The Front Yard Garden

Designing a garden that the neighbors will see from the front of the house.

  • Topic: Garden Design
  • Author: Cindy Bellinger
  • Keywords: design, Garden Design, gardens, front yard
  • Date: February 2004

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When I lived in a small prairie town, my house was a shack. During the high gales off the plains (which were all the time), the walls of the place actually swayed. I lived there four years and the best thing about that place was the garden I put in.

The corn grew tall and healthy; the tomato plants were sturdy. The cucumber and watermelon vines snaked around happily. I loved that garden. But I may have been the only one.

“Why is your garden out front?” a few snooty neighbors wanted to know.

I was teaching school then and some of my students brought the complaints to the classroom. “Gardens are supposed to be in the backyard,” they corrected me.

Well, not where I come from. I probably acquired this habit of doing all my gardening out front because that’s what my parents did. Even now I have a front garden. But let me differentiate.

This is not the same as entrance gardens. Those are contrived with a beckoning lure. The front yard garden, on the other hand, is the whole kit n’ caboodle laid out in the open, beckoning or not. Depending on your preferences and needs, the front yard garden can be anything you want. There are no rules. Want corn growing along the driveway? Well, why not? And any design, any style will go—

  • formal/informal
  • herbal
  • topiary
  • flower
  • vegetable
  • ...or a combination of all.

In the book “Front Yard Gardens” by Liz Primeau, a couple bought a house in Texas whose landscaping—front and back—was nothing but lawn. Wanting to trim the water bill and upkeep that lawns require, they replanted the area with a more water-wise garden—one part of it is formal, the other a little looser.

And if you put your heart and soul into a garden, you want to show it off, right? Wayne Renaud, a Canadian landscape architect, whose garden is also featured in the book, completely re-did a long narrow expanse of ground leading to a house that he and his friend, a house designer, bought. They added a water garden, fences and walls for privacy, added a patch of lawn, installed a cement walkway.

”...whoever comes to the house has to go through the garden. If it was in the back, they might never see it,” Renaud says. And maybe this says it all about front yard gardens. They aren’t hidden behind the backyard fence. They’re, well, out front where the world can see them. In this way the front garden is much more generous. Anyone can take it in.

And sometimes these gardens become a landmark for directions as in: Turn right after the house with the front yard that is blooming madly. I know it was this way when I was growing up. In second grade a friend of mine dubbed my house ‘the jungle’ and it stuck. Everyone knew where the jungle was. It was out front where everyone could see. Mine is this way now, too. Look for the house with the garden out front. You can’t miss it.