Every owner of a private house strives to make his home comfortable and beautiful. This applies to both the building itself and the surrounding area. And if the courtyard is hidden from prying eyes, then the front garden, a piece of land near the house, between its facade and the fence, is actually the “face” of the estate, so special attention is paid to its design.
Beautiful front garden near a brick house
Small front garden in front of the house
If you want to arrange the front garden in front of your house with your own hands so that it becomes the hallmark of your home and attracts everyone's attention, you need to spend a lot of effort and time. However, the result will exceed all expectations. By using imagination and non-standard solutions, you can make your front garden a real work of landscape art.
When designing a front garden, two options are used: open and closed. The first option provides for the arrangement of plants and other landscape design elements so that the best view is from the street. In the closed version, plant compositions are placed “facing” the house. The choice depends on the layout of the site and the desires of the owners.
Front garden with path in the courtyard of the house
Front garden of various flowers in front of the house
Fencing for the front garden
The appearance of the front garden largely depends on its fencing, which often serves a decorative function. Today, there are many types of fencing, among which you can choose an option that harmoniously complements the design of the front garden and matches the style of the building facade.
Decorative stone fencing for the front garden
Classic white wooden fence
If there are forged bars on the windows of the house, then an openwork fence for the front garden with a similar pattern will form a single ensemble with them. A huge variety of patterns that artistic forging masters can embody in metal will give your home and area a unique look.
Wrought iron fence for the front garden
A classic option is a wooden picket fence, and a wicker fence is perfect for creating a rustic-style front garden. A beautiful fence for a front garden is its frame, which gives the area a holistic and finished look. If you wish, you can make a wooden fence for your front garden with your own hands.
Wicker fencing
The design of the front garden should be in harmony not only with the fence, but also with the architectural appearance of the house. Not only specialists - landscape designers - can make this area equipped, stylish and well-groomed. This task can be done by anyone who loves gardening and is ready to use a creative approach. How to decorate a front garden with your own hands - this will be discussed further.
Stone fencing
Low fence for the garden
Small front garden near the house
Front garden with stone fence
Original fence for the front garden made of bamboo
Front garden with a conditional fence made of large stones
How to make a beautiful front garden?
It is impossible to get the ideal option without observing stylistic nuances, adjusted for personal taste and financial and other capabilities.
It is very important to figure out which style suits you best. You will create your own patio with your own hands, taking into account the requirements of the style that you have chosen for your front garden.
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Front garden design: beauty and harmony
First you need to decide what you want your front garden to look like. In this area, you can arrange a flower garden by selecting the plants in the front garden in such a way as to ensure their continuous flowering from early spring until frost. This may be a familiar flowerbed, or, depending on the characteristics of the site, one of its varieties:
- Rabatka. If your front garden has a rectangular shape and occupies the area between the fence and the facade of the house, you can turn it into a garden by planting flowers in even rows.
- Rock garden (alpine slide). This is the name given to a landscape composition that imitates a mountain landscape. To create it you will need stones and ornamental plants.
- Border. If there is a path leading from the gate to the porch of the house, then the area with flowers framing it is called a border.
- Mixborder. This is the most common type of flower garden, which is a complex composition of a variety of flowering and ornamental plants.
Front garden in front of a wooden country house
Front garden with stone slab fencing
Small front garden in classic style
Front garden on the lawn near the house
Front garden near the entrance to the house
Choosing plants for the front garden: basic rules
When selecting ornamental plants, the following factors must be taken into account:
- Many flowers in the front garden are light-loving, and for lush flowering they need open sunny areas. These include daisies, peonies, petunias, asters, lupins, phlox, and gladioli. Forget-me-nots, hostas and ferns thrive in shade. Depending on which side, sunny or shady, your front garden is located, the assortment of plants will depend.
- Flowering dates. There are early flowering plants, which include most bulbous plants: crocuses, hyacinths, daffodils, tulips, as well as lilies of the valley, daisies and primroses. Medium-flowering plants include peonies, irises, daylilies, phlox, bells, marigolds, nasturtiums, and cosmos. From the end of August until almost frost, late-blooming dahlias, asters and chrysanthemums bloom. If you want to enjoy continuous flowering for several months, you need to make sure that your front garden has flowers with different flowering periods.
- Plant height. Delphinium, foxglove, gladiolus, lupine, canna are tall plants. Medium-growing varieties include chamomile, poppy, salvia, bellflower, and rudbeckia. Scabiosa, purslane, pansies, and nasturtium are called low-growing. And sedum, subulate phlox and saxifrage are considered creeping (ground cover). To make your front garden look harmonious, you need to combine flowers of different heights, creating original compositions. In closed front gardens, the tallest plants are placed along the fence.
- Lifespan of plants. All plants are divided into annual, biennial and perennial. The life cycle of annual plants lasts only one season. These include petunias, marigolds, cosmos, asters, and snapdragons. In biennial plants, a rosette of leaves is formed in the first year of life, and flowering occurs in the second season. Turkish carnations, pansies, foxgloves, and daisies are grown as biennials. Perennial plants can grow in one place for several years, and most of them overwinter in the ground: chamomile, lupine, daylily, iris, rudbeckia. Perennials such as dahlias, callas and gladioli are dug up after flowering and stored in a cool, dry and dark place in the winter, and planted in the ground in the spring.
To make your front garden look beautiful and delight you with continuous flowering, you need to wisely select plants according to flowering time, life expectancy, height and color scheme. When planting perennial plants, you need to take into account that they will grow from year to year, so their placement should not be too dense. In the early years, annuals can be planted between them to fill the empty space.
To the delight of front garden owners, there are a large number of plants that bloom continuously almost all summer. These are perennial phloxes, roses and hydrangeas. Of the annuals, salvias, petunias, lavatera, cosmos, morning glory, and nasturtiums will delight with lush and long-lasting flowering. Having harmoniously selected the color scheme of the front garden, you will admire the riot of bright colors of nature for several months.
Front garden in front of a stone house
Front garden of various types of flowers and shrubs
Front garden with interesting decorative details
Semicircular front garden in a stone fence
If you decide to arrange a front garden for the first time, or do not have the opportunity to devote too much time to caring for plants, pay attention to unpretentious flowering plants. Irises, sedums, peonies, daylilies and poppies are among the most unpretentious perennials. Annual petunias, morning glory, nasturtiums, calendulas, and sweet peas will also not cause much trouble either during planting or care.
Selection of plants
Plants for the front garden are selected according to several principles:
- Care requirements;
- Compatibility with each other;
- Flowering period and duration;
- Decorative after flowering;
- Winter hardiness and shelter requirements.
- Lifespan (annuals, biennials, subannuals or perennials).
- Garden style.
These principles must be taken into account primarily in order to facilitate the care of flowers, as well as to ensure the normal development of each of them. Style is taken into account when a specific style is chosen and the garden fully corresponds to it: strict English style, Japanese garden, country style.
But often owners prefer not to strictly adhere to one style, so as not to limit themselves in the choice of plants.
You can read about choosing plants for the front garden here.
Front garden style: which one to choose?
There are many styles for decorating a front garden: oriental, classic, rural, etc. How to decorate a front garden, which style to choose for its design, depends only on the wishes of the owners. The main thing is that the beautiful front gardens are in harmony with the other areas and correspond to the overall style of the house and other buildings.
Front garden with decorative bridge
Front garden with stone decor
A laconic, minimalist front garden with straight paths lined with paving slabs and geometric flower beds is perfect for buildings made in a modern style. Plants for such flower beds will need to be low-growing or creeping: awl-shaped phlox, broom, sedum, cereal grasses.
For an Asian-style front garden, flowering perennial plants of not too bright colors, dwarf coniferous trees and low-growing shrubs are used: boxwood, juniper, thuja. Be sure to decorate the front garden in the form of untreated, “wild” natural stone.
Front garden in Asian style
The front garden in front of a private house in a romantic style welcomes the presence of garden arches with climbing roses, gravel paths and flower beds with bright, lushly flowering plants: asters, peonies, dahlias, petunias, salvias.
Front garden in a romantic style
The rustic forbs of a front garden in a country style will harmonize with urban buildings, a house in the village, and a country house. This style has a special effect of negligence. Beautiful front gardens in this direction are distinguished by wicker hedges and unpretentious perennials that do not require careful care.
Unusual front garden with barrel decor
Small front garden in front of a country house
Front garden with bushes in front of the house entrance
By wisely selecting decorative and flowering plants, you can beautifully decorate your front garden and turn this area into a colorful oasis. It will look bright and stylish, attract admiring glances from others, and will become the highlight of your estate.
