Question: I’d like to do a “foundation planting” for our house. Where do I start?

Answer: That’s an old concept of landscape design, stemming back to an era when houses were high off the ground, usually on craggy leveling blocks or old bois d’arc stumps. We had to do something to conceal all those ugly sights, and those tall “foundation plantings” were our answer. Today, though, modern homes are more compact and lower to the ground, and our foundations aren’t all that unsightly. Of course, if you’re relandscaping an heirloom structure from decades ago, the old concept of straight lines of tall evergreen shrubs might still be in keeping.