If the door is close to the corner of the house, there may not be room for both a corner group and a door planting. In that case the thing to do is to arrange the corner group so that it will also form half of the entrance planting. The half on the other side of the door would be very low as determined by line drawn to edge of the house.

Low Foundation

Whenever the exposed foundation is 3 feet or less in height, it is desirable to use plants only at the above-mentioned areas. It makes the house look larger and more dignified to have the lawn extend right up to the foundation walls.

But if the foundation is more than 3 feet high, we readjust our thinking and break the rule of not having a solid planting around the house. We maintain the general outline of the mass plantings at the corners and next to the entrance, but add a planting that connects them. In effect, this lifts the straight linerepresented .by the lawn in the case of a house with no foundation or a very low one – up to the point where the foundation ends and the house covering begins.

Directing Attention

The reason for having lower plants beside the door than at the corners is simple enough. If we want to pour a liquid into the top of a bottle or other small opening, we usually use a funnel to help do it. Psychologically the same effect results when we look at a house with high corner plantings and low entrance plantings; our attention is more or less funneled from the high points to the low ones close to the door. This is exactly what we want, namely, the attention of the observer to be directed to and centered on the entrance.

Various Architectural Styles

Although it may not be obvious in all instances, you can usually see in these different architectural styles the same guiding principle behind all of the foundation planting arrangements.

On a house with tall pillars in front, it is not advisable to put a single plant at the base of each pillar in order to break the vertical line. This would make it appear as though the pillar was suspended in mid air. There is little danger of monotony even if everyone who owns a house with tall pillars were to handle it in the same general manner; homes of that type are few and far between, so one will rarely see two that are planted exactly alike.