70 Impressive Front Yard Landscaping Ideas

The front yard is the part of the home that's most visible to others. Landscaping your front yard to match your home and style is the best way to create the first impression that you want visitors to have. And it doesn't take loads of money or a background in landscaping to make an impact.

We've gathered a lot of front yard landscaping ideas here, suitable for a variety of experience levels, beginner to expert. Some are simple, some a bit more complex. There's also a variety of approaches and ideas for different space sizes and shapes, for different climates, different soil situations, for sun and shade, and for beauty in all four seasons.

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Go for Modern and Minimal, Yet Colorful

The large hydrangeas in front of this modern home of wood and stone are a great choice to add curving shapes and color. Edged with a short boxwood hedge, and flanked by tall clumps of decorative grasses, the hydrangeas are part of a minimal yet fulsome design, and create a changing palette of color throughout the season.

Try Clean Cottage Style

This charming cottage-style home in California has a simple entryway accented with color and a striking vintage lighting fixture. The front yard landscape is similarly simple yet striking: a mature tree, some simple small shrubs flanking the door, and some desert-friendly perennials in soft neutral blue-greens that complement the bright aqua trim.

Define the Space

If there's a lot of lawn, you can still add gardens to define the space. This house has a well-defined area below the front steps with a stone patio and pavers. Garden beds on all sides full of colorful perennials, plus container plantings on the stairs, create a beautiful entry experience

Keep It Simple and Evergreen

Landscaping design can be as simple or as complex as you want. One easy way to have landscaping that lasts through four seasons is simply to plant evergreen shrubs. These low-growing boxwoods only need occasional trimming to keep them neat and healthy, and they look great all year round.

Include Ever-Changing Perennial Color

There's virtually no limit to the color combinations possible by combining herbaceous perennials. This summer scene includes echinacea, day lilies, daisies and phlox in shades of red, pink and white. You can experiment with different color schemes like orange and pink, yellow and blue, or red and white, and even plan color palettes around bloom time.

Organic Shapes and Balance

The angular lines of this modern house pair up well with this landscape design which includes many organic shapes, including the large mature trees on both sides. There is a wonderful symmetry to the design also, anchored by the straight walkway, with shrubs left untrimmed, spiky evergreen trees, and beds with buoyant day lilies.

Add Small Statues

Sometimes figural sculpture in the garden can look overdone with too many pieces. The "stone" birdbath here (actually made of lighter resin) balances the small figurines placed throughout this compact Florida garden. Well-placed pavers and natural rocks and stones complete the natural cottage look.

Design Versatile Hosta Bed

There are so many varieties of hosta, with a huge range of size, shape, color and texture. They maintain their form and color from spring though late fall, sending up stems with flowers in late summer. If you have a shady spot in your front yard, a bed of mixed hostas is an easy and low maintenance idea. Divide your hostas every 3-4 years and you'll have plenty to plant and share. Add some color contrast with shade-loving heucheras.

9 Hosta Garden Design Ideas to Bring Your Yard to Life

A Woodland Spring Palette

If you have a large swatch of woodland, consider planting spring bulbs. They'll get enough sun to bloom before the trees leaf out, and bulbs will multiply each year, filling in over time. This splendid spring garden features mostly blue grape hyacinths and yellow daffodils, making a vivid landscape against the green lawn and pale green tree buds, all visible from a distance. After blooming, the bulbs' foliage dies back naturally, and and can coexist nicely with large shade perennials such as hostas.

Choose Classic Shrubs

This pleasing landscape design is very straightforward and simple. There are charming window boxes on the right side windows on both floors. The beds across the front are full of 'Limelight' hydrangeas (a sturdy, reliable paniculata). There are two young trees planted on either side of the door and some container plantings on the stoop. Without looking crowded, this property has an abundance of plants defining the entire front yard.

Draw the Eye with Color

This large woodland property in New Hampshire has many mature trees and woodland undergrowth on three sides. The flower gardens by the street attract the eye with three seasons of colorful perennials, like these tall orange lilies that bloom for weeks in summer.

Japanese Garden Inspiration

The mix of elements in this front entrance area show some inspiration from Japanese garden style. This design includes a water feature, a balance of round and ragged edges, a harmonious balance of textures and shapes, stones used as sculpture, and a Japanese maple.

Don't Forget Containers

Containers can be an eye-catching design option that is easy to maintain and can be changed as often as you like. These antique cast iron urns are a classic look. The combination of curved willow branches and brightly colored annuals is unexpected and attention-getting.

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Hang Gardens on a Tiny Balcony

Okay, but what if you live in a city apartment and don't have a front yard? You can certainly make an impression with window boxes, and gain appreciative stares from passers-by. These balcony gardens feature overflowing pots and window boxes, lush with tropical plants, trailing vines and vibrant perennials.

Plant a Charm of Tulips

Is there any sight in spring more eagerly awaited than tulips in bloom? Planting large numbers of these bulbs ensures a grand show in spring, and you can choose varieties that provide continuous bloom all season long. Early blooming varieties include Empire (aka Fosteriana) tulips (like Albert Heijn), mid-season includes the Darwin hybrids (like Apricot Impression or Daydream), and May bloomers include lily-flowered tulips (like Ballerina) and the peony-flowered double late varieties (like Angelique).

Arcadian Shade

What if your front yard is tiny but your side yard is huge? This large shady garden in upstate New York is full of trees, shrubs and flowers, as well as charming style stone sculptures and pots. The garden has a peaceful yet wild look, and a sylvan quality one would expect to find in the French countryside.

Create an Avenue of Trees

This orderly design is full of lush textures and a pleasing color palette of greens and blues. This style of trees planted in a row is known as an allée (alley) or avenue, such as one would find along a city street, but located in an open area like a park or garden estate. To achieve this look, be sure to get young trees of the same age and plant at the same time, spacing them an equal distance apart. You can also create this effect with small trees or shrubs planted in containers.

Hollyhocks: Summer Spires

One often sees hollyhocks planted against a fence or wall or other structure, but their sturdy tall stems can hold their own most anywhere. This planting offers dramatic long-blooming colors in shades of pink and red that draw the eye to the red trim of the house.

A Circle of Annuals

These round beds beneath mature trees are real eye-catchers when filled with colorful easy-care summer annuals like these white and hot pink caladiums. Shade perennials including boxwoods and ferns fill up the middle section. Other plants to try could include astilbes, anemones or hostas.

Include Desert Brights

The bright orange elements of this desert home (door, wall, planter and sculpture) are a stunning and striking contrast to the assortment of rich green cacti planted in front. No doubt the oranges merge from time to time with the glorious desert sunrise and sunset skies, too.

Forest Modern

This handsome modern home with large windows is surrounded by lush forest undergrowth and mature trees. The golden light from inside the house softly illuminates the fairy tale forest setting. A wide stone path with woodland ground cover plants welcomes visitors to this forest idyll. These shady woodland plants are low maintenance and stay green through three seasons.

Xeriscape Colorfully

Planting a drought-tolerant cottage garden should never mean skimping on color. This desert garden is abundant with plants like gaillardia, yarrow, yucca, verbena and lavender that flower just fine when the hot days give way to cool nights.

Create a Bright Driveway Garden

If your main entrance is a gate or door, your design choices should focus on enhancing the area but also low maintenance plants. The bright contrast of the palette here is achieved simply with white-flowering perennials that echo the striking white wall with its dark wooden door.

Ditch the Lawn

The majority of suburban properties seem to consist of at least some percentage of lawn or grass. But it's possible to eliminate your lawn in favor of trees, perennial beds, and shrubs. It can seem daunting, but once you start working at it, you'll be glad you replaced your lawn with a verdant oasis of plants like this one. You'll have shade, beauty, and noise absorption and space to grow edible plants. Plus, you'll be attracting beneficial pollinators.

Match Large Scale and Simple Design

The minimal plantings in front of this house emphasize the beautifully conceived placement of the home in this coastal landscape. The light colored stones in the walkway enliven the black stained wood of the home's exterior, while the curving lines balance the house's angled edges. Simple yet dramatic, this design shows thoughtful consideration of the entire property's footprint.

Autumn Hues

Consider the impact of your landscape design throughout the seasons. The gorgeous golden colors of this property's mature trees in autumn are nicely paired with this modern home's golden wood trim. The small autumn display of pumpkins and gourds draws the eye and echoes that grand color palette on a smaller scale. It's hard to imagine anyone walking by this property in October and not being charmed by this bold appreciation of seasonal color.

Build Retaining Wall Gardens

This attractive southern California home features graceful mature trees and a tiered retaining wall. With room to plant, the retaining wall looks like terraced gardens. The simple heat and drought-tolerant plantings include bright-leafed succulents that add a pop of color to the house's white exterior, and even echo the color of the dark stained wood doors.

Mediterranean Style Gardens

If you have a large sunny property, consider defining the space with herb gardens and fruit trees. Many flowering herbs such as lavender, sage, borage, oregano and rosemary will spread well and increase over time, creating large bushy flowering clumps that attract pollinators. Check your growing zone to be sure you plant winter-hardy varieties.

Create a Lush Look

This image from Central Park in New York City is a perfect reminder that a beautiful garden can be inspiring. This lush grouping of daisy style chrysanthemums looks great against the evergreen hedge with autumn gold in the background. This look would be quite easy to emulate in a home garden, with daisy mums like Clara Curtis daisies.

Add Desert-Friendly Containers

This eco-friendly northern California desert home relies on sustainable, drought-tolerant plantings. These lush tropicals in pots, including cold-hardy palms that stand up to chilly desert nights, frame the entry way and can be moved around throughout the season.

Coordinate the Colors

This home's deep purple and white trim was clearly inspired by the glorious iris beds in full bloom... or was it the other way around? Every spring, you and your neighbors will enjoy the colorful showcase of German irises in shades of dark purple, lavender, blue and white.

Highlight a Single Plant

There's a lot to be said for creating a simple planting of one plant. These long-flowering lavender clumps add color, texture, and fragrance to the the front of this home. Other options with similar growth habits include flowering catmint, various salvias and coreopsis.

Plant Colorful Semi-Shade Beds

While some plants that do best in full sun may not work in dappled shade, many flowers bloom just fine with some indirect or dappled sun throughout the day. After the spring display of tulips and daffodils has gone dormant, this colorful perennial bed bursts forth in early summer with bold colors that light up the shady spots with pink echinacea, creamy hydrangeas and white-leafed caladiums.

Birdbath Garden

While most gardeners will tend to put birdbaths in the backyard, a birdbath can work in the front yard, too. Place it where there's plenty of foliage to give the birds cover so they feel safe from predators. This design is well-balanced and eye catching, with a small magnolia tree, perennial geraniums, dwarf boxwoods, dark coleus, fuzzy lambs' ears, echinacea, anemones, and assorted hostas.

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Try Smaller Hydrangeas

If you love macrophylla hydrangeas but don't quite have the room for a large shrub, you can plant them in your window boxes or containers. Hydrangeas with large blooms are often available as container plants in the spring around Easter time or at Mother's Day. This is essentially treating the shrub as a flowering annual. Deadhead the spent blooms to keep the flowers coming. In the fall you might consider giving the plant to a friend with a larger garden, as its roots will freeze in a small container.

Frame With Large Shrubs

It was once common to see enormous shrubs and hedges planted right next to older houses. This was sometimes for reasons of privacy or cooling, but also because there were fewer options for dwarf shrubs from nurseries. But for a newer home, a large shrub by the door can look great too, like a majestic guardian. When choosing and planting a shrub, be sure to allow room for it to reach its full height and width. Consider a hybrid that may be more compact. Suggestions for part shade include rhododendron, azalea, coppertina (aka ninebark), hydrangea paniculata.

Embrace Abundant Spring Color

Once the early spring bulbs have begun to fade, the late spring garden comes alive. These beds are planted with three seasons of bloom in mind, and in May the salvia (the bright purple 'May Night' cultivar is above) and peonies bloom for weeks, the alliums pop up with colorful spheres, and the hosta leaves get big seemingly overnight. Day lilies and hostas are often planted strategically to hide the remains of the early spring daffodils. Paying attention to bloom time helps you design a perennial garden that will be constantly full of dazzling colors and textures.

Shade Bed Walkway

This partial shade area by this house's front entrance has an eye-catching assortment of perennials including a small variegated dogwood, 'Autumn Brilliance' ferns and assorted hostas. The centerpiece is a reblooming mountain hydrangea that is compact and colorful ('Tuff Stuff Ah Ha'). The combination of variegated foliage and lace-cap hydrangea flowers brings airy lightness to this shady bed.

Make a Front Door Flowerbed

On a property with a large front lawn, sometimes the most practical way to create an eye-catching garden is to plant beds right by the front entrance. This easy care design includes low-growing evergreen hedges, and full perennial beds with perennials that increase every year, like irises and day lilies. These can be divided every 2 to 3 years, providing even more beauty.

Try Country Elegance

This landscape design has all the charm of an English garden. The ivy-covered walls are a lovely backdrop for the cottage style flower beds and flagstone path. Note the fullness of the shrubs left to grow into bushy, organic shapes, and the multiple areas of plantings that lead the eye. There's even some red foliage that echoes the bright red door.

A Gentle Entrance With Cottage Style

The inviting entrance to this classic Michigan bungalow deserves a charming yard to go with it. The wrap stairs are reached from a walkway of old bricks, and flanked by low-growing cottage style garden beds. Pastel and white flowers (including mini hydrangeas and dianthus) are a good choice near the dark house exterior color. Potted plants by the door continue the airy outdoorsy "surrounded by nature" feel of the open porch.

Make a Cozy Front Porch

If you have limited outdoor space it can seem daunting to make the most of it. Creating a front porch oasis is easy. Comfortable wicker chairs with washable outdoor cushions, a small table, and some plants nearby. This narrow space is cozy and the open railing overlooks the billowing hydrangeas. Potted ferns add another touch of greenery to this outdoor sanctuary.

Horizontal vs. Vertical

If your house is a sprawling modern ranch style, your garden design should include some elements that suggest height, for balance. The young trees here add some vertical shapes, and the perennial beds include upright growers including large clumping grasses.

Save Plenty of Space for Plants

This house in Sweden has a narrow passage to its entrance alongside a tall hedge. The plantings fit perfectly on the other side of the walkway of square pavers and gravel. The enticing pathway welcome visitors, and draws the eye down the path to the larger gardens behind the house.

Find Formal Yet Soft Symmetry

This grandiose Dutch Colonial home could easily overpower most landscape designs. With no mature trees in front, there's a need for a strong planting aesthetic. Notice the simple yet symmetrical design, with evergreen shrubs clipped to an oval shape, macrophylla hydrangeas for color, small trees for height in between, and containers on either side of the door. Every element is symmetrical, yet the organic shapes soften the geometric lines of the house.

Try Tropical Glamour

This large Florida home has glorious mature palm trees. To create a design that makes the best use of space and scale and embraces this tropical aesthetic, mid-size shrubs are planted on both sides of the front yard and smaller plantings and containers adorn the entrance and front porch area. The soft curving shapes of the trees and shrubs are a lovely contrast to the flat roof, striped awnings and rectangular windows.

Plant a Tree Garden

If you have a mature tree you love, you can create a round garden bed around it. This tree has a simple bed with an assortment of part-shade perennials, and a gorgeous large-flowered purple clematis vine that provides striking color in summer.

Annuals Provide Extra Color

Even a well-designed landscape like this one, full of healthy shrubs and perennials, might need a boost of color at times. Annuals can provide colorful blooms for weeks, even months, during the growing season. This beautiful front yard is made even more striking with the colorful annuals in front of the low brick wall. Long-blooming varieties to try include petunias, begonias, impatiens, salvia, marigolds, snapdragons, verbena, and lobelia.

Make a Sloped Garden

This modern house is all about the setting: a forest on a cliff above the water. There's not much level ground to plant on, so the entrance is accented with an attractive sloping rock garden, including the large rock surfaces that are naturally occurring. The cool blue-green foliage of the evergreen shrubs contrasts beautifully with the warm autumn tones of the house.

Keep It Simple

This minimalistic design feels expansive yet also strangely intimate. One potted plant by the door, one narrow evergreen shrub at the entryway, and some well-placed perennials (mostly lavender) are just enough for this open-air porch entrance. One could choose small round boxwoods or flowering catmint here as well.

Dramatic Grass

There is so much going on in this small front yard space, which is a tribute to the artistic eye of this fine garden designer. The climbing vine creates a beautiful entry point at the gate, the tall clumping grass is dramatic and graceful, and the small variegated hosta catches the eye and establishes scale. The airy ferns continue the theme of diverse textures, all in bright green foliage.

Square House, Round Shrubs

It's always a good idea to stand back and look at the overall shape and scale of your home when creating a new landscape design. This grand house, all squares and rectangles, needed rounded, softer shapes to balance its size and rather boxy shape. Small round boxwoods in front do the trick, along with small airy white hydrangeas.

Go With One Vibrant Color

Certainly one way to attract attention in the garden is with vibrant color. Choosing one color to emphasize can be a very powerful statement, and an enjoyable design to create. This garden with flowering perennials in varying shades of purple is a stunner.

Tall Trees, Monarchs of the Front Yard

Having a mature tree (or more than one) on your property may be something many take for granted until you see a new development or an old city block with no trees at all. Large trees provide shade, shelter for wildlife and birds, and natural beauty. This large house has a big front porch to enjoy the tree's shade, and flower beds on both sides of the stairs have a colorful variety of perennials for a traditional look.

Illuminate Pathways With Pale Flowers

Semi-shade is a very versatile gardening situation to have, but any shade means the yard can seem a bit dark at times. This front yard bed gets enough sun for these perennials ('White Swan' echinacea and 'Moonbeam' coreopsis) to bloom consistently, but their pale colors help light up the space. If you have limited sunlight, afternoon sun is best for plants that need partial sun to bloom.

Match the Front Door

Bright colors seem to be able to shift moods. Yellow in particular is a cheery sight in spring, which may explain the popularity of daffodils. These golden beauties are a sunny companion to the bright yellow front door of this stone cottage.

Add Early Spring Color For Early Spring Joy

Few sights are better after a long cold winter than the appearance of early spring flowers. Daffodils, Dutch hyacinths, scilla, grape hyacinths and other bulbs are easy to plant and increase every year. This flower bed also has early-blooming deep purple hellebores for extra drama, and a reflecting pool to multiply the colors.

Make Room for Porch Life

Making your porch an appealing space includes more than the furniture. Consider the landscaping nearby and how it affects the space. The tall shrub at the corner pillar here provides definition and privacy, as well as shade. The low maintenance perennials include boxwoods and clumping grasses and offer texture and color.

Spiky Is Spicy

Succulents and grasses can be wonderful low maintenance, drought-tolerant options. This southern California home has a stunning and colorful array of desert-friendly plants including yucca, blue fescue grass, agave, and sedum.

Townhouse Territory

Townhouse or condo living can be convenient, but gardening can be a challenge. If your yard has limited space or the adjacent property is close, using shrubs and plantings can offer some design solutions for small spaces. Plants can create an effective buffer zone. The low shrubs on the right form a hedge for defining the space and providing a bit of privacy. The small boxwoods planted around the walkway give the feel of a garden in a limited space. The small tree offers a bit of shade and gives the simple design a sense of fullness.

Get Creative in Narrow Spaces

This narrow strip next to a house in Sweden creates a vertical design that has artful rose trellises, lollipop shrubs, and tasteful ground covers, all on a flower bed barely two feet wide. If you think you don't have enough room for a beautiful garden space, think again.

Vivacious Vines

This simple design provides a stunning impact, with bright green climbing vines against the white brick wall. The upward growth draws attention to the small trees behind the wall. Many clinging vines or climbers could achieve this effect, including euonymus, clematis, jasmine, or chocolate vine.

Add Rocky Edges

This flower bed edged with large rocks offers some curved, organic shapes to offset the many vertical and angular shapes at the front of this house. The perennials also offer a range of dark and light colors to spruce up the impact of the solid white house and stair railings.

Feature Large Plantings for Impact

Perennial beds need not contain a huge assortment of plants to deliver a big statement. These beds in semi-shade look abundant and gorgeous with a mix of purple hydrangeas and white astilbes, flanked by trimmed evergreen shrubs and with backdrops of glorious flowering trees.

Make Color Always in Season

This stunning mature bougainvillea vine makes a dramatic entry way on this house. The complementary color scheme of purple and yellow is strikingly beautiful. If you want a flowering vine at your entrance, consider the color impact of its blooms against your house.

Frame With Shrubs and Containers

This classic Cape Cod look includes voluminous hydrangeas that will soon begin their kaleidoscopic color change from green to creamy white to pink to rose. The pink annuals in containers are a vibrant accompaniment to the seasonal show. Consider annuals in pots that can complement the blooming perennial shrubs in your front yard.

Try Seasonal Container Palettes

This welcoming arrangement of containers at the entrance of this home echoes the colors found in the garden. The deep purples and burgundy hues not only draw the eye through the garden space but create a dramatic color opposition with all the blue-green shades.

Beachside Beauty

This house in the Hamptons has plenty of space for large, tall plantings. The huge clumps of Russian sage, coreopsis, and grasses offer a vivid expanse of color and airy shapes, sturdy enough to withstand the coastal salt breeze.

Make It a Winter Wonder

The winter garden has its own quiet beauty. Leaving this pampas grass uncut allows snow to lightly coat it and creates a delicate yet dazzling display on this woodland property.

Plant a Perfumed Welcome

Imagine the delight of a neighbor walking past your fence when they inhale the heady fragrance of English roses. A showstopping front yard shouldn't just be a visual treat: why not delight the other senses, too? Fragrant varieties of roses, dianthus, irises, daffodils, and lilies, not to mention larger shrubs like lilacs and Korean spice viburnum, are a source of pleasure to people and pollinators alike.

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