Hello, please post a photo of your walkway all the way to the front steps. It's difficult to imagine what is needed. For instance, is this a curving path? Do you really need rectangular shaped hedges or can simple ball shaped hedges do?

The best way to envision how things would be, is first to take a photo, print it on paper and draw directly on it. This way, you can envision placement of hedges. Consider your view point, access to the yard, and of course the children's use of the yard.

Hedges need not be made of evergreens. And by the way, boxwood is an evergreen. You probably were thinking of cedars which is unsuitable for a low hedge. Cedars, emerald cedars-the most popular, are used normally to line fences.

other evergreens include, yews, hollies, eunonymous(which is also considered a vine), pines, spruce, junipers. And normally hedges take a while to fill out.

Hedge materials can be made of any plant and there are so many that can be used which could fill out a space in no time.

It is a bit difficult to envision but do you want to be able to trim the plant to form a 1 x 3 foot shape eventually? That probably would require time and the proper plant. Or perhaps two of a certain shrub close together. Maybe plant a small shrub in each 'rectangle' and them surround them with annuals or bark mulch?

Boxwood is a good choice, maybe small cedars like 'teddy' (thuja occidentalis 'teddy'), falsecypress, etc. Gold spirea shrubs are very tolerant of pruning and shaping as you like. There is a bit of choice if you are prepared to experiment and/or trim them annual if they grow out of bounds.

Here are some suggestions.

If you cook with herbs why not plant some herbs? Some of them are ornamental to.

I've seen lavender used but since that needs to be trimmed every spring (I'm a lazy gardener) I would go with hyssop.

Other plants I've seen used are ferns, hosta, sedum. daylilies. All of these come in different sizes.

You could get small shrubs like spirea or barberry.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

How do I post a picture to give you a clear vision?

Most people use Photobucket. Once you have your picture there, you can cut and paste the HTML Code to Gardenweb, it will be displayed under the pic when you hold your mouse over the pic. Marg