Here is what we were working with: a patchy, weedy front lawn that had seen better days. Overgrown grass, no structure, no purpose. A lot of front yards end up in exactly this state, and most homeowners are not sure what to do next.
This homeowner wanted something genuinely different rather than simply tidier. So we drew a naturalistic planting plan built around mostly native species, a dry stream that works with the boulders already on the property, and enough variety to give the space real character. The design phase matters enormously on a project like this. Get it wrong and it reads as a mess of random plants. Get it right and it looks like it was always supposed to be there.
We brought in a skid steer to strip the old lawn and prepare the soil, which gave us a fresh start to work from. From there we laid out the dry stream using rounded river rock and positioned the existing boulders deliberately, placed to guide the eye and anchor the design rather than simply dropped where they landed.
Then the planting: native grasses, flowering perennials and shrubs, going in one at a time, spaced to fill out over the coming seasons and layered for texture and height.
