23 Front Yard and Backyard Ideas for a Beautiful Home.BaoHa

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

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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.
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Try Clean Cottage Style

@cottageandsea / Instagram

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.
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Define the Space

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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
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Keep It Simple and Evergreen

Michelle Berwick Designs

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.
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Include Ever-Changing Perennial Color

@gardenfromscratch / Instagram

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.
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Organic Shapes and Balance

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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.
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Add Small Statues

Wren Walker

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.
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Design Versatile Hosta Bed

@gardenfromscratch / Instagram

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
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A Woodland Spring Palette

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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.
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Choose Classic Shrubs

M. Lavender Interiors / Photo by Janet Mesic Mackie

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.
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Draw the Eye with Color

Wren Walker

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.
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Japanese Garden Inspiration

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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.
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Don’t Forget Containers

@thejardiniere / Instagram

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.

The 13 Best Planters of 2023
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Hang Gardens on a Tiny Balcony

@thetravelingapartment / Instagram

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.
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Plant a Charm of Tulips

Finding Lovely

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).
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Arcadian Shade

The Spruce / Peg Aloi

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 old world 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.
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Create an Avenue of Trees

@thelaundrygarden / Instagram

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.
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Hollyhocks: Summer Spires

@thetravellingapartment / Instagram

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.
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A Circle of Annuals

@thepsychgarden / Instagram

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.
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Include Desert Brights

Dazey Den

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.
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Forest Modern

Nile Johnson Interior Design

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.
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Xeriscape Colorfully

@beartrapgarden / Instagram

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.
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Create a Bright Driveway Garden

Design by Mindy Gayer

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.
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Ditch the Lawn

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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.
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Match Large Scale and Simple Design

@burcharddesignco / Instagram

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.
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Autumn Hues

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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.
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Build Retaining Wall Gardens

White Sands Design/Build

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.
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Mediterranean Style Gardens

Finding Lovely

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.
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Create a Lush Look

@gardens_and_architecture / Instagram

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.
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Add Desert-Friendly Containers

@beartrapgarden / Instagram

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.
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Coordinate the Colors

The Spruce / Peg Aloi

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.
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Highlight a Single Plant

@burcharddesignco / Instagram

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.
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Plant Colorful Semi-Shade Beds

@thepsychgarden / Instagram

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.
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Birdbath Garden

@thepsychgarden / Instagram

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.

The 11 Best Bird Baths of 2023
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Try Smaller Hydrangeas

Musings by Madison

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.
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Frame With Large Shrubs

Erin Williamson Design

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.
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Embrace Abundant Spring Color

@ladylandscape / Instagram

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.
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Shade Bed Walkway

@thepsychgarden / Instagram

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.
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Make a Front Door Flowerbed

Cake and Confetti

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.

Go for Modern and Minimal, Yet Colorful

Try Clean Cottage Style

Define the Space

Keep It Simple and Evergreen

Include Ever-Changing Perennial Color

Organic Shapes and Balance

Add Small Statues

Design Versatile Hosta Bed

A Woodland Spring Palette

Choose Classic Shrubs

Draw the Eye with Color

Japanese Garden Inspiration

Don’t Forget Containers

Hang Gardens on a Tiny Balcony

Plant a Charm of Tulips

Arcadian Shade

Create an Avenue of Trees

Hollyhocks: Summer Spires

A Circle of Annuals

Include Desert Brights

Forest Modern

Xeriscape Colorfully

Create a Bright Driveway Garden

Ditch the Lawn

Match Large Scale and Simple Design

Autumn Hues

Build Retaining Wall Gardens

Mediterranean Style Gardens

Create a Lush Look

Add Desert-Friendly Containers

Coordinate the Colors

Highlight a Single Plant

Plant Colorful Semi-Shade Beds

Birdbath Garden

Try Smaller Hydrangeas

Frame With Large Shrubs

Embrace Abundant Spring Color

Shade Bed Walkway

Make a Front Door Flowerbed

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