I was so surprised at how cute our house looked in her plans that I almost second guessed our decision to move! I read a lot about using fast growing evergreen trees in budget friendly designs because of their coloring and price, but I wasn't sure if they would work in our tropical climate. She proved me wrong though because the sculpted trees flanking our entrance path are definitely my favorite parts of the design.

What a difference something as seemingly simple as a few evergreen shrubs can make on a home! You probably wouldn't be able to tell from these photos, but our property looked pretty darn bare before we decided to plant a bunch of dwarf evergreen shrubs in both our front and our back yards. I am just so incredibly pleased with how the whole thing turned out that I had to jump on here and share some of our latest photos with the world! Without a doubt, our front yard landscaping ideas were the ones that needed the most work because, despite the charming architecture that we have, I felt that the home simply did not look inviting. Turns out that all we needed were some cheerful touches of bright green shrubs planted along the foundation of our home. We spent just under $1000 on the new bushes and I think that it was money well spent.

When it comes to designing the front of the home, I always like to try to incorporate some type of evergreen shrubs in order to provide greenery at a low to mid height all year round. The key to any "professional looking" landscape design like you see in these photos is achieving visual interest at multiple heights (low to the ground, at eye level, and high up) so that they space feels balanced. Of course evergreen trees provide nice color in your taller zones, but you don't want to draw attention to the brown lawn or mulch in colder seasons. For this house, we planted mid-sized trees at the corners of the home and then some nice fast growing evergreen shrubs around the foundation of the home and leading up the path to the entrance. The only thing left to do to balance the space is bring in some contrasting color through flowers.

It continues to amaze me how versatile evergreen shrubs are both in size, shape, coloring and even the different applications you can you them in. In this single property, the landscape architect utilized them in so many facets of the design from privacy shrubs along the fence line, to lovely accents at the foundation to break up the stucco exterior, and even in the garden to provide some year-round color. Even better, despite their elegant look, I really find that they are not as expensive as you would think to purchase and maintain. Just about any nursery or home improvement store sells evergreen shrubs and usually for a pretty good price. I definitely encourage anybody looking for some simple yet beautiful backyard ideas to check these varieties out and see if there is a place for them in your home.

As a landscape architect my friends and family are always asking about what types of plants I suggest for their properties. My typical answer is when in doubt, go for evergreen shrubs because they are a safe choice as far as color palette and they are super hardy. You really want to create a good balance of colors in your landscaping that will last throughout the year. Obviously most of your landscaping shrubs will die off in the winter, but if you have a few evergreen varieties interspersed throughout the rest, you will still retain some pops of green color even when the growing season ends. I always recommend researching pictures of shrubs before you buy anything, that way you can see the size, shape, color palette of the mature variety before you commit to the younger one at the store.

I come from a long line of family members with green thumbs, but it seemed to skip a generation with me because the only thing that I can seem to get to thrive are evergreen shrubs. Now I know that this is not a challenging feat because they can survive the harsh winter and still look pretty and green for Pete's sake. However, I took it an ran with it and filled our entire front yard with shrubs and bushes that fell in this family. I was careful to pick varieties in different sizes, shapes, and coloring so that there would be some variation in design. I mean I didn't want the whole place to look like one giant blob of green after all. Now that I have posted pictures of our front yard redo (let me know what you guys think!), I am planning to plant some fast growing evergreen shrubs for privacy all along our back fence line. Stay tuned for that!