7 Front Yard Landscaping Ideas To Totally Transform Your Outdoor Space
First impressions count! Learn about some front yard landscaping ideas to create a lasting impression in front of your home.


Gardeners love front yard landscaping ideas! Everyone knows how important and lasting first impressions can be, and that goes for your house too. Your front yard sets the stage for all who enter, whether it’s friends coming to visit or just your family heading home after an outing. If your front landscaping doesn’t impress, it’s time for a change. Read on for ideas that will enchant family and visitors alike.
Transformational Front Yard Landscaping Ideas
Are you ready to rewrite your home’s first impression? Here are seven ideas - from easy to challenging - that ups the ante when it comes to pow-power. With a little effort, your front yard landscape can move from boring to brilliant.
1. Replace Grass With a Garden
In yesteryear, a neat square of turf grass was the opening act of the American dream. Today, it has outlived its usefulness. Turf is boring, requires a lot of water and a variety of chemicals to grow, and then there’s the constant maintenance. Why not use the no-till grass removal method to easily get rid of that lawn, then put in flowers, trees, or even veggies for an instant front-yard facelift?
2. Pick Plants That Complement Your Paint Color
Here’s a front yard landscape idea you can combine with the first one or use on its own: coordinate plants with your paint. Too much matchy-matchy in clothing and accessories is dated, but picking foliage and flowers that work well with your house color helps make your place stand out.
3. Add Trees With Four Season Interest
Any tree will add some beauty to your front yard landscaping, whether that be spring blossoms or autumn color. But if you pick carefully, you can select a tree that increases your home’s appeal in all four seasons. Four season interest trees may have with spring flowers and fiery leaves in autumn, but also delight with fruits in summer and interesting bark in winter
4. Select Plants That Increase Home Value
A home is not only a gardener’s castle, but also a major investment. Keeping that in mind, it’s a great idea to keep curb appeal in mind when you are picking sifting through front yard ideas. Go for long-flowering perennials or shrubs with fragrant flowers to up the value of your home sweet home.
5. Try the “Unexpected Red” Theory
Trending garden color schemes come and go, but one color that always offers “pow-power” is red. This vibrant and lovely color catches every passing eye. When trying the "unexpected red" theory in your garden, you could start with one red-flower bed or one red-leaf tree, then see how much farther you’d like to go.
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6. Brighten Up Your Winter Landscape
If you think of winter as the “barren” season, it’s time to revamp your landscaping. Some shrubs and trees offer stunning winter color, from evergreen hollies with bright berries to exfoliating bark on fruit trees. These are the ones that will brighten up the cold days of winter.
7. Utilize Every Area – Even Under Trees
When you are trying to add beauty to your front yard landscaping, it’s fun and so appealing to tuck pretty plants into the space beneath trees. Not every plant will do, since these areas are in light to deep shade, but there are some amazing plants that grow under trees.

Teo Spengler is a master gardener and a docent at the San Francisco Botanical Garden, where she hosts public tours. She has studied horticulture and written about nature, trees, plants, and gardening for more than two decades. Her extended family includes some 30 houseplants and hundreds of outdoor plants, including 250 trees, which are her main passion. Spengler currently splits her life between San Francisco and the French Basque Country, though she was raised in Alaska, giving her experience of gardening in a range of climates.
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