Gardening Your Front Yard

Gardening your front yard gives you the opportunity to make a statement about what’s important to you as well as how you want your home and yard to be perceived by the public. You can plant a cottage garden, wildflower meadow, or vegetable plot while also incorporating flowers and trees for beauty, privacy, color, and fragrance. Front-yard gardens are often a welcome break from the sterility and formality of the suburban lawn, but can be as visually interesting and welcoming to the eye as any landscape.

If you’re thinking about gardening your front yard, take a look around your neighbors’ yards to get ideas for design. Browse garden magazines and the internet to find pictures of flowers, plants, and layouts that appeal to you. If you have friends with gardens, visit them to see their work in person.

One of the most important things to consider when designing a front garden is its size and location relative to your home. The scale of your property will dictate how large or small you can grow things, and also the amount of space you’ll have for seating areas or play areas.

The amount of sun your front garden gets will also determine what kind of plants you can grow. Full sun will support warm-season annuals, while shade lends itself to growing perennials, berries, and some vegetables. Evaluate the light in your front yard by watching it for a few days to see how much sun different parts of the yard receive. Watch the weather forecast as well, as sunny, windy days will be better for planting than cloudy ones.

Another aspect to consider is the soil, which may need to be heavily amended for a vegetable garden to thrive. The soil in your front yard may be clay-like, sandy, or rocky, and can often be amended with compost, manure, or other organic matter to help it hold water, and nutrients.

Depending on the location of your front garden, you’ll need to consider how easy it will be for you to access the plantings for watering, fertilizing, and weeding. Do you plan on having a path, stairs, or some other structure that makes it easy to reach all parts of your front garden? Are there any existing or potential obstacles, such as trees, that will require you to rethink your plans?

If the trees on your property are especially tall or produce a lot of shade, you may need to rethink your gardening plans. Some trees produce chemicals that prevent other plants from growing in their vicinity, known as allelopathic effects. For example, black walnut trees (Juglans nigra) and butternuts (Juglans cinerea) release a compound that prevents the growth of many other species, including turf grass.

Even if you’re not planning on planting a large vegetable garden, adding a few containers of herbs and greens can be a great way to bring food into the front yard. Vegetable gardening can encourage children to try new foods, and research suggests that it may lead to a healthier diet overall.