Your front yard sets the stage for your home’s exterior beauty and style. It’s the first thing guests see when they come to visit. Your front yard landscape design can add depth and scale, visual interest, vibrant color and soft textures that will impact the look of your home.
Whether your Northern New Jersey home has sleekly modern lines or traditional old-world details, the right front yard landscape design can enhance your home’s architectural features and style.
With creative design planning and proper planting, your front yard can make an impressive statement that creates an inviting entrance for your guests and a beautiful backdrop for your home. Take a look at seven refreshing front yard landscape design ideas.
A Front Porch Enclosure
Your front porch is a distinctive architectural feature on your home that provides functional shelter, as well as visual appeal. Although an open front porch can be welcoming and relaxing, it has limited use much of the year for Bergen County homeowners. By enclosing your front porch, you can create an outdoor environment that can be used year-round. A front porch enclosure offers advantages:
Extended Indoor Space
An enclosed front porch can provide additional indoor living space, an especially appealing feature for small homes. It can be used for entertaining, relaxation or extra storage for coats, hats, umbrellas and footwear.
Furniture Protection
Enclosing your front porch will protect your outdoor furniture from the elements, expand your furniture’s lifespan and prevent the need for winter storage when freezing temperatures arrive.
Insect Control
Mosquitoes, flies and gnats can make an open front porch unusable, especially during spring and summer. A front porch enclosure will keep out insects and allow you to enjoy your front yard landscape design all year.
Privacy
Whether you enclose your front porch with screens or glass, you will gain added privacy. If you enjoy sitting on your front porch, an enclosure will add privacy, as well as noise reduction from neighbors and passing traffic.
Safety
If you have young children, an enclosed front porch can provide added safety. By enclosing your front porch, you can create a safe, comfortable play area with welcome light, sunshine and fresh air for your children.
Walkways and Pathways
Adding beautiful walkways and pathways to your front yard will quickly enhance curb appeal, as well as the value of your home. They can be used to create a safe, inviting entrance to your front door, a winding pathway to colorful garden areas or functional pathways to adjacent structures.
Whether you prefer the elegant look of stone, the traditional look of brick or the modern appeal of concrete, walkways and pathways will provide interesting texture and depth to your front yard landscape design.
Most walkway materials come in easy-to-install pavers that are thinner, lighter and less expensive than poured materials. Pavers are available in a variety of beautiful colors and textures that will enhance any design style. You can create walkways and pathways that blend quietly into your landscape or stand out with color, contrast and visual impact. Pavers come in a variety of shapes and sizes that can be laid to form straight, long walkways or winding pathways with intricate patterns. Since most pavers are installed over
Pavers come in a variety of shapes and sizes that can be laid to form straight, long walkways or winding pathways with intricate patterns. Since most pavers are installed over natural soil and gravel beds, you don’t have to worry about cracking from poured materials when they settle. Paving stones are resilient, easy-to-maintain and chip and crack less than poured walkway materials.
To enhance beauty and create soft contrast to hard materials, you can accent your walkways and pathways with border plants that provide lush greenery and texture or brilliant color. Border plants are a great way to balance the larger scale of trees and shrubs in your front yard.
To provide safety and soft ambiance, border your walkways and pathways with landscape lighting fixtures that enhance your home’s architectural style, materials and finishes.
Garden Beds
Planting colorful garden beds or increasing the size of your existing garden beds will add instant curb appeal and create interesting focal points for your front yard landscape design. Beautiful flowers and blooming plants can provide a rainbow of stunning color in your front yard year-round if you use plants that bloom at different times throughout each season.
Garden beds not only provide visual appeal, they also soften the hard edges of architectural materials on your house and hard surfaces on walkways and driveways. Lush green foliage adds a variety of textures while trees and shrubs add depth, height and scale. If you plant aromatic flowers and plants, they will add wonderful scents to your landscape and invite beautiful birds and butterflies to your garden areas.
With landscape advice from a garden designer at Borst Landscape & Design, you can select the right plants for your existing landscape conditions that will flourish all year and fill your front yard with vibrant blooms and lush greenery.
Specialty Gardens
Specialty GardensIn addition to garden areas filled with colorful blooming plants, you can create a unique front yard landscape design with specialty gardens that will benefit your landscape and the environment and provide a variety of advantages for your lifestyle. Depending on your existing landscape conditions and your gardening interests, there’s a variety of specialty gardens that will enhance the beauty of your front yard.
Herb Gardens
If you love to cook, consider an herb garden that will provide the essential flavorings for your favorite recipes and aromatic scents for your front yard. With sunshine, adequate water, well-draining soil and some compost or fertilizer, herbs are easy to grow. Although you can plant them in decorative pots, they grow best when they’re planted in the ground and can spread out.
Butterfly Gardens
Butterfly gardens are not only lovely to look at, but they add benefits to your landscape and the environment. What could be more beautiful than colorful butterflies fluttering around in your front yard landscape design? By growing plants that caterpillars and adult butterflies like to feed on, you can promote a healthy and natural eco-friendly outdoor environment for your home.
Zen Gardens
Zen gardens create private areas that promote serenity and calmness. By planting a zen garden in your front yard, you can create a peaceful retreat for meditation and relaxation. To enhance your zen garden atmosphere, you can add soothing water sounds with an outdoor waterfall or a beautiful outdoor pond.
Native Gardens
Native gardens use native plants that easily adapt to local climate and soil conditions. They help to reduce air pollution, require less water and don’t require fertilizers and pesticides. With a native garden, you will provide seeds, pollen and nectar that serve as a natural food source for Bergen County’s native birds, butterflies, insects and wildlife.
Arbors and Trellises
Arbors and trellises can add charm and character to your front yard landscape design and create private outdoor spaces for relaxation, family gatherings and entertaining. They can create a private entrance to a lovely corner garden area, a division between different front yard areas or a special landscape setting for conversations and quiet dinners.
Arbors and trellises provide a great way to add vertical interest to your front yard. They emphasize scale and height while providing both shade and privacy. Typically used as support for a variety of trailing vines and plants, arbors and trellises offer the perfect opportunity to create a beautiful focal point in your front yard.
By adding an arbor or trellis, you can create a unique landscape area with overhead greenery, colorful blooms, aromatic scents and outdoor lighting. An arbor or trellis is a great way to create special areas in your front yard such as:
- Private cutting gardens
- Quiet, family gathering spots
- Romantic dining areas
- Relaxing areas for morning coffee
- Private areas for entertaining friends
Water Features
Water FeaturesThe soothing sounds of water instantly provide an atmosphere of comfort and calmness. To add curb appeal, welcoming ambiance and unique architectural interest, consider adding a fountain, waterfall, running stream or outdoor pond to your front yard landscape design.
Whatever the style of your Bergen County home, unique outdoor water features can enhance architectural design elements and create a special entrance to your front door.
Fountain
If your Northern NJ home has traditional, old-world features, consider a tiered outdoor fountain made of stone, brick or concrete. It will create height and visual interest in your front yard landscape. To add impact and soft ambiance, light the fountain at night to create a dramatic entrance.
Waterfall
An outdoor waterfall is a great way to create a spectacular entrance. You can build a natural rock waterfall for rustic appeal or incorporate a waterfall into a concrete or stone wall for a modern look. The sounds of running water in your front yard will create an inviting entrance and a spectacular focal point.
Running Stream
With a landscape design professional from Borst Landscape & Design, you can incorporate a running stream into your front yard landscape design. With a recirculating pump, underwater lighting and the right plants, you can turn your front yard into an oasis with dramatic appeal.
Koi Pond
Whether your home is traditional, transitional or modern, a beautiful outdoor koi pond will create a front yard landscape with unique appeal. As well as a special focal point, it will provide a beautiful gathering spot for guests and neighbors. An outdoor koi pond can provide years of outdoor enjoyment.
Fencing
Adding fencing around your front yard will create visual interest and additional privacy for your property. Whether you prefer the look of a natural wood fence with a stained finish or a picket fence painted in brilliant white, a fence will add style and value.
Depending on your property layout and size, you can enhance the appeal of any style fence with border plants. Landscaping along fence lines will soften hard edges, camouflage imperfections and create visual interest. Lush greenery, colorful flowers and a variety of textures will create a finished, well-maintained appearance that enhances your front yard and your home.
For most homeowners, a white picket fence evokes the idea of cottage gardens filled with lavender, roses and fragrant, colorful blooms. Whatever look you’re going for, if you tie your fence planting to the rest of your landscape, it will look like an integral part of your front yard landscape design plan, rather than an afterthought. Repeat plants along the fence line and in the front yard to create unity and structure.
When selecting landscaping plants, look for plants that bloom throughout all four seasons. Choose some wonderful spring and summer flowers, as well as a variety of plants and shrubs that produce fall and winter color.
