Front Yard Landscaping Lessons - the First Step

To create inviting, attractive, and easy entryway to your home and property, functionality of the landscape should be your first concern. Plants and other elements should be secondary concerns. And since the main function of front yard landscaping is generally access to the home, our first design focus would be how and where are we going to enter and exit our homes.

To what extent you can plan landscaping the front yard may be limited by some factors that you can’t control. The size of your lot, how your home faces the street, and property lines can all be limiting factors. Careful planning and consideration of these factors will help you reach a medium of functionality and beauty in the front.

I know that this seems basic and obvious but many times folks simply just don’t know where to start or go with their design. So as a starting point, by first laying out your needed access paths, you could possibly be laying out the framework of your entire design. Not only will laying out these areas take up a lot of space, but it will also create shape, areas to design around, and a visual direction for your ideas.

Usually, the most dominant access use in the front yard is for vehicles and parking. So we’ll determine where we and our guests are going to park, drive, and turn around. Also, we’ll decide where our walkways, sidewalks, and paths will lead from these areas to the home.

Your driveway should not only lead to entry points but should also allow for off street parking. The entrance of the driveway should be wide enough to comfortably drive in and out of. It may be desirable to also have a way to turn around inside the driveway. Having a turn around area is an added safety factor to keep from having to blindly back out onto busy streets.

If you have enough space, a circular drive is usually the best access to entries along with the safety factor of drive through. It also provides an opportunity for creativity as you can create some design on the inside of the outer circle of the driveway.

If a complete semi-circle drive isn’t possible, you may have room for a regular drive with a simple cutout addition. This cutout can also be used as additional parking when needed. It doesn’t need to be paved or even the sam material as the rest of the drive as it won’t receive the same amount of use as the rest of the drive.

Simply widening the driveway in an area can provide additional parking as well as enough room to turn around. Again, this area doesn’t have to be totally improved. It just has to drain well and support the weight of a vehicle.

By first addressing your vehicle access to your home, you’ll be taking care of a large portion of the front yard design. Then by adding sidewalks and other foot access from driveways to the home, you’ll possibly have the entire framework of your front yard landscaping created. And then deciding on secondary design elements such as plants and ground covers will be a much smaller task and much easier to visualize.