company to drop and haul off the decapitated trunk that had
been left standing, and hired another company to grind out the stump.
While I was still mourning the loss of the
tree, my mother-in-law was brushing the sawdust from her gloves and envisioning
something new for her front yard. “I’d like to put in a new bed,” she said.
“Something with a lot of color.” And off she went to the garden center. She
returned with a tree, a half a dozen shrubs, some annuals, a concrete birdbath
and a new wren house.
We hauled in three granite boulders and
edged the two lower sides of the bed with stone pavers. My in-laws planted the
‘Autumn Sunset’ maple first, about five feet from where the honeylocust had
stood. My mother-in-law hung the birdhouse on a high branch with the hope that
her annual visitors would return to the strange new surroundings. Groupings of
red pygmy barberries and golden privet fill the bed with color, and clusters of
bright red annuals sing along the sidewalk. The wrens did return, and the
birdbath drew crowds. My mother-in-law so enjoyed the activity through her
kitchen window that she added a bird feeder.
Before their front yard venture, their
neighborhood had nothing but garnish-around-the-turkey, home-hugging landscapes
and driveway-to-driveway turf. My trendsetter in-laws were the first to break
ground with an island bed in the front yard, but by the following spring, many
neighbors were following suit and planting new front yard beds.
With this one bed, my in-laws added curb
appeal, reduced their mowing and maintenance, attracted wildlife and began a
new landscaping movement in their neighborhood. The loss of their immense shade
tree ended up turning into something wonderful. “Yeah, it was pretty amazing,”
says my mother-in-law.
Amy McDowell is an Iowa
Certified Nursery Professional. She has a degree in horticulture and has worked
in the field for ten years. She lives and gardens in Polk County.
