Even the most beautiful mid-century yard can disappear into the night, so I brought mid-century landscape mastermind, Jim Drzewiecki back to talk about how to light up your landscape and choose plants that keep your outdoor space stunning year-round.
Lighting Your Mid-Century Yard
One of the cornerstones of mid-century design is a seamless flow between indoor and outdoor living. That’s true for a mid-century yard as well. The clean lines, expansive windows, and thoughtful design invite the outdoors in. So how do you create outdoor spaces that you want to invite in?
The right lighting can highlight your home’s best features and create inviting outdoor areas.
Highlight the House
You can use outdoor lighting to highlight key architectural elements of your home. If you have a any striking features—a flat roofline, a wall of glass, or some stunning brickwork—showcase them. Jim is a big fan of using low-voltage LED lighting for this. Not only are LEDs energy-efficient, but they also give you the flexibility to adjust brightness and even color, so you can really play with the mood you’re creating.
Build in layers
Creating a layered lighting scheme is essential for a dynamic and inviting outdoor space. Jim thinks about lighting in layers. First, light up the house itself. Then move on to any hardscape elements like patios and walkways. Finally, focus on the landscape.
Choose the right type of light
In the landscape, choose the right light for each application. Uplights accentuate trees or architectural features, downlights to create a cozy ambiance under a pergola or in a seating area, and path lights guide you safely through the mid-century yard.
In true mid-century modern style, simplicity is key. It’s easy to overdo it with lighting. Jim counsels restraint. A few carefully placed lights can be far more effective than a flood of brightness. The goal is to enhance the natural beauty of your space, not overwhelm it. Remember, less is more!
Lighting can completely transform your yard at night, but the right plants will keep your landscape looking gorgeous all year long day or night. Since we’re about blurring the lines between indoors and out, your plant choices should reflect that seamless connection with year-round color.
Choosing plants for a mid-century yard
In the Midwest and most areas of the U.S., evergreens are an absolute must in your landscape. They provide structure and visual interest, even when the weather turns cold and other plants lose their leaves.
In colder climates, Jim recommends starting with “woody” plants like trees and shrubs that keep their shape throughout the year. Evergreens create a backbone for your landscape, offering privacy and a sense of continuity no matter the season.
And you can choose species that complement the clean lines and minimalist vibe of your home. Jim loves incorporating plants with simple, geometric shapes into his designs. Ornamental grasses, boxwoods, and yuccas are all fantastic options that align the mid-century yard with the architecture.
Focusing on both lighting and plant selection can create a mid-century yard that feels cohesive, inviting, and timeless.
In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:
- Where to stand when designing your landscape. (Hint – it’s not outside!)
- Why the quintessential evergreen is still the right choice for your mid-century yard.
- How layers in the landscape help highlight what’s great about your house.
Listen Now On
Resources for your mid-century yard
- Check out Jim’s fav landscape lighting brands – FX Luminaire and Volt.
- And get into the zone when choosing your plants! Find the right plants for your landscape using the Missouri Botanical Garden database.
- Get ready to remodel with my free Masterclass, “How to Plan an MCM Remodel to Fit Your Life(…and Budget)” available on demand!
- Get the essential elements of my master plan process in my new mini-course, Master Plan in a Month.
- Want us to master plan for you? Find out all the details with my mini-class, Three Secrets of a Regret-Proof Mid Mod Remodel.
And you can always…
- Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Della Hansmann
Where do you turn when you’re looking for some great design ideas for your yard to take mid-century yard design from the house all the way out to the property boundaries? Well, you call Jim Drzewiecki of ginkgo leaf studio. That’s what I do anyway.
Della Hansmann
So today, for your mid-century yard delectation, here’s the second half of my recent conversation with Jim, where we’re getting into all the fun you can have with lighting a mid-century landscape design. Spoiler alert, it’s way less expensive and scary and way more diy-able and customizable than I had known. He’s going to share his favorite systems and products.
Della Hansmann
Then after that, we’re going to pivot to even more DIY friendly things, how to make great choices for your own yard, including how to choose the right plants for your home, your yard and your climate.
Della Hansmann
So grab a notepad and get ready to be inspired. Hey there. Welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is the show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host, Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast, and you’re listening to Episode 1806.
Della Hansmann
Now, before we get into the weeds on landscaping. Now, that metaphor doesn’t work before we get into the native plantings, there we go. I just wanted to mention that it’s now the middle of August. I know, I know the summer is just melting away into humidity around here, but it is actually a great time to think about the future, because remodel projects that are going to break ground next January and beyond are being planned right now.
Della Hansmann
So if you’ve been listening along all summer to the fun mid-century mastermind chats and sort of hazily telling yourself you’ll put this all to use in next year’s remodel, well now is actually the right time to jump into action. So getting through the Master Plan process is actually one of the most efficient ways to progress your home improvement plans from wish list to clearly defined plans ready for contractor pricing.
Della Hansmann
But it still takes a few months, even when we collapse it with all of the efficiency that bringing in a design team and the Master Plan process can give here at mid mod Midwest, we always seem to get backed up in our calendar every fall. Something about the start of the year and the turn of the seasons has people calling to get the ball rolling soon. So here’s your reminder to get in ahead of the crowd.
Della Hansmann
Get in touch right now. You can get started on your master plan by setting up a time for a chat that’s just you and me getting your questions answered. You don’t need to know too much about what you want to do. Finally, that’s what we’ll figure out.
Della Hansmann
If you’re thinking about making changes to your mid-century home next year, start by checking out mid mod midwest.com/services, to find out more about how to work with us, starting right now.
Della Hansmann
All right, one more order of business before Jim and I get into it, we are name dropping some resources this week. Jim’s favorite brand of yard lighting, for example, and also the best search engine for native plantings.
Della Hansmann
So if you want to get into those details of things, you want to check out the show notes page. It’s got links for you a transcript of all our conversation with Jim’s great tips and some pretty pictures of his past projects. Go check out all of that at midmod-midwest.com/1806.
Della Hansmann
Landscape lighting for a mid-century yard. What should you know? So let’s get into how much, how and when to light a mid-century yard.
Jim Drzewiecki
It’s a great question, because lighting can add so much to a landscape, it extends your enjoyment of it, because now the sun goes down and everything turns dark. Highlighting a mid-century yard and house with lighting is probably where I would start, versus a typical landscape lighting project actually might highlight the plants more interestingly enough, so I would look at the architectural elements on the house, the cool porch support.
Jim Drzewiecki
If the house does have interesting siding or a type of brick or stone on the surface, there’s a way to put an up light at the very base of the house, and you get really interesting shadow lines because the surface its lighting gets highlighted, and then we can drift more out into the actual landscape, and light paved areas as Wayfinding. We can up light trees and other elements in the landscape. Great.
Della Hansmann
Well, you know, I really didn’t expect you to start with the house, but that makes a lot of sense. When you’re thinking about adding light to a house, how much of an endeavor is it to get into adding exterior lighting? Is this something that can be done? Is it DIY able, or does it always require you’re getting an electrician, you’re trenching and you’re sort of making major changes to the wiring system in and out of house.
Jim Drzewiecki
That’s a great question. Della most landscape lighting today is what we call low voltage. It is not the electrocute yourself level of electricity that’s in a normal outlet. Interestingly, the original a lot. Of the original old landscape lighting was line voltage.
Jim Drzewiecki
So if someone had those big mushroom lights down their driveway, those had underground wiring running to them, and they went on with a switch inside the house, just like the lamp post. Yeah, Nightscaping was the big original brand out there. And I have gone through a lot of mid-century homes here in the Midwest and in the Milwaukee area, specifically, where it is actually low voltage from the 50s and 60s, and it’s all controllable from in the house, but the technology, of course, wasn’t as good back then, and wires fail and fixtures fail.
Jim Drzewiecki
So nowadays, the right way to do it, we’ve gone completely away from halogen bulbs, which were dangerously hot, to LEDs. The LEDs are a nice warm temperature for lighting. They’re yellowish. They’re not the creepy bluish white of the old fashioned LEDs when those first came out. No, they’ve gotten so much better, so much better. And with it being led and low voltage, the combo of that means you’re using a lot less electricity than you would have used with either line voltage lighting or the old halogen bulbs.
Della Hansmann
So when you think about lighting, are you thinking about a single use? It gets dark out, the lights come on, they last a certain amount of time. Or do you work with people who want to have sort of different lighting scenarios for when they’re not like when they’re out of town, away from home, when they’re away from home, or when they’re in the house, or when they’re in the front yard, or when they’re outside. Sort of how use specific do you tend to get, or do you ever get with your lighting design?
Jim Drzewiecki
Well, most landscape lighting schemes are either on or off. And that’s, that’s the base level. It’s the least expensive, naturally, the professional grade ones that we use have a transformer box that the wires all come out from. That’s, that’s the box that knocks the voltage down point of contact the house goes but inside that box is a photo eye, so the lights automatically go on at dusk. There’s also an astronomical timer inside that the client, the homeowner, can set.
Jim Drzewiecki
So that might mean the lights go off at 10 o’clock because that’s when they go to bed. They might want them on for a few hours past bedtime. Some people even have their lights stay on till two in the morning because they treat the lighting as security lighting. Oh, okay. But then beyond that, the new systems. We recommend this FX Luminaire brand, they have two other tiers of lighting. The middle tier is called zone dimming, and that means you can zone your lights.
Jim Drzewiecki
So if you wanted only your paved areas lit, that would be one zone, and your if you wanted your trees lit, that could be a second zone, and then path lighting could be a, you know, a third zone, or a different way of lighting. Your plants could be a third zone that way. I call it the weeknight versus weekend lighting. The weeknight when you’re just there at home, you might light only certain parts of your landscape. If you’re having a party on a Saturday night, you might light up everything.
Della Hansmann
So you are thinking about sort of, what’s the the outdoor dining situation versus everybody’s in the house, but you just want to look out and see that the mid-century yard that you’ve worked hard to create doesn’t disappear into darkness. When you were thinking about big scenario. You’re throwing a backyard party. Where might you put light to highlight features other than the house, which I love, highlight the house. What else might you throw light on? Literally.
Jim Drzewiecki
Certainly for a patio space, where, and I’ll use a rectangle as an example, we’re putting lights at the corners, because these are not the plastic solar Malibu lights that people sometimes buy. They do not need to be five feet apart in order to cast enough light. A good outdoor light is going to cast a decent halo of light, my rule of thumb can be 15 or 20 feet apart, believe it or not.
Della Hansmann
Oh, wow. Okay.
Jim Drzewiecki
And sometimes, when we present a design, a client will say, Well, that doesn’t look like enough lighting. And I always say, Well, let’s start with this level of this amount of light and live with it for. Maybe even a season. And if you really then decide it’s not enough light, low voltage lighting systems are very easy to add on to.
Della Hansmann
Because you can kind of clip right onto the wire and add more lights.
Jim Drzewiecki
High end melta water protection on that cut wire, and you’re good to go.
Della Hansmann
Well, that’s nice to have that ability to turn it up. Because I feel like over lighting is a problem. I push back against inside houses too. And honestly, the last thing you want is for your comfortable outdoor evening space to be lit up like the surface of the sun.
Jim Drzewiecki
That, or I call it resort lighting, where you feel like you’re at the Holiday Inn or the, you know, the Hilton. That was the most intriguing thing to me about the zone dimming is the dimming part. I saw a photo of a house lit at 100% and then at 70 and quite honestly, the 70% level was much more attractive.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, it can feel it makes things feel cheap to be too brightly lit, right? It just resort lighting is such a good yeah, I totally agree. And I, I, uh, I really think the same thing can happen on the inside. Mid-century yard s and houses are under lit as a rule.
Della Hansmann
They just aren’t wired to have a whole lot of extra lights per room, because people like to customize with floor lamps and table lamps and pendants. But I think a lot of remodels err on the side of going too far in the other direction. And you often see a mid-century house remodeled with just like a ceiling full of can lights, right? And there’s not that many scenarios when you really ever need that and when they’re all on at once again, it has that sort of cheapening effect. Yep. Interesting. Not to take this too far off topic, but do you think about holiday lighting when you’re thinking about the lighting design for a landscape?
Jim Drzewiecki
Well, that’s interesting that you brought that up because the third tier of this price point thing with the FX Luminaire brand. I’m not trying to sound like a commercial here, but
Della Hansmann
You like it. That’s okay. That’s an endorsement.
Jim Drzewiecki
Those lights at the third level can have control from your phone via an app. You can have a color wheel literally on your phone, and you point to a spot on that color wheel, and each individual light can be a different color.
Della Hansmann
Let’s see. You could set up a red, green array if you wanted,
Jim Drzewiecki
or red, white and blue for the Fourth of July barbecue.
Della Hansmann
Maybe I love it. That’s great.
Jim Drzewiecki
It almost doubles the cost of the system so…
Della Hansmann
Well. So, you got to weigh it out. Do you want your sort of like vintage c9 True Tone bulbs separate from your built on landscaping system. Or do you want a system that’s always set to go and you can just go colorful on it?
Jim Drzewiecki
I do recall dragging the very hot spotlights out into my parents front yard at Christmas time to light the trees, and they get covered in snow and they, you know, it’s a big hassle. Believe it or not, I have to see nine true tones on my 71 ranch. So I’m still a fan of that look. But up-lighting trees with red and green built in, I think that’s a really convincing argument. You know, Halloween, St Patrick’s Day, you know, you almost, you name it, you can do a different color scheme with that, that upper level of light.
Della Hansmann
That’s really a lot of fun. Um, all right, I feel like we could go super deep on this. But what I actually wanted to ask next was, what do you think about and how does this system work with the lights, the way they look when they’re off? Do you try to get your landscaping lights to be invisible?
Della Hansmann
All you’re seeing is the light, or do you choose and recommend any specific shape, style, glass, opacity of light to work well with a mid-century house? And I know, of course, part of the answer is look to the house and see what’s going on there. But any other rules of thumb around the look of lighting?
Jim Drzewiecki
Well, you can’t really avoid seeing a path light because they’re there at their key locations. I tend to, and this is a mid-century yard kind of way of thinking. I tend to go for a simple right. I don’t want attention necessarily drawn to what the fixture looks like.
Jim Drzewiecki
Some of the lighting companies out there have a cast frog holding an umbrella, and that’s where the light is coming from. I’ve seen little mini lighthouses, like for ships, but for path lights around a patio. I lean towards very simple and basic copper finish because it will weather to a nice brown tone and kind of disappear. Yeah. And up lights are typically buried within the landscape, so we almost really don’t care what they look like.
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, the FX brand does have two of the classic pagoda lights that the Nightscaping brand had years ago. So you can do that retro look nice. And then they came out recently with three black aluminum fixtures that are definitely more modern. They’re very angular, very square, tubed light.
Della Hansmann
It’s just sort of minimalist, very minimalist. Good, nice. So when we think about when I’m sketching the exterior of a mid-century home, or when Evan, our wonderful design assistant, is we’re often thinking about the more visible light elements that you see, even when they’re off, pull light out in the front sconce lights on the house, and thinking about shapes that are going to fit mid-century, the bow tie, the globe, sometimes something A little bit more square or can shaped.
Della Hansmann
But I think maybe it sounds like more often the landscaping lighting you’re choosing is trying to be invisible and focus light on plants or light on features, rather than be a feature in itself. I think the rule of thumb, yeah, interesting. Okay. What other lighting advice before we wrap it up?
Jim Drzewiecki
Well, low voltage lighting is a little more DIY, because it’s safe to work with. You’re not going to electrocute yourself. The transformer, literally just plugs into an outlet. So that’s your starting point. You need an outdoor outlet somewhere on the house.
Della Hansmann
And that’s it, though, yeah,
Jim Drzewiecki
that’s it. Ideally, GFI, ideally, in a perfect world, it’s its own circuit, so that if a wire got cut in the landscape lighting now your dishwasher doesn’t work, or your garage door doesn’t open because they happen to be on the same circuit.
Della Hansmann
For anyone who has their original mid-century yard and house wiring, well, you might have a fuse box that needs updating, but even if you’ve got an electric panel, you may find that weird things are connected, like the kitchen lights and the garage door and sometimes the outdoor outlet. So maybe instead installing a circuit, getting electrician to put that in for you is good step one, even if you’re going to DIY, yeah,
Jim Drzewiecki
but then after that, the wires only need to be six inches below grade. So there’s no trenching or excavating involved. If you’re someone my age who had stereo speakers when they were a teenager. Low voltage wiring is basically like speaker wire. You can cut it, you can splice it, and it just works. So I think it’s a very DIY thing.
Jim Drzewiecki
There’s the volt brand out there. I think that is actually geared towards maybe more homeowner installations. A lot of these lighting systems now work with the home control system, so that it’s tied into everything that you’re controlling within the house, it can be also controlling outside the house.
Della Hansmann
Fantastic. Well, hopefully we’ve inspired a couple of people to get a little bit DIY friendly this summer, and now I want to know more about this, because I’ve had a lot of fun customizing the lengths of my Christmas lights and chopping them adding new plugs. So now this feels like another I’m not I’m not going to go that far down the electrician pathway, but this feels like a doable thing, and maybe to some of the people who are watching right now as well. So fantastic. Let’s all get excited about lighting this summer for our outdoor spaces.
Jim Drzewiecki
For sure.
Della Hansmann
Let’s talk about choosing the plants for a mid-century yard. So plants for a mid-century yard, or any yard design, what makes a difference? Where do you start? When you’re thinking about choosing the right plants for a mid-century yard?
Jim Drzewiecki
We look at the key plants as the starting point, the bones of the design. That means we start with what we call woody plants, trees, deciduous shrubs and, of course, evergreens. When we say they’re woody, that means they lose their leaves, likely if they’re deciduous and the structure of the plant is still there.
Jim Drzewiecki
Perennials and annuals are herbaceous. They’re soft tissue, and when they are done at the end of the summer, they dry up. Most remain standing in some shape or form, but they lose their leaves and they kind of disappear. So we want to start a landscape design with the key plants, the structural plants that are going to be there year round.
Della Hansmann
Got it that makes sense. So when you’re picking those, what leans into a good choice are there, are there factors you’d think about when you go for a tree of deciduous tree versus an evergreen?
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, I think evergreens need to be. Mixed into a landscape at an appropriate ratio, especially in the Midwest, because we can have a dreadfully long winter here and without the evergreens, your landscape can look very, you know, depressing and dead, arguably so.
Della Hansmann
Or much more open to your potentially to your neighbor’s yards, right?
Jim Drzewiecki
I mean, it will be wide open because now you don’t have the privacy screening you thought you had in your backyard. The front yard may just look like this brown, flat plane of nothing. So Evergreens are key. Now I mentioned that even though evergreens were arguably almost the only thing planted around a lot of mid-century yard and house areas back in the day.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, that’s what I find when I visit a client’s Time Capsule house is, it’s, its basically just lawn, and evergreens usually overgrown.
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, the ewes that have been trimmed, you know, into flat boxes, yeah, the big hairy junipers that have outgrown the space. Those are the classics. We tend to lean more towards lower junipers if we use junipers, pyramidal ones to accent maybe the edges of the house. But we’re big fans of boxwoods. They are not needled evergreens. They actually have round leaves, but they stay green year round.
Della Hansmann
Oh, all right, so that’s your compromise. It doesn’t look like a Christmas tree, but it’s going to be there even in the winter.
Jim Drzewiecki
But then we also focus on dwarf evergreens, like bird’s nest spruce, a mugle pine, and those tend to have a little bit of an Asian flavor to them. And I always think Asian style fits well with just about any mid-century yard.
Jim Drzewiecki
Well, this is where I say, don’t just focus on, you know, a lot of homeowners will say, Well, I really want a crab apple. And by the way, the crab apple is the classic mid-century ornamental tree, at least in the Midwest, that’s what everyone had at least one in their front yard, or maybe a magnolia. But don’t focus on what. Don’t even focus on whether that’s a crab apple or a magnolia. Think about where is an appropriate place for a tree. Do you need a focal point?
Della Hansmann
Yeah, there’s the crossover. Even though he denied it, Frank Lloyd Wright was so influenced by his travels in Japan, and so all of his buildings feel vaguely more or less Asian. And then you can kind of bring that out into the yard, and it makes sense Midwest. I think it always does. We’re always standing in his shadow. Marvelous. So when you’ve knocked off where you want to put in your green all year round things, where do you think about a deciduous tree being a good idea?
Della Hansmann
Okay,
Jim Drzewiecki
Do you need a tree to help hide the ugly telephone pole in the corner of your yard? Of course, when picking a tree near power lines, you have to think about not planting a huge oak or maple, something smaller scaled. But it really comes down to finding the right spot for it, determining how much spaces are going to be around that tree. And then that might help you to decide if I’m going to ornamental tree, because it’s a smaller space, full blown hardwood, maple, oak, etc., because I have a bigger open lawn.
Della Hansmann
Yeah. Yeah, when you think about an ornamental tree, this really ties into something I talk about all the time, being the asymmetry of A mid-century house and a really modest ranch might not have as much dramatic asymmetry as we might want, but you could add that by if you’ve got more of an interesting part of the house, the entry, the garage on one side, putting a tall focal point tree, or a house height focal point tree on the other side of the house, that can give you that off balance, balance that you’re looking for there.
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah, it’s visual balance, even though it’s asymmetrical. And we’ve talked before that. I love asymmetry, but to do asymmetry well usually requires the skill of a designer.
Della Hansmann
It’s tricky, it’s yeah, it’s a hard line to hit, but it often just requires, well, when I’m thinking about drawing, it requires testing and trying it a bunch of times. When you’re planting, you kind of want to know what you’re doing before you’ve done it. You don’t want to sketch a plant, not a tree. Anyway.
Jim Drzewiecki
I’m going to say I’m guilty of this myself, so I’m not criticizing anyone that’s done this, but the classic homeowner move is to go to the garden center on Memorial Day weekend, buy everything that’s currently flowering because it all looks amazing.
Della Hansmann
Looks great on Memorial Day weekend,
Jim Drzewiecki
Um, getting home, opening the back of your vehicle and saying, Where are we putting these? And then you’re scrambling to look at the tags and well, how big does this get, and is this plant going to look good next to this plant? Do we have enough sun? Does that one need shade? And suddenly it’s not a fun task anymore, because you bought things that maybe weren’t even appropriate for your yard.
Della Hansmann
This, actually, I’m getting childhood flashbacks. I feel like this is something I have done in the station wagon with my parents as a kid, or I’ve at least been a party to it if it wasn’t my choice. Um, so that’s, that’s what not to do. Thank you.
Della Hansmann
Um, what to do instead is, is to plan first when we talked on our podcast chat a while ago, you had mentioned that you thought a great way to start with the design of plants was drawing circles. Um, what is the what are the sort of things that go through your head when you’re thinking about the scale of those pieces, when you’re before you’re making plant, you’re thinking, it’s a big circle. It’s a little circle.
Jim Drzewiecki
It, yeah, it obviously, that’s one of those things you’re taught as a designer. But to give the overview of that idea is it’s almost like if you looked at the house from a from the street, and you looked at the house. The other variation of that idea is rectangles of different sizes, and whether it’s a vertical rectangle or a horizontal rectangle, that’s making you think about the shape of the plant.
Jim Drzewiecki
You want circles because now you’re in plan view, corners of the house tend to be better for larger circles. Tight areas naturally should have smaller circles. And then the idea is, of course, to make sure you mix all the sizes so that it’s not just, you know, two hedges of very large shrubs like a lilac and nothing else or not, a bunch of little perennials that will look very busy without the structural plants to kind of try to hold it all together, right?
Della Hansmann
So you start with structure. You’re starting with your evergreens and your deciduous trees. What comes next as you come down in the scale of sort of detail.
Jim Drzewiecki
Then I get to the deciduous shrubs. They’re nearly as important as the evergreen shrubs. But now I have much more variety to choose from, and I can look at flower color. We certainly think about, well, what does it look like in the fall and winter too? That’s one of the wonderful things about being doing designs that are for the Midwest is that we have four seasons to play with that’s a little less pronounced. You know, when we do a design in Arizona or a design in Texas, because a lot of those plants don’t lose their leaves. As an example, they may not even change color in the fall and winter. They may be they may remain green year round. So a Midwest landscape has these layers built into it of the seasonal changes that happen. But even with the deciduous shrubs we’re looking at flower color we’re looking at, is it a more of a wide, vertical shrub versus a low, spreading shrub, right? And we do tend to layer plants from shortest to tallest, but you have to be careful that you don’t get into what we call choir planting, where everything is small to tall. It’s okay. This is the asymmetry idea. It’s okay to have something tall towards the front of a plant bed because it adds visual depth to it. It actually makes it feel more 3d and you have to look around that plant to see the rest.
Della Hansmann
So it keeps you moving as you come past the house or walk around it, it makes you
Jim Drzewiecki
The view changes.
Della Hansmann
Nice, yeah, that’s a really interesting way to think about it. And while we look at specific views when we’re thinking about the exterior updates of a house, um, it’s important to remember there’s more than the views that you see when you’re looking at it, when you’re looking when you look at if you if you’re designing from a photo of your house, you’re inside in the winter or something like that. You don’t want to just think about one spot, not the Google street view of your house, but how does it feel as you move around it?
Jim Drzewiecki
I’m glad you brought that up, because I think a lot of landscape designers don’t consider the view from inside the house looking out designs from that curb view.
Della Hansmann
Which is nice for everyone else. But what about the person that lives there?
Jim Drzewiecki
Correct. And maybe this is from someone who’s lived in Wisconsin their entire life, but you start to realize how often you’re in the house, looking out at your yard and the and with a mid-century house, I think it maybe is even more important, because you tend to have that big picture window in the living room. You might have that big floor to ceiling windows with the patio doors on the backside of the house, and so now whatever is planted outside that view becomes part of the house.
Della Hansmann
That’s the second excellent reason not to do the church choir planting of low, medium tall, because then you get to the house and you’re just looking at the back of a bunch of tall plants that weren’t meant for you, not what you want. Yes, fantastic.
Della Hansmann
Well, what else? This is a huge topic. Obviously, this is topics, and within topics, to think about picking the right plants for a mid-century yard. But if you had to boil it down, and you wanted to give some people some people some good what to do, what not to do, advice. What else would you say about choosing plants for mid-century?
Jim Drzewiecki
Particularly, I think groupings are important. You don’t want to have the, the plant zoo. Where it’s one of this, one of this, one of this, one of this,
Della Hansmann
oh, Uh huh, yeah.
Jim Drzewiecki
And if you think about it, traditional mid-century yards are simpler. Linear groups, I think are still important. So even if we’re trying to get away from the U hedge across the front of the house, I think linear groups are still important because they accentuate the lines of the house.
Jim Drzewiecki
One thing I really wanted to make sure I mentioned is that ornamental grasses, which will be a later topic, can be the Midwest version of the yucca or agave of Palm Springs.
Della Hansmann
Yeah, you don’t need to, you don’t need to take that California landscape plant here, but you can create same effect with our
Jim Drzewiecki
Yeah,
Della Hansmann
Do you use an actual native grass, or would you use, like, a hybridized version?
Jim Drzewiecki
Both. Both, there are native switchgrasses to the Midwest, which are wonderful plants. But then there’s the tried and true like Carl Forrester grass, which everyone’s probably seen somewhere, usually in parking lot islands, because it is an absolutely indestructible plant, and it’s very vertical, so it looks great in mid-century yard s. It’s not native, but it’s really a wonderful grass.
Della Hansmann
It does work. That’s yeah. I mean, if it lasts in a parking lot, it’ll last in your yard. So that’s good. Yep, for sure. Recommendation, fantastic.
Della Hansmann
Well, hopefully we’ve got you excited to think about what you might plant in your yard and how you might modify what’s there and make better spaces. If you’ve got questions for Jim or for my please comment below and let us know what is holding you back or getting you excited about landscaping around your mid-century house.
Della Hansmann
As always, there’s just never enough time to cover all the questions that come up when I start to chat with Jim, and I bet you have mid-century yard questions of your own, so reach out and ask them. This will not be the last time we have Jim on the podcast, and if you are feeling like you’d rather just reach out and hire Jim and ginkgo leaf to solve your mid-century yard questions, don’t hesitate for two reasons.
Della Hansmann
One, he is great. His team is great, and two, he’s booked out for the next year already. So the show notes page of this episode has all the information you need to find Jim and ginkgo leaf studios online. Head over to mid mod, midwest.com/ 1806, for that and the transcript.
Della Hansmann
And of course, remember, if you want to work with mid mod Midwest to plan an amazing upgrade to the inside and outside of your mid-century home, the house part, you can also get the information about working with us there. And now really is the perfect time to get into that design process for little projects you might squeeze in at the end of this year, or anything more big and comprehensive that you want to do next year at all.
Della Hansmann
So making great choices for your mid-century home is about finding the right people, people like Jim, and getting them on your side. And speaking of that, next week on the podcast, I’ll be chatting again with Adrian Kinney of mid mod Colorado.
Della Hansmann
In part about how to assemble that mid-century dream team how to find the right realtor, architect, landscape designer, interior designer, builders of all stripes and scales, and how to make your great project happen. So more on that, then see you next week.