Operation Frontyard

Type: Personal / Hobby Status: Planning Deadline: TBD (sooner rather than later, phased execution OK) Created: 2026-05-30

What is this?

A redesign of the front yard / front garden at our home in Scarborough, ON. Three layered aspects:

  1. Plan and execute the actual garden redesign with David and Kelly doing the work themselves.
  2. Build a lightweight tool that lets Kelly explore configuration options — preference sliders (e.g. maintenance level, water needs, height, bloom season, color palette) and plant include/exclude picks. Output is a ranked plant list with placement suggestions.
  3. Speculative upside — if there’s real “there” there, this could evolve into a productized “landscape architecture app.” Not the reason for doing this, but worth keeping in the back of the mind.

Motivation

Front yard is currently a bit of a mess, lacks curb appeal, and just generally needs attention. Neither David nor Kelly are green thumbs or have landscape architecture experience. Want to avoid the cost of hiring a landscape architect + labor — the scope feels small enough to DIY with the right planning.

What does success look like?

Phase 1 (current target): an approved design + well-thought-out execution plan that David and Kelly are both excited about. Phase 2: phased execution of the plan, DIY. “Done” is a moving target beyond that.

Resources Needed

  • Budget: open / flexible — no major competing expenses this summer. Avoiding spend on architect/labor.
  • Time: David + Kelly’s time for planning and execution
  • Tools: TBD (basic gardening tools, possibly soil amendments, mulch, etc.)
  • Materials: plants, soil, mulch, possibly hardscaping elements (TBD)
  • Location: Scarborough, ON — USDA hardiness zone ~6a/6b (to confirm)

Constraints & Preferences

Current state (described 2026-05-30, sketch at assets/current-state-sketch.pdf, site photos in assets/site-photos/)

  • House: traditional 1970 Toronto suburban 4-bedroom, garage at front, stone-clad facade with white siding above
  • Orientation: front of house faces north — but in practice the front yard is NOT primarily shaded as initially described. At Toronto’s latitude (43°N) in summer, a north-facing front yard gets strong morning + evening direct sun (sun rises/sets north of E/W in summer). Midday the house itself casts shade closer to the foundation.
  • Mature trees casting shade:
    • Birch (NE corner of garden) — David’s, full-form multi-trunk paper birch, healthier looking than initial description suggested. Casts dappled shade on the east half of the garden.
    • City-owned maple (on the median between sidewalk and road, in front of the house) — protected, CANNOT be removed or significantly altered. Adds canopy from the south/street side. Foliage in photo has an orange/red tint (possibly a ‘Crimson King’ or similar cultivar — confirm species/variety later). Important shade-caster for the south end of the front yard.
  • Effective light profile (zoned):
    • Far south (near sidewalk): shaded by city maple canopy
    • Middle of yard: more sun, especially mornings
    • East side: dappled shade under birch
    • West side: more open sun
    • Near house foundation: midday shade
    • → Site is best described as a patchwork of full sun, part sun, dappled shade, and full shade zones — not a uniform shade garden
  • Layout (looking at the property from sidewalk, facing south toward the house):
    • Property runs north (sidewalk) to south (house)
    • Driveway + garage on the EAST side of the property
    • Walkway runs north–south, between the garden (west) and the driveway (east), leading from sidewalk to front door
    • Main garden is on the WEST side of the property, west of the walkway, running from sidewalk to house
    • Garden splits into two zones: grass (front/north, by sidewalk) and flowerbed (back/south, closer to house)
    • Secondary small flowerbed sits between the walkway and the garage (south-east corner) — exact contents TBD
  • Grass zone:
    • ~90% weeds
    • Large birch tree — fairly unhealthy looking; surface roots running through the lawn
  • Flowerbed zone:
    • Two large yews near the house
    • Additional yews along the property line with the adjoining neighbor (east side)
    • Existing plantings (all from previous owner, none are must-stays): alliums (in bloom in spring photo — likely ‘Globemaster’ or similar), daylilies (Hemerocallis, strap foliage visible), mix of other plants
    • Dead yew trunk still in place
    • Root systems from dead boxwoods (died ~2024) near the house
  • Hardscaping:
    • Brick wall along the western edge of the main garden (property line with neighbor), wrapping around the western-side yews
    • Brick wall has been almost fully pushed over by yew roots — needs to be addressed

Vibe

  • Current: neglected, ugly, unhealthy
  • Desired: modern, low-maintenance, Japan / Scandinavian, native, pollinator-friendly but clean

Priorities (ranked)

  1. Welcoming + thoughtfully put together, well-maintained from the street (highest)
  2. Pollinator habitat
  3. Privacy — currently provided by yews (screening neighbor’s driveway + window from road); if yews go, replacement screening must be planned
  4. Something to look at from inside the house (lowest)

Maintenance tolerance

  • Goal: “ignore it” mode — design must largely run itself
  • Ceiling: a few hours / month
  • Implication: plants must be well-matched to north-shade + birch-root competition + Zone 6, no high-pruning plants

Plant philosophy

  • Perennials, shrubs, groundcovers, grasses — yes
  • Annuals — no (hard constraint: David doesn’t want to replant yearly)
  • Native to Ontario / Eastern NA preferred; non-natives allowed only when truly exceptional fit for site + aesthetic and no native alternative exists

Style references

  • Neither David nor Kelly have clear style north-stars yet
  • Plan: build a reference set collaboratively (Claude proposes archetypes, both react)

Must-stays

  • Birch tree — keep and rehabilitate (ref: decision 001)
  • Concrete walkway — already in good shape

Open to removing

  • Eastern / property-line-east yews — pending replacement privacy strategy for the driveway side
  • Dead yew skeleton — definitely removing (significant chainsaw + stump grind job)
  • Brick edging along the walkway (low, tilted, “not nice”) — easy removal
  • Brick wall on western property line — find a fix that doesn’t require yew removal (ref: decision 003)
  • Lawn / grass (open to alternative ground planes)
  • Light post — possible but bigger job (electrical)

Keeping (or strong candidates to keep)

  • Western (neighbor-side) yews — substantial privacy screening + creating the shade pocket for the Japan-style corner (ref: decision 003)
  • Right-side front-of-house yew — healthy, well-formed, anchoring the entry experience
  • Birch tree — keep + rehabilitate (ref: decision 001)
  • Concrete walkway — already in good shape
  • Decorative stones currently around the dead yew skeleton — reuse as accents in the Japan-style corner

Design direction

  • Zoned approach (north → south across the property):
    • North end — sunny meadow zone: the broad open area currently 90% weedy lawn, between sidewalk and flowerbed. Becomes the native pollinator meadow with structural anchors and “cues to care” (clean edges, repeated structural plants).
    • Flowerbed — east half (under birch): transitional / dappled light; native shade-tolerant plants that fit between meadow and woodland; birch is anchor.
    • Flowerbed — west end (in front of LR window): Japan-inspired woodland — ferns, hosta, Japanese forest grass, moss, sculpted stones; preserves the existing layered view (western yews → road) from inside.
    • Entry corridor (south, walkway approach to front door): curated foundation planting along the narrow foundation strip; the right-side front-of-house yew stays as the architectural anchor.
  • Layered ground planes (moss + stepping stones + controlled meadow-style)
  • Birch is the design anchor / focal point for the eastern zone
  • Reuse the existing decorative stones from around the dead yew skeleton as accents in the western corner
  • Need an organizing principle to prevent the mix from reading as fragmented (ref: decision 001)
  • The plant database (current 58 plants) is shade-skewed and should be supplemented with sun-loving natives for the eastern zones (ref: decision 003)

The Tool (for Kelly)

  • Inputs: preference sliders (maintenance, water, height, bloom season, color, etc.) + plant include/exclude picks
  • Output: ranked plant list with placement suggestions
  • Form factor: lightweight web app, single-purpose
  • Tech stack: Astro page on davidtingle.com (same repo as koi-koi, pot-odds — ~/projects/davidtingle.com/src/pages/garden.astro)
  • URL: https://davidtingle.com/garden (unlisted — no link from home)
  • Deploy: Netlify, no git integration. Standard flow is npm run deploy (astro build && netlify deploy --prod). Pushing to GitHub does NOT trigger a build.
  • Status (2026-06-01): deployed. 90 plants (58 shade + 32 sunny meadow natives), 32 shortlisted. Filters: type, sun, water, maintenance, pollinator value, zone fit (meadow / birch / japan / entry — color-coded chips on cards), and quick toggles (shortlist, loved, hide-excluded, native, dry-shade, birch-roots, deer, winter). Click-to-modal with both photos, full attribute spec, attribution.
  • User-tag layer (localStorage): love / exclude / one-line note per plant, persists across reloads. “Copy my tags” / “Paste tags” buttons round-trip JSON through the clipboard for sharing between David and Kelly (no backend). Excluded plants hidden by default (the Hide-excluded pill is default-on).
  • Vanilla Astro + TS, no frameworks. CSV loaded at build time. Uses <style is:global> because cards are injected via innerHTML (Astro scoping doesn’t reach runtime-injected DOM).