I really enjoy spending time at my design studio. I’m always moving all my junk around in different places. This is the place where we take photographs that you send in to me and I respond to them and we come over the ways to improve the landscape.

Today, we’re looking at Sandra’s garden in Portland, Oregon. It’s a charming craftsman-style bungalow. Now, it looks like the exterior is done in stucco. There are a few things that I would suggest to help bump up the charm factor which is exactly what she would like to do.

First, I think that there's an opportunity here to remove all of the grass and make this entire space, here and here, even out here, assuming that’s the curb garden and that’s what we want to do. The other thing is that you can see that we’ve got a flower bed from here to here and here to here and it stops and it’s not on center with the house.

So, as we think about the design of this particular garden, I want to make sure that we try to create some symmetry here. Here’s the rail, the post, columns on the front, here, so we want to make sure that we’re symmetrical with that line, so let’s get started.

To bump up the charm factor, I always like to lean on a classic picket fence and you can create just about any style you like but it’s fun to come up with a motif that’s a craftsman-style house. I would encourage you Sandra to look for a craftsman-style motif but I would do is bring it across to here and I’ll bring it across here and do some sort of gate and do it the craftsman-style, pickets along here. We’ll do a nice, simple post, simple post here and bring those pickets all the way down. This doesn’t need to be elaborate. Come across like this.

Now, it could be white or what might be more interesting would be to let this fit and get a really dark, chocolate brown. I can’t tell the color of your door here but let’s assume that it is a really dark, chocolate color. You could bring that color, to the fence which would make it really interesting.

Another hard scape component that I would add would be here. It would create the width of the sidewalk, whatever that is, let’s call it four feet perhaps. Now, we’d lay some flagstone right here, maybe just a couple of flagstones and then you can see that we have really centered this up.

Let’s talk about some of the plants we might want to use here. I’m not sure what’s going on over here on this corner. It looks like it might be some sort of evergreen but what about if we did some kind of a camellia over here and I would love, if there’s enough, it’s a little hard to see but a pair of yoshino cherries with their pale, pink blossoms, one on that side and once over here would be fantastic and pull them a little close to the street so the trunk may come to here, to here because you don’t want them getting up into the eve of the house.

Let’s remove all of the grass and create a path that comes around the side of the house and that would just do that in little tiny gravels, maybe some flagstone and use the inside of that as a way to plant or as a place to plant lots of different kinds of flowers. There are opportunities here of course to do some kind of a rose that would grow across the fence, here and here and maybe even one up this column and this column to come across here.

If we want what sort of peachy, salmon color, you could use Colette. If you wanted to go with a more golden color, you might go for polka I grow both of those and love them. And then on the fence, I would either use Colette or polka I wouldn’t mix it up too much.

Then, on the inside, there’s a wide range of perennials you can grow, just think of some of the old classics, iris, flox, peonnies. For summer, you could use purple coneflowers and then it pairs just no in to the annuals you could grow. For instance, this whole bed along here, I would take out this deciduous material here and here and make all of this flower bed. I would do a pair of boxwoods or evergreens here on each side to mark it and then let this just be all low annuals and here’s where you can really have a lot of fun through the growing season, you might do a whole range of purples like that, wonderful royal, velvet purple petunia. You might use a beautiful blue sage. There are many of those to choose from, artemisia for silver tones and just think about all of these flowers being in the cool range and then these warmed colored roses up against this white stucco. You’ll get a real charm over here Sandra and I hope these ideas help you out.

Would you like to see your home featured in a makeover like you just saw in the last segment? If so, just go to pallensmith.com/virtualmakeover and send me a photograph of your house. If your house is selected, it will be featured in the future episode of the Public Television Series, P. Allen Smith's Garden Home, distributed by American Public Television. Also, in my website, you’ll find great tips on gardening, recipes and videos. Just check out pallensmith.com.