Planting and garden beds in Yarmouth, Maine.
The foundation beds around many Yarmouth homes were planted in one of two waves. Village houses on Main Street and around the historic districts carry beds that have been reworked for generations, while the subdivisions of the 1960s and 1970s, which account for about 39 percent of the town's housing according to Census data, often still have their original yews, junipers and shrubs pressed against the siding. Replanting those beds is some of the most common garden work in town.
What comes out first
The town's open-space monitoring, summarized in the 2024 comprehensive plan, recorded Japanese barberry, burning bush, Morrow's honeysuckle, multiflora rose and Asiatic bittersweet on Yarmouth preserves, with glossy buckthorn treated by the town at Pratt's Brook Park, the Frank Knight Forest and the Riverfront Woods Preserve in 2022. The plan asks private owners not to transplant invasives and notes they likely cross property lines. Old barberry and burning bush hedges near a house are worth replacing with native or non-invasive shrubs of similar size and color.
Removal means roots as well as tops, and bittersweet threaded through an old foundation planting takes follow-up visits before a bed is clean.
Soil, zone and the finished bed
Yarmouth sits in USDA zone 6a on the 2023 map. Many soils here are silt loams formed in marine or lake sediments, including Suffield on the better-drained ground and Scantic in the wetter areas. Silt loam holds moisture well but packs tight around a foundation, so we loosen and amend the bed before planting, set shrubs at the right depth, and keep the finished grade sloping away from the house.
Hardy perennials and shrubs get chosen for the actual exposure: shade under the Village's mature street trees, full sun and wind on a Cousins Island lot, or wet ground near a brook. Beds finish with clean-edged mulch.
When a bed includes a small flowering tree, the species list published by Yarmouth's Tree Advisory Committee is a good filter for what will last.
On waterfront lots, Chapter 701's revegetation standards are a useful model even where they are not required: at least three species when more than three woody plants go in, no single species over half the planting, and native ground cover with a mulch layer at least four inches deep where bare soil is exposed. Those same rules apply when plantings replace vegetation removed in the shoreland zone.
Plantings · Mulch · Garden Design
How we handle planting & garden beds
We build planting beds that look better every year — hardy perennials and shrubs matched to your site, finished with clean-edged mulch and stone accents. From single foundation beds to full hillside plantings.
See the full planting & garden beds service page or everything we do in Yarmouth, Maine.
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