Could your front yard landscaping use some freshening up this season? Maybe you’ve lived in your home for a long time and it’s time to start over, or perhaps you’re just looking for a few new ideas for styling your front porch. Whether your front landscape is in the sun or shade, you will find inspiration in these ten ideas. Remember to save your favorites from the list so you will have them when you’re ready to tackle the project.
Idea #1: Use Annuals as a Color Accent
Is your landscape already established? An easy way to boost your home’s curb appeal is to add a border of easy-care annuals in front of your existing plantings for a bright pop of color. In this full sun garden, Supertunia Vista® Bubblegum® petunias line the front landscape bed and fill the window boxes across the front of the house. Supertunia Mini Vista® petunias would also work beautifully for such an application. Since all Supertunias are self-cleaning, you’ll enjoy non-stop blooms all season without deadheading.
Idea #2: Start with EZ Scapes™ Perennial Garden Kits
Leave the design work to the pros! Developed by perennial experts, our EZ Scapes perennial garden kits contain three to four varieties of perennials that combine perfectly together. They are designed to provide multi-season interest, continuous blooms and attractive foliage – all in plants that share a need for similar growing conditions. Categorized by traits such as deer resistance, heat tolerance, pollinator attraction and more, there is an EZ Scapes kit to fit most landscape applications. Browse our 30+ EZ Scapes perennial garden kits.
Idea #3: Coordinate Your Porch and Foundation Bed Plantings
One trick to make your front yard gardens look as if they were designed by a pro is to coordinate the plants in your porch pots or baskets and your front foundation beds. With this charming bungalow, hanging baskets brimming with Supertunia Mini Vista® Pink Star petunias dress up the front porch. Notice they are also repeated in the porch pots on both ends of the stairs and again in the corners of the front garden beds. The repetition creates balance and continuity in the design.
Idea #4: Rely on Container Plantings to Freshen Up Mature Gardens
If your home has a well-established landscape with mature shade trees, you probably don’t have much room left in your garden beds for new plants. That’s where containers can play an important role in freshening up your home’s look with fresh foliage and colorful blooms.
Your porch can become a stage set with a bevy of attractive planters filled with shade-tolerant plants. In this example, ColorBlaze® coleus, Summer Wave® wishbone flowers, Surefire® begonias, Sweet Caroline sweet potato vines and purple spiderwort provide all-summer interest.
Idea #5: Start with a Clean Slate of Site-Suitable Plants
If the little tree you planted on your front lawn decades ago is now casting shade over your entire front landscape, your gardens will need to transition from once-sunny beds to those with more shade-loving plants. That’s what happened at the home pictured here. Just out of view is a large oak tree on the front lawn that casts shade over the whole front of the house.
All of the old landscaping was torn out and replaced with a mixed border of interesting foliage plants and contrasting textures. A bright apricot front door and coordinating annuals contribute a warm splash of color. Hardy Kodiak® diervilla, brunnera, coral bells and Athyrium ferns return year after year in the landscape while the container plants are switched up annually. This year, they are filled with ColorBlaze® coleus, Heart to Heart® caladiums and impatiens, and next year will bring the opportunity to try something new.
Idea #6: Make Your Porch an Extension of Your Home
Summer is porch sittin’ season! Make it an extension of your home’s living space by adding seating, rugs and flowers to enhance your outdoor living experience. Here, hanging baskets filled with Superbells® Double calibrachoas and creeping wire vine make good use of vertical space while helping to screen the view for a bit of privacy. Since the baskets are loaded with blooms, the floor pots were used for lush foliage plants including Heart to Heart® caladiums and ferns.
Idea #7: Shrubs Are for Containers, Too!
Consider switching up a few of your porch pots to hold shrubs instead of annuals for a different look that could last from year to year. Dwarf, non-hardy and trailing varieties of shrubs make good candidates since they won’t outgrow their containers quickly and they can be moved under cover or indoors for winter.
Here, the arching, flower-lined stems of the new Fairytrail Fresco® Cascade Hydrangea® look gorgeous displayed in a container, plus it can handle the shade of the covered porch. Other shrubs you might try in containers include Estrellita™ Bouvardia, Hollywood Hibiscus™ (tropical hibiscus), Juiced® Jessamine, roses and Chicklet® Tecoma.
Idea #8: Plant Layered Hedges
Layered hedges – meaning those that include two or three parallel rows of plants – have been trending over the last five to ten years, especially for foundation plantings. This simple approach is easy to design, shop for, install and maintain, all while creating beautiful curb appeal. Evergreen, deciduous, or a mix of the two can be used in layered hedges.
In the example pictured here, a row of Incrediball® smooth hydrangeas forms the taller hedge fronted by dwarf Pugster Blue® butterfly bushes. Together, they provide color from early summer to frost. Another popular look is to grow boxwood, inkberry holly, or something similar as a short, trimmed hedge in front of a row of hydrangeas.
Idea #9: Save Time (and Your Plants!) with Self-Watering Containers
If you’re like many people, you typically enter your home through your garage and leave the front door for visitors. In such situations, it can be easy to forget about watering your porch pots until it’s too late. Self-watering containers are ideal for this situation and for parts of your yard that aren’t near a hose. They are also great for homeowners who travel often, don’t have much time to water, or are tired of lugging around a heavy hose. Most only need to be refilled once per week.
Check out our Weekender® self-watering hanging baskets online and in-store as well as our AquaPots® self-watering planters like those pictured here at our retail garden center.
Idea #10: Enhance Your Home with Fresh Paint and Hardscaping
Sometimes, it’s not only a home’s landscaping that makes it appealing from the street. It is also details like an eye-catching paint color, hardscaping like a pergola or retaining wall, or porch furniture. Here, crisp lime green and contrasting white paint make this home the most unique one on the block. An overhead structure casts just enough shade to make the porch comfortable for the homeowners to sit and enjoy their morning coffee there. Vividly colored geraniums, sweet potato vines and lantana really pop against the lime green walls.
Inspired to work on your front yard landscaping?
*All photos courtesy of Proven Winners except EZ Scapes, courtesy of Walters Gardens, Inc.