Innovative Front Yard Landscaping – Home > Team > Design Basics > 12 Functional Front Yard Ideas That Add Liveable (and Beautiful) Square Footage
The theory is that pandemic isolation forces our homes to meet all our functional needs. Due to space constraints and indoor fever, homeowners began taking classes out into their backyards. Outdoor living has become an integral part of well-being.
Innovative Front Yard Landscaping
Pandemic isolation has eased, but our taste for the outdoor life has not changed. Having learned first-hand how time spent outdoors improves our quality of life, we are reconfiguring our yards so we can spend more time outdoors.
Maximizing Your Space: Small Front Yard Landscaping Ideas
For generations, front yards have been little more than decorative foregrounds, but the standards for what we can do with them are rapidly evolving. More than ever, it’s fair game for front yard designs to meet homeowners’ needs by providing places to work, play, eat, grow food or simply socialize with friends and neighbors.
Ready to get more out of your yard? Looking for front yard landscaping ideas? Big! Let’s take a look at a few projects that are reimagining the front yard as a space not just for viewing, but for living.
Plantings, a clean look inside, and comfortable seating are all you need to give your yard a social edge.
The answer depends on your yard and your goals, but as this design shows, attractive plantings, clear views of the outdoors, and comfortable seating are a great place to start.
Budget Friendly And Easy Small Area Front Yard Landscaping Ideas — Lord Decor
Flower beds filled with flowering perennials and shrubs surround the front patio, which is topped with crisp, decomposed granite for a casual, rustic feel. Bold bougainvillea and a specimen olive tree create a triangle of focal points, defining boundaries while maintaining open edges along most of the patio perimeter.
Those open edges are key: sight lines connect the sidewalk and seating area, beckoning neighbors to pull up a chair. Extending the DG from the sidewalk also implies permission to enter the territory.
After all, it doesn’t take much to create a cozy, social outdoor living space. In fact, the lightness we see here has benefits such as lower installation costs and greater flexibility – this movable furniture can be added or removed at will, depending on the situation.
A series of open rooms surround the front yard, easily wrapping around the axis of the paver, ending at the front door.
Of The Best Townhouse Landscaping Ideas (and Pictures) For Alexandria And Arlington, Va
The owners of this modern Austin rental wanted their front yard landscaping to feel like an extension of the home itself. This goal is most strikingly achieved with the pergola, which matches the house’s black and light exterior while simultaneously extending the wallless room away from its front façade.
Take a look at the initial “wow” of a pergola, however, and you’ll quickly realize that the three main landscape spaces—the dining area, the seating area, and the fire pit—provide a seamless sequence of rooms for outdoor living.
Careful design of boundaries also plays a role. A translucent pergola separates the living and dining areas, but otherwise leaves all edges wide open, creating a sense of shared space and easy movement that makes spaces feel larger and more connected.
Importantly, each room has direct views of the front yard plantings, whose dappled canopy and swaying ornamental grasses add softness and charm to the overall ambiance.
Creative Front Yard Fence Ideas To Try Today
It’s not as simple as the previous design, but is no less attractive thanks to its cohesive aesthetic, flowing layout and tight integration between the landscape and plantings.
A limited color palette in both landscaping and landscaping creates a sense of cohesion while drawing attention to the striking architecture.
As in the previous project, the project provides several recreation areas on a common surface. However, instead of a deck and grass, we get ivory herringbone pavers and a beautiful mix of shrubs and perennials, not to mention a large front lawn.
Inside the paved area, furniture is arranged to define distinct zones, which are themselves emphasized by the change in material of the house’s façade.
Front Yard Landscaping Ideas
As with the previous project, the design minimizes physical barriers between spaces, choosing instead to maximize openness and connectivity. This creates a spacious and flowing feel to the patio. It also creates a beautiful, uniform foreground, allowing the home’s intricate design to take center stage—a good trick for enhancing curb appeal.
Answer? Depends on your HOA, but if you want a functional front yard, this is almost always possible.
Clients in areas with a more traditional aesthetic, including many HOA communities, may encounter a little more resistance to the idea of bringing functional spaces into the front yard, especially if they are floating separately from the house.
If this describes your situation, please reach out to our old friend The Porch. By integrating functional spaces into porch designs, front yards can maintain a traditional look while enhancing their functional characteristics.
Surprising Front Yard Landscaping Ideas
Here, a classic porch swing on one side is contrasted with comfortable lounge chairs on the other. The design is simple, attractive and ready to communicate.
Where there is a will, there is a way. If you have a veranda, but there is little space on it, try adding functional areas next to it.
Some features, such as fire pits or dining areas, require a little more space than some porches can provide.
Not to worry! Try placing new functional areas near the porch, as is done in this design.
No Grass Yard Ideas For A Low Maintenance Oasis In Florida
Repeating motifs from other parts of the porch will give your new space a sense of belonging. In this case, the design repeats the motif of decorative grass stands and a light, neutral color palette in the furniture and ground cover material. This visual consistency helps the new functional space feel like an extension of the porch.
Front yard fences designed to create front yard play areas must balance attractive design and visual permeability with the need to effectively contain children and pets.
Dogs and children, bless their hearts, shouldn’t think twice about running outside.
If your dog can’t jump, all that’s needed is a low fence that’s thick enough to keep kids and puppies from slipping through. We offer fence designs that use wire or boards with moderate (less than 3 inches) gaps that keep your loved ones out while letting in light and maintaining an inviting feel to passersby.
Sidewalk Landscaping Ideas
This design takes just such an approach by placing attractive planting beds along the base of the street-side fence, while still providing an abundant lawn where children can frolic within the safe confines of the fence.
Rather than investing in large, permanent play structures that children will eventually outgrow, we offer flexible space that can cycle through lighter play features to meet the changing needs of children or adults.
This children’s area has natural wood play elements that are suitable for both children and adults. We all need to have fun, right?
Instead of fencing, these homeowners rely on planting to keep their children safe. The garden design uses durable, child-safe (non-toxic and non-sharp) shrubs and perennials, planted densely to avoid gaps that children can crawl through.
Stunning Front Yard Ideas For Your Home
For their part, adults get a dedicated seating area at one end of the lawn where they can relax while keeping an eye on the children. A water feature located along the entrance path at the other end of the lawn creates a calming atmosphere and provides fun entertainment for children.
This design cleverly combines modern and rustic features. His approach to privacy—blocking some views and letting others through—takes a similar approach, offering a sense of solitude with nature without completely disconnecting from the urban environment.
Privacy may be the biggest concern clients face when it comes to functional front yards. Homeowners like the idea of making better use of their front yard space, but don’t necessarily want it on display for neighbors to see.
Good news? You can tailor your yard design to provide as much or as little privacy protection as you wish.
Contemporary Front Yard Design Ideas On A Budget
Often the planting itself can do all the work. Greenery at ground level combined with understory trees such as Japanese maple or dogwood can create an attractive layered planting design that also blocks most incoming sight lines. Those looking for a more complete blockade from prying eyes can install a privacy fence or thick evergreen hedge. Key species can often be hidden by a well-placed tree, tall grass or shrub, or even a trellis panel planted with climbing vines.
Your privacy solution should be tailored to the style of your home. To protect your leisure time, you should also bring in low-maintenance plants.
Combining modern pavers, decking and lighting with rustic gravel and shaggy, naturalistic plantings, this design uses tall, evenly spaced evergreens and a 4-foot-tall fence to create a semi-private ambiance in this outdoor fire pit area. The fence blocks the view of those seated, and gaps between the evergreens allow views of the raised terrace and living room.
The tree canopy overhead provides dappled shade for pleasant daytime entertaining, while the landscape lighting and fire pit itself create a pleasant space for enjoying the evening under the stars.
Modern Front Yard Landscaping: 10 Unique Landscaping Ideas
A row of bamboo provides maximum privacy while occupying minimal space, leaving additional space for a functional front yard.