I think you’ll agree that we don’t get to see enough non-beautiful but highly important things on the Internet to help inform our design decisions. I didn’t realize how important having evergreens would be until we spent a few winters here. In winter it’s very brown, wet and dark, and if you only have perennials (the most attractive flowers, beautiful wild flowers, and generally more my vibe), winter seems even more miserable. so when dennis’s 7 dees The sports courts were reconfigured and so a bunch of landscaping was added last year, a big part of the brief was “something green, something beautiful, all year round”. I was willing to sacrifice and lose some of my favorite varieties for the sake of year-round interest. Not necessarily like pine trees and boxwoods everywhere, but enough plants to give us pleasant visual interest, not just mown grass or lamb’s ears all winter long. They agreed, and I trusted them, but it wasn’t until January that I could really see what it would look like, and boy, was I relieved to see that it was actually really pretty. Now, is this a beautiful photo tour like summer? No. And we didn’t style it at all (or even move our stupid umbrella stand). But I hope it can help you make some decisions, or at least realize that you’re not the only person with a perhaps less beautiful yard during the darker months.
Summer 2025:
Our first summer with the recent updates was amazing, and we’re even more excited about summer #2. There were a lot of things I never thought I’d like so much (like these incredible hydrangeas). But with so many flowering shrubs, what will we see in February?
Here we are today, Winter 2026:
Despite lots of bare bushes and trees, I find it so green that I feel very happy. I know it’s hard to explain that beautiful southern light, but when you look outside, it still looks full. It should be noted that Dennis 7Dz also maintains our yard, which is not sponsored or subsidized, but obviously, having the same company that designed and installed the plants and maintains them is a pretty plus. They’re super invested in keeping it healthy, and because they know each plant and what the vision should look like, I don’t even have to talk to them about anything.
Summer 2025:
Definitely, in the summer it has a real park vibe. I am so excited for this summer.
Winter 2026:
Still really beautiful in winter. Things are obviously not in bloom and cut out, but nevertheless, there is still enough green, variations in texture, depth and even height to delight your eyes 🙂
Summer 2025:
Winter 2026:
shout out to Those Folding Adirondack Chairs Which are available year-round (and were very affordable). I can’t say they’ll last 10 years because we don’t store them like we should, but leaving them outside sounds really tempting (and they’re lightweight and fold up, so they’re easy to move when we mow in the winter, which isn’t often).
Summer 2025:
The perennial plants around the house actually disappear in the summer, but supposedly, by year 4, they become quite huge and possibly overcrowded. However, I still really love them. But its view is different in winter:
Winter 2026:
So there’s actually very little packed around the house, which should frustrate me, but our view is generally looking out from the house, less looking out the back of the courtyard. If I could snap my fingers, I’d plant a few more evergreens around the house (like near the sunroom), but it’s so pretty in the summer and we have other areas we want to spend our budget on, so that’s good enough.
Summer 2025:
Winter 2026:
I’m sure if we didn’t get help maintaining it, it would be an absolute mess regardless of the plantation. But I really like how it looks, there’s a lot of variety, and enough plants that flower in winter.
Summer 2025:
When we built the area around the pool three years ago, I asked Kelly for a planting plan that would show off the first summer (since we needed to reveal our sock pool, we needed immediate beauty), and I love these wild flowers (I forget what they’re called). But we always knew that by year 3/4, they would be extremely long and potentially dirty (which they were last summer). It looks dreamy in this shot, but compared to the rest of the yard, it feels like a different environment now. And yet in winter, they are heavily cut.
Winter 2026:
Now it looks perfectly fine, but in person, it’s mostly just brown. So I’m going to pull out some of the unruly tall grasses and plant more manageable plants (ideally some plants that are evergreen). Honestly, I just want what Eric has put everywhere in the new yard. Can someone please edit those umbrella stands? Oh dear. I originally asked Caitlin to go out and take handheld shots to show you the reality of it.
Here you can really see the differences between the seasons:
One of the winter flowering plants I am most pleased with is thistle (Laurestinus). We have a lot of hellebores, which are honestly hard to see in photos, but they are still quite showy (and great for winter flower arrangements). I don’t even remember what they look like in the summer, but I’ll take them for winter blooms.
Summer vs Winter:
Summer 2025:
Winter 2026:
The biggest lesson I’ve learned (from so many people) is to forget what you “like” or think is “good” and listen to the experts. I mean, sure, you want the look/feel/vibe/style that represents you and works with your home’s design (our design is casual, wild, natural, colorful, not fussy, not formal, etc.), but then again experts say it will thrive in your space. Even asking the salesperson at the nursery (if you’re in Portland, I’m really impressed by this dennis’s 7 dees). If you have a gardener or a landscaper, it doesn’t matter what style you work with; Ask them and trust them. I had to learn it the hard way with things like tiling or even paint, thinking I knew my design and aesthetics and needed to make decisions. But all of you, they are naturally experts because it’s everything. They. to do.
Another lesson. Kelly (our original landscape designer, who I loved so much studio campo(who now lives mostly in Colorado) told us early on that landscape is a living design that evolves greatly. You cannot guarantee how plants will grow or thrive for four seasons. In that sense it is not like furniture. Even experts may realize, hmm, it’s not working after a year and needs to be improved. For example, our lamb’s ear looks great in the summer, but oh my god, it looks like extra garbage in the winter (worse than all our neighbors). So we will also make some changes in them…
UPDATE: New seating areas coming soon
Remember when I wrote that big love letter on the picnic table? I still love them (and look how good they look in our patio – so simple, natural and graphic). But last summer, when we held school parties with neighbors who didn’t know each other well, no one sat at them. I think they felt like there was a commitment to get involved, and then you’re locked in. People stood around them and mingled, but no one sat down, and I was so upset that people were not relaxing. So we brought our loveseats and chairs down from the back porch, and then people plopped down. So this spring I want to move the two picnic sets along the paddock fence line (for the kids) and create some more comfortable seating groups for the adults. I’m thinking of a fire pit area (we used ours). solo stove a lot of nights last summer) and a lounge set – like two love seats or a small sofa + 2 chairs. Now designing this is proving to be quite challenging because I don’t want it to be all mature, mature, I really don’t want it to look stuffy and busy. I also love the wood here and I don’t want too much color since green is the main color, but I also don’t want it to be boring!! Oh, and finally, yes, I’d like to be able to at least drop the frames, ideally not cover them. So getting something high-quality that’s really weather resistant is important (good luck).
This year, I want to be better about shooting the yard in all four seasons – it changes a lot, and Eric, our designer dennis’s 7 deesDid a great job selecting plants that thrive year round. This is difficult to organize because the weather is unpredictable here, and shooting in the yard is only appropriate at certain times of the day. I want to make some changes near the covered walkway and kitchen door area (which is basically our front door), so stay tuned on that. But I think they’ll mostly take what’s working here and plant the same varieties because we know they work and look great here.
*by photos Keltin Green
