Garden Design Maine | Perennial Garden Designer in Limerick ME

New Gardens for
New Construction

New Gardens for New Construction | Garden Design for a New Home in Saco, Maine

This garden design project in Saco, Maine created welcoming new landscape plantings for a recently constructed home. The homeowner contacted Garden Design Maine to develop a cohesive planting plan that would add beauty and character to the property while remaining easy to maintain.

The project included designing a long garden bed along the front of the house as well as providing planting suggestions for a side yard picket fence garden. Because the home was newly built, the property offered a blank canvas and the homeowner was open to creative ideas that would enhance the architecture while adding seasonal color.

The resulting design combines flowering shrubs, ornamental trees, and long-blooming perennials to create an elegant landscape that will continue to mature and improve over time.

Garden Design Goals

The planting plan for this new construction property focused on creating gardens that would feel established and welcoming while remaining manageable for the homeowner. Key design goals included:

Create an attractive front garden running the length of the house
Provide long-blooming color throughout the growing season
Incorporate ornamental trees and flowering shrubs for structure
Develop a planting palette suited to Maine’s climate
Design a charming garden layout to accompany a new picket fence in the side yard
Select hardy plants that will thrive with minimal maintenance

Designing Gardens for a New Home

New construction landscapes often present both opportunities and challenges. While the space offers a blank slate for planting design, soil conditions and sun exposure must be carefully considered when selecting plants.

For this project, Garden Design Maine developed a planting plan that would provide immediate beauty while allowing the landscape to grow into a mature garden over time. A mix of ornamental trees, flowering shrubs, and long-blooming perennials was selected to create layers of height, color, and texture.

Front Garden Design

For the front-of-the-house garden, depicted in the rendering above, the homeowner chose a design featuring a color palette of pinks and purples. This combination creates a soft, elegant look while providing continuous seasonal interest.

A lilac “lollipop” tree serves as the centerpiece of the planting, creating a focal point within the garden bed. Surrounding plantings include echinacea, deutzia, white peonies, and ornamental grasses, which provide a mix of bloom color and foliage texture.

Additional plants such as drift roses, salvia, gaura, hydrangea macrophylla, weeping redbud, hibiscus, and lamb’s ear contribute layers of seasonal interest. These plants offer blooms at different times throughout the growing season, ensuring the garden remains vibrant from late spring through fall.

Near the front entryway, long-blooming drift roses and salvia provide colorful flowers and light fragrance, creating a welcoming experience for visitors as they enter and exit the home.

Picket Fence Garden Design

The homeowner also planned to install a classic picket fence along the side yard and requested planting suggestions that would complement this traditional garden feature.

The design for this area was kept intentionally simple and balanced. A magnolia tree anchors each end of the fence line, providing structure and springtime blooms, as seen in the rendering above.

Between the trees, repeating panels of plantings include hosta, penstemon, catmint, daisies, and roses. This repitition creates rhythm along the fence while maintaining a relaxed cottage-garden feel.

The combination of perennials and flowering shrubs ensures the fence garden will remain colorful and attractive throughout the growing season.