Gardening Your Front Yard

In Southern California where I live, we can thank several years of drought for finally opening people’s eyes. I’m not talking about the need to conserve water, although that was a positive result. I’m talking about the wonders of landscaping the front yard with something other than grass and a few token shrubs and flower beds.

Gardening Front Yards

I’d always thought it ironic. In a climate where you can grow just about anything all year long, including flowering and fruiting plants, many people insisted on using most of their front yard space for green grass. I’m happy to say that gardening in the front yard—true gardening—has finally caught on in So Cal. It’s now acceptable in many circles to treat your front yard like a backyard.

The book Gardening Your Front Yard: Projects and Ideas for Big & Small Spaces shows you how to reimagine your front yard. Make your front yard stylish by adding gorgeous trees, flowering shrubs, annuals, perennials and edibles. Using this book, you can create a picture-perfect front yard that has nonstop curb appeal. The options when it comes to colors, sizes and shapes of plants makes it possible to create a work of horticultural art in your front yard.

Front Yard Gardening Ideas

No matter where you live, Gardening Your Front Yard will give you plenty of great ideas for sprucing up the part of your garden everyone sees. Check out the many projects in this beautiful and useful book. One of my favorites is the Vertical Privacy Plant Stand, pictured below.

Also find detailed instructions for making a live-edge raised bed, Rolling Versailles-Inspired Planter, pretty Garden Obelisk and a handy Staircase Planter.

Savvy Front Yard Gardening

Author Tara Nolan is a garden writer and editor. She’s cofounder with three other garden writers of Savvy Gardening and does work for the Toronto Botanical Garden and Canadian Garden Council. She puts all her years of horticultural expertise into this well-illustrated book.

The gorgeous photos of beautifully landscaped front yards are inspiring all on their own. Like this front yard below, brimming with ornamental grass. I’ve been planting such grasses in my yard, so this is a look I’m working on achieving.

If you have a front or side yard challenge, Nolan’s book likely has a few solutions. For instance, find out all about adding a patio to your front yard garden, sneaking veggies into side yards and how to create a driveway garden.

Front Yard Vegetable Gardening

The section on “Building with Front Yard Vegetable Gardening in Mind” shows you how raised beds can elevate the exterior of your home to great garden heights. Find ideas for wooden and stone raised beds for gracing your front yard.

Gardening Your Front Yard also offers tips for small front yards. For instance, your focal point in such a yard may be a walkway, like those pictured below.

Other useful advice and instructions found in this book include how to train vines up brickwork and planting around and in hell strips and foundation walls. Nolan gives advice for shade gardens, as well as mixing edible and landscape plants, and even planting in birdbaths.

I recommend Gardening Your Front Yard to anyone looking to create an eye-catching and inviting front yard. The book promises to inspire nonstop ideas for making your front yard a living masterpiece.