Want the latest take on street-view style? Home and landscape designer John Gidding, host of HGTV’s ‘Curb Appeal’ franchise for seven years, has big ideas.
WE AMERICANS LOVE our front lawns. Fairway-like expanses on which to run barefoot, toss a ball, attempt to perfect a so-so golf swing. Not that we often do these things, if ever. Still, we generally leave room for our country-club fantasies, devoting most of our plot to turf, with shrubbery and few trees hugging the edges—what John Gidding refers to, sadly, as a “houses on platters” style of landscaping.
Since 2004, San Francisco-based Mr. Gidding, who designs homes and landscapes, has hosted television shows in which he transforms living spaces. These include iterations of HGTV’s series “Curb Appeal,” which takes homes’ exteriors and yards from dull to covetable. Many of his beautifying strategies are classic, such as ensuring a clear sight line to the front door and pushing for welcoming lighting. But by the time he was working on “Curb Appeal Extreme,” the 2021 version of the franchise that transformed homes both front and back, he had joined a wave of landscape designers and architects who evangelize gardens that factor in local ecology and dwindling resources. His aim is not unlike that of the United States Golf Association, who urged greenkeepers facing water restrictions back in 2016: “[Reduce] turf in out-of-play areas where turf is not necessary.”
M r. Gidding’s philosophy is as much about aesthetics as it is climate change. Instead of mowed turf bisected by routine pavers that march from curb to doorstep, Mr. Gidding recommends what he calls “sylvan landscaping” (and other advocates term “forest gardening”): a layering of native greenery comprising trees, shrubs, perennials and ground cover. “It’s a much more romantic, naturalistic style,” he said. Sound like a lot of upkeep? Part of the point in choosing native material, he counters, is its low water and chemical requirements. “It’ll take a couple years to establish, but after that, it should be very low-maintenance,” he said, acknowledging that abandoning turf is a huge leap for most yard owners. But he has baby-step suggestions as well other curb-appeal ideas a 41-minute television episode can’t accommodate. Here, some essentials.
1. Glimpses of a facade are more beautiful than a full-frontal
Few people find a front-door approach flanked by keep-off-the-grass-style turf particularly welcoming. Much more inviting: a yard that affords passersby more-oblique, seductive sightings of the house. “It’s not like you’re crowding yourself in with trees and cutting yourself off from neighbors or sunlight,” said Mr. Gidding, who illustrates his vision below. His ideal neighborhood is “a bunch of houses in clearings within trees that create a lifeline for wildlife and reduce our dependence on pesticides and mowing lawns,” he said, referring to the EPA’s estimate that one gasoline-powered lawn mower produces roughly 35 times as much pollution as the average car.
2. A single tree can help
When trying to coax a Nashville couple to adopt his sylvan-yard concept on “Curb Appeal Xtreme,” Mr. Gidding learned the idea is a tough sell. Though the pair initially agreed to replace the lawn with an all-native landscape, he recalled, “As layer upon layer of planting material was delivered, they got scared and called us saying, ‘We’ve changed our minds. We could never take care of all these plants.’” Mr. Gidding was crestfallen. “You see on the show I’m not in the scenes where they’re rolling out sod. I refused.”
Another Nashville couple, Tony and Ann Richardson, admit that garden vegetation is harder to maintain than lawn. As part of the “Curb Appeal Xtreme” makeover of their home, copious planting—not exclusively native—now borders the steppingstones to their door. “However, it is well worth the extra work,” said Ms. Richardson. “We have seen an increase in many species, including bees, turtles, humming birds and frogs, and gardening is therapeutic and meditative for us.”
For the similarly creature-conscious but perhaps less ambitious, Mr. Gidding suggests this first step: Plant one native tree in your front lawn. “Trees are such a bedrock of wildlife support. And it’s a start.”
To single out a tree to try, take a field trip to a nearby nature preserve, he said. Alternatively, the Audubon society’s native-plant database at audubon.org lists trees indigenous to your zip code that will lure birds seeking both food and a happy-making habitat.
3. Your front yard can become another outdoor living room
“Before Covid, people were like, ‘I don’t want seating in the front yard, that’s weird. I like to sit in my backyard,’” said Mr. Gidding. The isolation of quarantine changed attitudes, he added: “Post Covid, no questions asked. ‘Of course I would have seating in my front yard. It’s such a communal spot.’” This didn’t mean folks plopped themselves in full sight of traffic and passersby. Mr. Gidding replaced the concrete front stoop of the Richardsons’ midcentury-modern house with a cascade of small wood decks, for example. One level down from the door, he created a seating area partially shielded from the street by shrubs and grasses. Today the couple uses it for morning coffee and catch-ups with friends. During the pandemic, the nestled space, half private, half communal, helped combat cabin fever. “Sitting out front, having some kind of interaction with other people, even if just waving...did encourage us to use that area,” Ms. Richardson said.
4. Facades should not follow color trends
Though Mr. Gidding broke his own rule at times on “Curb Appeal,” he blames the “trend pipeline” that a TV audience requires. “Don’t do what I do, do what I say,” he said, citing the fickleness of trends and the expense of repainting. Save of-the-moment colors for details like planters and fabrics, even shutters and doors.
5. Jewel tones always work on a front door
“Curb Appeal” taught Mr. Gidding this lesson. Sometimes, if he left a main entrance as is because it suited the home’s style, “I would get a note back from the network saying there’s not enough before-and-after pop.” So he’d paint the door, “and it was a revelation,” he said. “I learned over time that I could really push the front-door aesthetic, from a color perspective, as far as I wanted, and it would work almost every time.” Though he consequently has few door-hue rules, he’s found that gem tones—ruby, deep purple, emerald—rarely fail. “They have a richness to them, a sort of groundedness,” he said. Front doors often feature facet- or bevel-like edges, “so the jewel-tone analogy really works,” he said.
6. Every house has an architectural style you can build upon
So that the colors and details of your facade hang together, either identify your home’s style or attach a style onto it and let that be your guide. Every day he worked on “Curb Appeal,” Mr. Gidding says, he referred to “A Field Guide to American Houses” by Virginia and Lee McAlester, which he got while at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Even with a house of indeterminate style—say, vaguely ranch or colonial—“all it takes is identifying one or two key architectural features that help you latch the house onto an identity, and you’re off and running.” The McAlesters’ book calls out window trims, materials, etc., appropriate to your home’s type.
When confronted, for example, with a small, single-story house with Craftsman bungalow features—a low-pitched double roof and overhanging eaves—Mr. Gidding used the book to strategize his tweaks. He removed the architecturally inaccurate dentil molding that crowned the large front window, added natural-wood details and painted over the sky-blue exterior with muddy greens and blues, all true to the Craftsman spirit.
Even McMansions can be redirected. “If the developer of your home used unrelated details willy-nilly, resulting in a Garage Mahal, the work might be in removing some architectural features and streamlining your home toward an identifiable style,” he said.
7. Guidance is everywhere
The layperson is still out there, said Mr. Gidding, but in ever fewer numbers, thanks to social media. “Homeowners used to say to me, ‘I don’t really know what to do.’ These days they say, ‘Here’s my seven Pinterest boards.’” Mr. Gidding’s parting advice: Scour websites, DIY videos, Instagram. “There are many resources for facades that have worked. As soon as you start looking up styles of homes, you get very clear cues as to what to do to your house.”
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