The dramatic and expansive lawn at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is just like yours. Except maybe for the dramatic, expansive part.

Both are out there in the endless weather, the trees and plants exposed to the abuses of time and our climate extremes. A redo of plantings can be overdue after a few years.

For homeowners, fall offers an excellent opportunity to stand back at the curb and take a hard look. That’s essentially what landscape designers did at the art museum as they prepared the grounds for the recent reopening of the Kansas City Sculpture Park, which surrounds the original museum and the new Bloch Building.

Rick Howell, landscape architect with Gould Evans in Kansas City, and Jan Schall, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, collaborated on the choice of trees and other plants.

They envisioned, in part, “bold, colorful plantings that speak to the pristine geometry and contemporary spirit of the new Bloch Building,” Schall said.

And the plantings needed “to define space, to define the lawn and the paths, to frame the building and to provide canopy,” Howell said.

Howell said the goal at the sculpture park was to reinforce the original 1989 design by Dan Kiley and Jacquelin Robertson, with its emphasis on size and form, but also to wake it up a bit.

Most of the new landscaping opportunities are related to the Bloch Building, including “rooftop” groundcovers atop the mostly underground addition. The park’s trees needed refreshing, including groves of redbuds and dogwoods. But a lot of new varieties were added.

“We have a suite of new blooming trees, Galaxy Magnolia, tulip trees, Adirondack crabapples and Yoshino cherries,” Schall said. “It’s a feast for the senses year-round.”

Most people’s yards are less formal than the sculpture garden. But the concerns are the same: color, placement, size, usefulness.

What tree or planting will dress up a brick wall, buff-colored siding or a foundation?

The choices in the sculpture garden might spark ideas for your own yard. Here are descriptions of many of the new specimens at the sculpture park along with comments about why they were chosen.

Use the map to find them when you visit the museum grounds. The sections of the Bloch Building are referred to as Lens 1 through Lens 5.

For an online tour of the sculpture garden and a full list of plant specimens, go to nelson-atkins.org. Click on “Room to play” then “horticulture.”

A) Adirondack Crabapple trees

Malus “Adirondack”

Grows: 18 feet tall, 10 feet wide

Comments: This small tree blooms white in the spring, grows a red berry and turns yellow in the fall.

B) American Yellowwood trees

Cladrastis kentuckea

Grows: 30-50 feet tall, 40-55 feet wide

Comments: “It has a nice, loose, comfortable canopy. It helps soften the architecture,” Howell said.

“They don’t flower every year, but when they do, they’re a sight,” Schall said. “The blooms hang in white clusters, and the canopy of the tree looks like a big cloud.”

C) Autumn Joy Sedum

Sedum “Autumn Joy”

Grows: 15 to 18 inches tall, 15 inches wide

Comments: Sedum is popular in rooftop landscapes and tolerates hot sun. “… (it) moves from sea green to pink to deep rose to sienna as the seasons change,” Schall said.

D) Galaxy Magnolia

Magnolia x “Galaxy”

Grows: 30 to 40 feet tall, 20 to 25 feet wide

Comments: Blooms with a reddish-purple flower in April. A good accent tree because of its flowers and rich green leaves, Howell said.

E) Gro-Low Sumac

Rhus aromatica “Gro-low”

Grows: 2 feet tall, 6 to 8 feet wide

Comments: A groundcover that turns a dynamic red in the fall. “We’ll keep it about 18 inches tall, sculpted to match the ground plane as it bends up and down,” Howell said.

F) Katsuratrees

Cercidiphyllum japonicum

Grows: 40 to 60 feet tall, variable spread

Comments: “Their foliage is dense, their trunks straight and strong, but their leaves are delicate and heart-shaped,” Schall said. “They flutter in the wind and are golden in the autumn.”

G) Purple Beech trees

Fagus sylvatica “Riversii”

Grows: 50 feet tall, 40 feet wide

Comments: Burgundy leaf in spring turns to green-maroon in summer. “It is a nice color accent against some of the taller gray concrete walls and the glass,” Howell said.

H) Shantung Maple

Acer truncatum

Grows: 20 to 25 feet tall, 20 to 25 feet wide

Comments: Yellow, orange and red colors in the fall. It will create a low and wide canopy, Howell said.

I) Texas Scarlet Flowering Quince

Chaenomeles speciosa “Texas Scarlet”

Grows: 3 to 4 feet tall, 3 to 4 feet wide

Comments: A hardy shrub with deep red flowers in the spring.

J) Tulip trees

Liriodendron tulipfera

Grows: 70 to 90 feet tall, 35 to 50 feet wide

Comments: A tall, straight trunk makes it a fitting street tree. “It has a nice flower in the spring, a rich yellow in the fall and a really neat leaf,” Howell said.

K) Wintercreeper

Euonymus fortunei var. coloratus

Grows: 6 to 12 inches tall, spreads widely

Comments: A veteran groundcover, it tolerates sun and turns reddish purple in the fall.

L) Yoshino Cherry trees

Prunus x yedoensis

Grows: 25 feet tall, 25 feet wide

Comments: Flowers pink and then white in early spring and features interesting bark.

L) Japanese Pachysandra

Pachysandra terminalis

Grows: 6 to 12 inches tall, spreads widely

Comments: An evergreen groundcover that adds interest in spring with early white flowers. “It creates an impenetrable raised carpet of bright, shiny green,” Schall said.