Homeowners understand that their front yards are critical to their home’s appearance. When we think about the elements of landscaping that constitute great curb appeal, it’s not enough to simply have a well-manicured lawn.
We looked to well-known home improvement guru Bob Villa to get some professional tips on creating the front yard of your dreams.
#1. You Need a Defining Focal Point
The focal point of every front yard should always be the home’s front door. If you are thinking about adding large landscaping features such as trees and shrubs, don’t forget to consider the mature size of the plantings you want to use. You want your landscape elements to create a frame around the door rather than hide it.
#2. Enhance Your Property With Something Other Than Grass
Ground covers come in a variety of colors, textures, as well as foliage sizes and styles. Some ground covers are very drought tolerant, so they don’t need water very often. Ground covers spread horizontally, and as they do so, they suppress weed growth and keep the soil below them cool and moist.
#3. Create Interest With a Path to the Front Door
Regardless of whether the path to your front door starts at the street, or it extends off of the driveway, a curved pathway that is made of brick, stone, stamped or stained cement can soften an entire front yard, especially if your property lines, driveway and everything else is defined by straight lines.
#4. How and Where You Use Foundation Plants
Before you choose the foundation plants that you want to put in front of your house, try to visualize the way they’ll look after growing in the place where you want to plant them. Be sure you know how big they’ll get. The depth of a bed of foundation plants should be proportional to the height of the house.
#5. Use Plants and Shrubs to Create a Privacy Buffer
An attractive, innovative and functional way to create a privacy barrier is by combining plants and shrubs of varying heights, foliage colors, and textures. The variation will give your front yard a softer and more welcoming feeling.
#6. Create a Grander Entry to Your Home
An easy to transform a straight driveway that leads to the house into something grander and a lot more elegant is by adding a curved plant bed at the entrance to your property. A bed full of shrubs and perennial plants of different heights, colors, textures and foliage shapes will add instant interest to your front yard while softening the hard lines of the driveway.
#7. Add Interest to An Ordinary Driveway
Most driveways are pretty boring. An effortless way to rev up the dramatic interest into an otherwise dull driveway is by installing a border along the length of the driveway. You can use bricks, stone or cement pavers, or any other readily available material that is suitable for the Oklahoma climate.
#8. Plant a Flowering Tree in Your Front Yard
Flowering trees are the perfect addition to a front yard. They are smaller than the native big leaf trees, and the colorful flowers and their delightful fragrance are always a welcoming sign that spring is in the air.
If you’re ready to transform your boring front lawn into the front yard of your dreams, contact Proactive Landscaping. We specialize in “creating beautiful outdoor spaces,” and we’re eager to do that for you.
