Our front gardens are neglected. We don’t tend to spend time out there because it’s often a tiny space filled with the car, or it’s too near a road for comfort. Despite these shortcomings, front gardens can be turned into attractive spaces and used to your advantage. Read on to learn how and to get some useful front garden ideas.
When we’re all fighting for space in an urban environment every patch of soil is precious. Here’s why front gardens matter.
1. Who doesn’t love returning to an attractive home? A parking space surrounded by weeds or concrete isn’t welcoming at all – you deserve a leafy, warm welcome home after a hard day at work.
2. Bees, birds, butterflies, and hedgehogs – there’s all manner of wildlife struggling to survive in our urban spaces. Give your local fauna a hand with some sweet nectar-filled plants, evergreen winter shelter, and a bowl of life-saving water.
3. Front gardens add value – it’s said that buyers make up their minds on a property within a few seconds. Make those seconds count with a ‘wow’ factor as they approach your home.
4. Do you know your neighbours? Spending time in the front garden means you’ll see them more often and have a readymade ‘front garden’ subject to discuss. This is true of everyone walking past because people love to comment on greenery and flowers.
So now we’ve persuaded you that front gardens matter, here are some front garden ideas to get your imagination jump-started.
Hydrangea Paniculata Limelight in Full Bloom
Front Garden Ideas
Hot or Cool? When you’re designing a garden, you can’t go wrong building a structure of evergreens and adding colour that suits the conditions. Good evergreens for a front garden include holly, pyracantha, choisya, camellia, and skimmia japonica.
If its shady add some ferns, luscious bamboo, heuchera and hosta to green up your home. If it’s hot then lavender, ceanothus, rock roses, and any woody herbs are a great choice. Whatever the conditions topiary is always a good bet. It’s modern, stylish and looks good planted up with a blast of colour from spring-flowering bulbs.
Go Up
Front gardens are compact spaces but they can be planted with small, slender trunked trees or climbers trained against the brickwork on a trellis or wire support. Good small trees for a front garden are ornamental cherries such as Prunus Amanogawa Japanese Flowering Cherry or even a half standard apple tree. Climbers such as clematis, climbing hydrangeas, honeysuckle, wisteria, and virginia creeper cling to a trellis with gusto and take up little room.
Container Life
If your front garden is paved use containers. Containers can hold trees right down to bedding plants – whatever tickles your fancy. A window box is a great way to add colour without taking up parking room too. Kitchen herbs, trailing tomatoes, and small ferns are good choices.
And let’s not forget hanging baskets which can hold contemporary trailing ivy or traditional bedding at height without sacrificing your parking space.
Low Growing
A great way to introduce food for insects is that space beneath your car. It’s only the tyres that need support so plant it up with low growers like chamomile, ajuba, thyme, or Lysimachus Nummularia Aurea, better known as Golden Creeping Jenny.
Frame Your Doorway Or Window – Or Both!
Try a couple of flowering cherries, standard hollies, bay, or interesting topiary on either side of your front door to welcome you home all year round.
Choose A Theme
If you’re keen then a themed front garden looks spectacular. Cottage garden is always popular. Pick up some wisteria, hydrangeas, tea roses, hollyhocks, lavenders, and wildflower seeds to fill the gaps.
Or if you prefer structure go Japanese with acers, white-barked small trees, bamboo, and a water feature such as a birdbath with a solar fountain. Topiary such as box balls or yew cones look good in a structured garden with white stone chips to keep the weeds down.
Very popular now are wildlife-friendly spaces and luckily they are easily achieved. Pop in a wall-hugging pyracantha for its generous flowers and berries, nepeta, honeysuckle, ivy, and winter box.
Don’t forget that at Christmas, Halloween, Eid and New Year your front garden will look amazing adorned with twinkling lights strewn through small trees, around your window box, and into the climbing plants.
Front Gardens Matter – Transforming your front garden, no matter how small, can make a big difference to your well-being, wildlife welfare, and the value of your home.
Even a few climbers, a slender tree, or a container of evergreens can boost a drab front garden and lift your spirits every day.
Front Gardens Matter!
