Front Yard Flower Gardens

A lush, colorful flower garden is the perfect way to dress up your front yard. Create more visual impact by using your plantings to accent a gently curving walkway. The combination adds a big punch of color and interest and offers appeal in all four seasons. Incorporate cheery container gardens by the front door to add even more color, texture, and fragrance.

If you're not sure how to start, a flower-filled front yard cottage garden is a good choice. Cottage gardens look good with most house styles, and lush, romantic flowers, such as roses, peonies, or hydrangeas, add lots of drama.

A simple white picket fence makes a fantastic backdrop for a flower garden's summer show. This garden includes purple iris, red and apricot roses, and creeping thyme.

A front yard flower garden can make your landscape easier to care for because there's less mowing and edging to worry about. Here, colorful blooms dress up a traditional white picket fence and eliminate the need for using a string trimmer under the fence.

Test Garden Tip: Make your front yard flower garden extra appealing by incorporating fragrant flowers, such as sweet pea, Oriental lily, and herbs.

If you have a front porch, add a skirt of colorful flowers. Even a tiny pocket planting such as the one shown here offers big color and interest in the front yard. Mix annuals with perennials and bulbs -- and a dwarf evergreen or two -- so you can enjoy the show all year long.

Embrace the front yard garden look by getting rid of your sidewalk and putting in loosely spaced flagstones. (Note: We know this is not as applicable in snowy winter climates.) Low-maintenance groundcovers between the stones will create a carpet of color and interest.

Instead of mowing that strip of yard between a fence and sidewalk, fill it with a flower garden. The blooms add color and interest and prevent the fence from feeling like a barrier. This makes your front yard appear more welcoming.

Don't be afraid of color in your front yard. A riot of shades gives this landscape a romantic cottage garden feel. Climbing roses on the pergola over the front entry perfume the air, and a clipped boxwood hedge along the path gives the yard a sense of boundary.

Using color in a big way is an easy way to give your front yard garden a lot of impact. Here, bright red bougainvilleas clothe the front porch, while white marguerite daisies and blue lobelia playfully cloak the front walk. Yellow pansies add a bit of extra sparkle.

Create an impact in your front yard first thing each spring with colorful bulbs, cool-season flowers (such as pansies), and spring-flowering trees and shrubs (such as this redbud). As the bulbs fade, later-blooming perennials will take center stage. Accent them with summer-flowering annuals and perennials.

Repetition is a trick used by garden designers to create balance and cohesivess. Make your front yard stand out from the crowd by repeating pockets of color to draw your eye down a walkway or along the front of your house. Here, beautiful blue lobelia is joined by a riot of other early-blooming plants.

Spikes of easy-care Russian sage, sedum, and ornamental grasses among other perennials and shrubs add texture and color without making the front yard seem too crazy or overwhelming. A stretch of lawn between the foundation plantings and the sidewalk allows easy viewing of both flower gardens.

This flower-filled front yard garden incorporates lots of herbs and vegetables, too -- so harvesting fresh, homegrown produce is a breeze. Planting flowers with your vegetables helps attract pollinators for extra yields.

A bright yellow house is a perfect foil for a colorful mix of blooms in a front yard garden. The bright stucco wall, brick walkway, and colorful blooms combine beautifully to enhance a Spanish theme in this front yard.

Make a statement in your front yard garden with a good view. Clematis on an arbor offers a striking entryway, for example. The towering arch creates a tunnel, offering the illusion that the yard is much larger than it actually is. Bright containers against the house help draw you in.

A street-side front yard flower garden adds a pocket of color and breaks up a large expanse of front lawn, creating lots of interest in just a small amount of space. Front yard flower gardens are also a fantastic way to attract birds, butterflies, and other wildlife.

Create a sense of privacy and illusion in your front yard by planting some taller specimens near your sidewalk. Airy plants will create a screen that allows visitors to peek through without having a wide-open view.