Front Yard Landscaping Ideas

Whether it’s a stone-paved pathway, a well-manicured front lawn, or an intricate landscape design, front yard landscaping requires the same attention to detail as your home's interior. Well-manicured front yard landscaping ideas can elevate your home’s aesthetic. The right shrubs, flowers, grass, and plants can significantly spruce up your curb appeal by adding texture, fragrance, and color to your yard.

However, before executing your new landscape design, survey your yard and make some notes; you can’t implement some front yard landscaping ideas unless you determine the kind of climate you live in, how much space you have to work with, and how much money you’re willing to spend. From there, you can also consult the landscaping experts in your local area, who can help you determine the flowers and plants that are best suited for your front yard.

Why Landscape My Front Yard?

Landscaping is crucial in providing style and function to properties. Landscaping your front yard is essential, as it corrects any problems that may ruin your home’s appearance. In addition, beautiful front yard landscaping improves your home’s overall curb appeal by creating a welcoming atmosphere without compromising your property’s privacy.

Homes are built differently. Some homes are built in areas where the slope may ruin their appearance. Others may have a steep walkway or driveway that may endanger those living on the property. Landscaping your yard is essential if your home has any of these conditions. Landscaping can add some landscape and softscape features to your front yard that can resolve the conditions mentioned above. In addition, landscaping features can make your front yard more functional and more aligned with the property's value and appearance.

Many areas in a home must be included in the design process. While many contractors often consider this step, others need to remember the surrounding areas of a house in terms of curb appeal and design. Unfortunately, even with a well-designed home structure, a backyard or front yard that’s plain and neglected can ruin your home’s overall appearance. Thus, landscaping your backyard and front yard significantly improves your home’s curb appeal. With a well-landscaped front yard, expect your neighbors and guests to be mesmerized by your beautiful home. 

Another reason you should landscape your front yard is to maintain privacy around your home. Safety, security, and privacy should all be present in a home to reduce burglary incidents. Landscaping can give your front yard and backyard a customized gate and a solid border wall to ensure strangers and intruders don’t enter your home without permission. Further, landscaping can add plants, trees, flowers, and shrubs covering part of your home and providing fresh air. An expansive lawn can also be a boundary between your home and the nearby road. 

How Do You Style Your Front Yard?

These DIY front yard landscaping ideas can spruce up your home’s curb appeal:

• Add rock features in your yard: Even though you prefer different materials for your garden bed border, adding stones or rocks can break up your yard’s profile, creating an understated natural accent. Often, front yard landscaping ideas with stones or rocks can make your front yard more functional by adding a rock spillway for your gutters, for example, keeping the area from getting too muddy. You can also use rocks to break up a flower or garden bed.
• Light up your front yard: Landscaping lights are cheap; most are solar-powered. That means you only need to choose the color lights you love, add them around your front yard and let them light it up at night, creating a beautiful and warm ambiance. You can also spruce up your front yard with standout features such as lanterns, faux rocks with built-in lights, and lamps that recess into a pathway, seamlessly blending into your front yard.
• Upgrade your flower bed border: Refreshing or upgrading your flower beds' borders can change the entire outlook of the elements and plants already in your yard design. Pavers and stepping stones are all perfect, depending on your property’s style. To learn more about creating flower beds, click here. 
• Plant perennial shrubs in your front yard: Perennial flowers like Azaleas will bloom and add color to your front yard year after year. Most of these shrubs are inexpensive and easy to maintain.
• Add a garden bed around your mailbox: Planting annual flowers or Creeping Jasmine near your mailbox can elevate your yard’s curb appeal. This landscaping idea will add color and a bit of personality to your front yard.
• Add a birdbath: A lightweight, antique-style birdbath can add flair to your front yard. Birdbaths are a fantastic way to add water features without the hassle of maintenance and water connections. If you’re a bird-watcher, you’ll enjoy having beautiful, winged visitors in your front yard.

Designing and Planning a Yard Layout

Whether you’ve just moved into your new house or you’re tired of how your existing front yard looks--whatever your reasons are for wanting a fresh look--the first step is designing and planning a layout for your landscape. This may seem challenging at first, but it’s just a matter of determining how you want to use your front yard, then establishing how to add beauty and functionality to your design. 

Start by imagining your dream front yard, then sketch out a plan to make it come to life--you can always scale down to fit your budget. Next, to get a good sense of how you’d like your yard to look like:

• Make a list of your best assets: Note all the hidden treasures and elements you like about your front yard.
• Make a list of liabilities: Is there a garage or unattractive house next door you’d like to hide? Then, think about how to turn that liability into an asset. 
• Note your yard’s topography: including the sunny, sloped, or shaded locations. 

Once you know how you’d like to change your front yard’s landscape, you can think about what you need to add to make your dream yard come to life. Consider these items:

• Steps: Concrete, timber-and-brick, or stone steps
• Paths: Concrete pavers, brick, crushed stone, flagstone, or loose-fill pathways
• Walls: Timber, stone
• Decks: Geometric, wraparound
• Patios: Tile, stone

Other elements like planters, window boxes, tree-surround benches, ponds and waterfalls, outdoor lighting, garden shed, children’s play area, raised beds, potting benches, rain garden, or compost bins can help you add some pizzazz to your front yard.

What Are Some Easy Ways to Beautify Your Yard?

Has it been long since you last gave your front yard a makeover? If you’re on a limited budget, time, or inspiration, it’s a relief to know that there are many simple ways to spruce up your yard. Check out these easy landscaping best ideas to beautify your front yard:

• Add formal edging: Formal dividers can create distinct boundaries between various elements in your front yard, making maintenance more manageable while also defining and accenting the different spaces in your yard. You can choose plastic, brick, or steel borders to introduce different textures in your front yard. 
• Keep things flexible with container gardening: If your front yard is hardscape or you have a small space, you can use shrubs, flowering plants, or a potted plant to spruce things up. Container gardening offers an easy way to add color and textural interest to outdoor space. It’s also a budget-friendly and low-maintenance landscaping option. 
• Find a focal point: Introducing a strategic focal point in your front yard will make the space feel more intentional. Whether you add one or several focal points in your yard, they can hide unattractive elements, direct the light of sight, and add a bit of personality and balance to your landscaping design. Think water features, benches, sculptures, ornamental shrubs, specimen trees, or birdbaths. 
• Add an inviting front porch: A porch can protect your front entrance from adverse weather and acts as a transition between your home’s interior and exterior. Adding a porch to a front can:
• Improve your home’s aesthetics
• Provide an additional socializing area
• Provide additional natural light

How Do You Make Your Yard Look More Expensive?

Give your front yard a luxe update with these budget-friendly tips and tricks:

• Mow your lawn: A great way to enhance your yard’s curb appeal is to practice frequent lawn care, such as trimming shrubs, and clearing leaves from your front yard. Unfortunately, these minor details inadvertently mar your front yard, so move random outdoor items and garbage barrels out of sight to give your outdoor space a luxurious look. 
• Pick a decor style and stick to it! Undoubtedly, your modern-industrial-boho-chic-Tuscany look will take the world by storm. However, many competing styles can leave your front yard busy and confusing. On the other hand, creating a cohesive color and decor scheme relaxes the eyes, allowing your guests to enjoy the overall beauty of your yard. So, consider decorating with a few elements and colors to make your yard look more expensive. 
• Focus on the entrance: People first see your entrance when they approach your patio or garden, so invest time and money to make it more welcoming. For example, consider placing flowers in containers at the entrance to make your front yard look more expensive. Also, you could lay your entryway using modern materials like concrete, brick, or cobblestone. 
• A tasteful outdoor rug can make your yard or patio look more luxurious. A beautiful carpet can make your front yard look cozier. Today, many high-quality outdoor rugs can withstand various weather conditions and are affordable and luxurious. 

How Should I Set Up a Garden?

Do you want to set up a garden but need help figuring out where to start? Here are eight essential steps of gardening:

• Determine what you’d like to plant in your garden: Make sure your choices make sense for your local area.
• Choose a place to start your garden: Most vegetables and fruits need direct sunlight, with a minimum of six hours per day. So, pick an ideal location perfect for what you want to grow in your garden.
• Plan the garden beds: Once you find where you want your garden, decide the size and type of garden beds. Garden beds must be three to four feet across--narrow enough to allow you to access the center from either side.
• Buy essential garden tools: Basic garden tools include a dirt rake, scuffle hoe, hand tools, leaf rake, garden hoe, and dramm hose for watering.
• Test the soil: Before building garden beds or planting anything, you must know if your soil is acidic, neutral, or alkaline. 
• Build your soil: Many plants prefer deep, fertile, and well-drained soil rich in organic matter. 
• Plant your seeds: Choose the right transplants and seeds from which you’ll benefit the most.
• Nurture your garden: After all is done, ensure you maintain it by watering and harvesting when needed.

What Are Some Low-Maintenance Landscaping Ideas?

Many plants and outstanding elements can add flair to your front yard but take a ton of time to maintain throughout the year. These simple tips can help you start a low-maintenance landscaping project:

• Go for ornamental grass: Ornamental grasses, like Carex Pansa grass, are easy to care for, and they add movement to a front yard as they blow in the wind. You can mow this grass if you want, and you only need to water it twice a month.
• Opt for succulents: Succulents need less maintenance than other plants, and they can still add a vibrant pop of green to your front yard. Plus, they can give your landscaping project a sculptural quality you can’t get from a regular grass lawn.
• Try a cottage garden: This is another low-maintenance landscaping option because it’s more forgiving. This type of garden is more informal because it features open borders, native plants, and dense plantings. Cottage gardens are more about winding paths and whimsical flowers. 
• Plant drought-resistant plants: Watering restrictions are common in many places, and it makes sense to cut down watering chores if possible. Pick shrubs, plants, and trees that need less water to survive. Tons of options that are perfect for a variety of climates and soils. The key is successfully matching a plant to its site and watering it well for the first two years. Once it has a strong root system, it’ll mature with minimal water.
• Hardscape your yard with permeable materials: You can set up an elegant and low-maintenance front yard using inexpensive patio pavers in a grid surrounded by rocks. Walkways, patios, courtyards, and other popular hardscape elements can add flair to any front yard, reducing landscaping chores. Choose designs and materials that enable rainwater to permeate the soil to irrigate plants, limit erosion and prevent runoffs. These include gravel, organic mulches, permeable pavers, and stone. 

What’s the Difference Between Landscaping and Maintenance?

Landscaping is the reorganization or transformation of outdoor spaces through design perspectives that happen over time. On the flip side, maintenance is a set of short-term routine activities that ensure your yard always looks best. Maintenance services include weeding, mowing and fertilizing the grass, trimming shrubs and trees, and general cleaning and tidying up jobs. 

How Can I Landscape Within a Budget?

Landscaping on a tight budget doesn’t mean settling for an ugly-looking front yard. From patios and plants to water features and window boxes, you can save a lot of money while designing and planning an attractive front yard.

• Opt for long-living structural plants: Although garden centers are always overflowing with rows of bright, colorful plants--which are incredibly tempting--it’s best to direct your landscaping budget towards long-living plants and trees that’ll make an impact for many years. This includes shade trees, evergreens, and ornamental perennials. Start with hedging plants, large feature trees, and mass perennial plants like ornamental grasses. Then, you can fill in the extra space with annuals, flowering perennials, and container plantings in future seasons. To save money when doing a landscaping project, you should choose perennial plants instead of annual plants. That’s because you’ll plant them once and enjoy them coming back year after year.
• Opt for smaller plants: Often, garden centers price plants and trees by the size of the planter pot. Although large plants can immediately impact your front yard, they’re usually more expensive. You should pick smaller, cheaper plants to save money on any landscaping project. Smaller plants often grow more quickly than larger ones when you give them adequate care, giving your yard the desired dramatic impact. 
• Go for native plants: Another way to save your landscaping budget is to go for plants native to your local area or region. Native plants are easier to grow because they’re accustomed to the local climate. Plus, they’re drought-resistant and need minimal fertilization, saving you money on maintenance and watering. 

What Can You Do With a Small Front Yard?

Your front yard is the first impression you make on neighbors, guests, and, someday, down the line--potential buyers. So, why not make sure it’s beautiful and welcoming?

Whether your front yard is big or small, these helpful front yard landscaping ideas can help you extend your favorite interior design ideas out to the streets and add personality and joy to your home’s exterior:

• Add different depths: Heights and depths can make your small front yard seem bigger. For instance, planting fuller shrubs next to trees at the top of your front yard can add lushness, allowing you to go for smaller, simpler design options. 
• Frame your walkways: Framing your walkways with mulch and thin borders, then adding solar lights, small plants, and soils, can make a small front yard more visually appealing. Your mulch beds need not be symmetrical or straight, and this landscaping project can help you spruce your small front yard in no time.
• Opt for rows of shrubbery: For a traditional, clean look, plant rows of shrubbery in your small yard. Your small front yard will look beautiful year-round, and the only maintenance chore you’ll need to do is grab the shears regularly. You can experiment with what shrubs to plant, but remember, variations in shade often provide excellent contrast.
• Go for a vertical design: Often, we have big dreams but limited space to work with. This is where verticals come in handy. For example, a tall built-in side planter can add shrubs, plants, flowers, and plants to a small front yard. You can also hang box planters in your yard to make it more visually appealing. 

Check out our front-yard curb appeal guide to learn how to beautify your front yard.

What Not to Do When Landscaping the Front Yard?

Avoid these front yard landscaping mistakes to create a beautiful personal oasis:

• Don’t over-plant: Too many perennials and shrubs can make your front yard look cluttered and overgrown. Instead, you must add a focal point in your yard to create the best visual interest. That could be a beautiful hydrangea, a tree, or a shrub. Check labels and tags at the garden center to see how tall trees and plants will grow and give them enough room to grow and mature.
• Don’t plant trees and other plants too close to the house: Don’t forget that a tree’s root system extends as far as the branches. You don’t want limbs and branches hanging over your roof or roots damaging your foundation. To avoid damaging your gutters, foundation, and roof, you must plant trees at least six feet from the house.
• Don’t add too many planting beds in your front yard: Landscaping projects are often exciting with all the options of sizes and colors. However, don’t overdo it with shrubs and flower beds everywhere. Remember, less is more! A beautiful planting bed along the foundation of the house and an accent bed somewhere is enough for a beautiful front yard.

Will a Nicely Landscaped Yard Increase My Home’s value?

A well-maintained yard can add tens of thousands of dollars to your property’s value. Landscaping is one of the few property investments you can make that increases your home’s value immediately and as time goes by. While interior design and decor concepts go out of style regularly and mechanical designs and systems wear down, trees and plants mature as years go by.

First impression matters, and when potential buyers see your yard for the first time, curb appeal and the beauty of landscaping are the first indicators of how well your property has been cared for.

Further, a home with a nicely landscaped yard has a significant price advantage over a property with no landscaping. That advantage ranges between 5.5 to 12.7% based on the property’s original value and the type of landscaping. However, there’s more to landscaping than planting a few flowers and shrubs in your yard. The number-one thing prospective buyers look for in landscaping is a well-manicured design. Next is plant size and maturity. Another important factor worth considering is the diversity of plants within a landscaping design. 

To learn more about curb appeal front-yard fences, click here.

How Can Modern Aspect Help Me?

At Modern Aspect, we can help you execute low-maintenance front yard landscaping ideas to make your yard a beautiful oasis. We also offer affordable front yard and backyard landscaping items, like mailboxes, address planters, address plaques, yard signs, and planter pots, to enhance your curb appeal. Check out our unique products today!