North facing front garden ideas (new build)

[PensionPuzzle]

Hello lovely gardeners, I will have a north facing front garden to work with soon, it's only a small patch (drive is down the other side of the house) but I'd like it to end up being one of those gardens you walk past and say 'oh that looks nice' I think the builder will just plop cordylines in it judging by the other houses.

So what would you do, if it were yours? I've some hellebore seedlings on the go and plan to get a load of woodland-type bulbs but I'm all ears for any ideas. Don't mind foliage features, doesn't have to to be flowers. I know the soil will be absolutely awful as well as I can see now what they'll be sprinkling the bare minimum of topsoil onto so I know there'll be work to do there too.

Dry, poor soil and north facing plot, nothing like a challenge hey 😂 also considering just bark chipping it (it has a retaining wall) as we like that in part of our current garden. Maybe even not worth planting much til I've done the soil improvement but would still welcome ideas for what would do well in those conditions assuming I've already done a reasonable job of improving it?

You may have sun from the sides early in the morning and late in the evening in summer - any time before 7am and after 7pm, the sun will be on the north side of the E-W axis. There may also be sun around 1pm at the edge furthest from the house.

I have in my north facing front garden Euphorbia griffithii - bright orange bracts, royal fern; a pond with marsh marigolds; pernettyas with long last red and white berries (they need a male pollinator); Skimmia for its powerfully fragrant flowers, ssp “Reevesii” because it doesnt need a male pollinator for the berries that last all the year round; a red berried and a yellow berried holly; Magnolia stellata; “Red jade”, a weeping crab apple; a winter flowering honeysuckle; lily of the valley and alpine strawberries as ground cover, Rosa mundi with hundreds of pink and red striped flowers against the wall of the house; and lots of other things- it is very crowded!

Oh that's a fab help, thank you! Always good to hear of things that work in reality and I'm really encouraged that there plenty of choice, I thought I'd have quite a narrow field of similar looking things but your garden sounds very diverse!

I think I've seen Skimmia or something similar planted on the estate too so I'll cross my fingers for some of those in our plot. And definitely spend some time watching the sun going round (and looking for dry and wet zones) when we first move in. This is our first owned home so it's really exciting to be thinking at this level rather than just taking care of the landlord's garden choices and popping bedding plants around it.

We might have a bit that's east facing down the side (can't work out from the plans) and the main garden is south east facing with a brick wall facing east so lots of different areas to work with, plus keeping it child friendly too, it's all very exciting!

How about a dicksonia antartica (tree fern) for some real wow factor?

We are north facing in the front and have some flourishing David Austin climbing and standard roses. A wonderful big thalictrum. Lots of happy heucheras of different foliage colours. Our Annabelle hydrangeas are very happy too, and our big irises also romp away each spring. We also have window boxes with the usual array of bedding plants in them. If you can keep the slugs off them, hostas are very happy in shady north facing gardens and there are beautiful varieties of those. Ours are protected with some weird furry mats that are kryptonite to slugs. We also have fox gloves and hollyhocks. Have given up on lupins as we buy them each year and they never ever return 😩

The nicest shady bit of my garden is a little tree (pollarded cercis, it’s too big, get something else) underplanted with loads of miniature daffs and iris, hellebores and pulmonaria, epimidium and ferns. So in spring it’’s a riot of lovely colour and later as the tree greens up and makes shade it’s a range of lovely green textures underneath.

David Austin have some good roses for north facing aspects- Madame Alfred Carriere is a lovely scented climbing rose that works well on a north facing wall, you'll just need to put some sort of support on the wall for it to climb up. David Austin flag this rose as being very large, however I've found that growing it on a north facing wall seems to tame it a bit and mine has never got out of control. Roses can cope surprisingly well with poor soil, just be sure to feed them well each spring.

Foxgloves, snowdrops, bluebells, Japanese anemones, solomon's seal, hydrangeas, viburnum tinus and sarcococca will all cope well with these conditions. The viburnum and sarcocca have the bonus of both being evergreen and in flower when not much else is as well.

Really appreciate all these ideas, thank you, I'm making a list! I hadn't realised there are roses that would enjoy the conditions I think we'll have and it would be really nice to have a 'feature' plant. I've always wanted some sort of small blossoming tree, I've looked at cherries on dwarf rootstocks before now but looking at the plot in build phase I think it might be a bit ambitious to expect that to thrive, and might be too close to the house anyway.

Thank goodness the back garden is southeast facing, much more margin for error 😂

Would a camellia like this kind of shade or would it be too much, or maybe better to see if we do get a bit of sun at the ends of the day? I've had one in an east facing front garden before that seemed pretty happy with life but of course it got a good dose of sun in the morning then protected by the house the rest of the day.

Lots of woodland plants and varigated shrubs will do well in North facing but Camelias are picky about soil. I grow mine in tubs because they just don't thrive on London clay. If you are on ericacious soil you should be fine.

If its a builder plot I'd focus on improving the soil in the first year, see where the light falls and plan to plant more next year. In the mean time - annual plants will fill a bit of a gap and add some colour and are "disposable".

Yes I'm a bit gutted I've got loads of leaf mould, compost and rotted manure that I've curated over the last couple of years here and now I can't use it 😂 moving too far to even attempt to take it.

I do feel a bit sorry for annuals knowing that they'll just be fleeting friends in the garden, even though that's exactly what they need and want to do 😂 but definitely a good way to brighten things up and scratch the gardening itch while finding out how the whole plot will behave.

I've also got to suss out if we are in an area where any pots and baskets out the front might disappear...not that mine will necessarily be very desirable anyway!

This north facing front garden would catch my eye.

Ferns, vinca minor (be careful though as it can take over), a spring flowering clematis and a New Dawn climbing rose work well on my north facing walls which get hardly any sun at all. The vinca seems to flower year round.

We have the same as you, we are SSE at the back and NNW at the front.

Our front is paved but with lots of small flowerbeds (all round the edge and one “feature” in the middle) which gives it a formal ish look.

In the beds we have:
Viburnum lollipops
Pittosporum (compact varieties)
Various hydrangeas
Daphnes
Tiarella
Japanese anemone
Cyclamen (perennial type)
Ferns
Camellia
Portuguese laurel (hides the bins!)

All very happy, except possibly the Daphnes, they are ok but not flowering much. Our camellia is only a baby but there’s one next door that’s enormous and flowers abundantly so I’m pretty sure they can thrive here.

If you want a feature plant how about an Acer? I considered a cherry but wasn’t sure it would flower much in N facing. We have a Viburnum Snowball (or maybe Eskimo??) as a central feature plant but it’s a bit scruffy looking 😆

For your back garden - any flowerbed against your back garden wall, the one facing the back of the house, will be in shade (from the wall) so you’ll need shade loving plants there too. I made the mistake of thinking S facing garden = sun loving plants, but then realised that back bed really doesn’t get sun. You may have figured this out already!!

Our previous house had a north facing front garden. It had a 'lawn' when we first moved in which was 90% moss, so I turned it into a woodland garden. We had some established shrubs, a euonymus and another one, plus a cotoneaster. I trained a honeysuckle up a wall and in the front wall which was hollow, and planted bulbs and some other plants (lavender, rosemary and a penstemon) along with a silver birch, and then put bark down. We eventually had some tiny wild white wood anemones grow. My dds still say they loved our front garden.

This is a lovely shrub/small tree. I have one in a shady spot, pruned regularly to keep it small, but it truly is a plant that has year round interest, and the birds absolutely lurve the berries. Fab Autumn colour, blossoms in Spring, followed by the berries, very hardy, tolerant of any soil/aspect. What's not to like 😁

I should say its an Amelanchier......

An acer in a pot would be great for the first year, but very stealable...probably only if you can secure it somehow if you're not sure about security in the area.

It isn't the pots which tend to be the targets - its the plants. A well established camelia or acer in a tub is worth quite a bit. However its possible to fix pots in the ground or even bury them if the purpose is solely to provide the right soil.

Once an acer is established it will grow on most soils.

I'm so relieved theres all these options for the front, I really thought I'd have a very limited range to pick from so thank you all 🙂 I'm tempted to either go full woodland style as the little wall will retain the chippings, or maybe even try to make it an ericaceous (sp?) soil seeing as it's small and self contained. But I really like acers too! Can't wait to see the reality of it.

With the back it will mostly stay to lawn in the middle as we've small kids and a dog, but I'm hoping for planters with a drip rainwater system along the back of the house, so the hot bit, and then a nice sweeping border on the southwest facing bit and up along the top of the garden in the hope that lots of partial shade 'normal' plants will handle that. The kids' stuff-mud kitchen etc-will go along the south east facing boundary I think, as it's directly in the line of sight of the main room in the house/patio. Probably 🤷‍♀️

You could a more Japanese style woodland theme for your front garden. Some lovely ideas here www.edenproject.com/learn/eden-at-home/how-to-make-a-japanese-garden

Before you spend time trying to create a special kind of soil, have a wander round the local area and see what plants thrive. You may be surprised - for example camellias do well round me even though we are London clay in theory!

For your SE facing boundary I would suggest putting in some shade tolerant climbers and maybe some small evergreen shrubs so that you’re not just looking at the mud kitchen when you look out… and for when the dc are older and the mud kitchen is gone. We have trachelospermum and roses on our SE boundary wall, they don’t flower as much as in sun but better than nothing! They’ll do better once they reach the top of the fence and get more sun. We also have Sarcococca there but not sure if the berries are toxic (our kids are older) and Hebe topiaria.

That's a good shout @minipie next time we visit site I'll take the dog for a search round to the oldest part of the estate and see what looks well, although there's a lot of plastic greenery and also mares tail (😬) judging by the local Facebook group. I'm sure there's some gems tucked away too though!

If it's small I'd go with a simple colour scheme - say ferns and white flowers. They could be anenome, fox gloves, lily of the valley.

I have this one: www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/symphoricarpos--doorenbosii-magic-berry/classid.2000037189/

It is growing very well on a north facing plot that has very poor soil and almost no direct sunlight. Managed to get some flowers too (first plant on that side that has flowers!) so hopefully will be nice.

Has anyone mentioned hostas? Most things do well in my north facing front garden, they grow a bit slower but look good for longer. I have pots of ferns and a few annuals to add colour but the hostas are the stars of the show. If you send away to a specialist nursery there are numerous interesting varieties ( I added blue mouse ears and hands up to my group this year) The new less toxic slug pellets have worked well this year, the expensive wool things I bought last year were rubbish. They come up every year, look great and if you divide them when they get pot bound you get free new ones.