Inexpensive Front Yard Ideas

Flagpole Garden

• Create a small circular garden at one corner of your front yard. Put up a flag pole, and hang the U.S. flag or your family crest flag. Add flags that celebrate each season as it arrives. Plant colorful perennials in your flagpole garden, and surround them with sparkling white gravel. Climbing flowers, such as roses or morning glories, will make a colorful spectacle. Once planted, these flowers will return year after year.

Cactus Garden

• Section off a curved area near your front door, and plant cacti and sedum ground cover in raised beds. Cactus gardens work well in dry, desert climate areas where you may find planting lawn grass and keep it growing uniformly difficult. Cacti and sedum need little maintenance and do very well outdoors in hot climates. Some cactus varieties will bloom on a regular basis, providing a splash of bright color against the sedum carpet.

Ornamental Fences

• Your front yard can look pretty bare when you have just completed building a house. Often, the lawn is just starting to grow, and ornamental trees can look pretty spindly. Protect your young ornamental trees and shrubs with fences. While fencing can get expensive, these trees only need a small amount for protection. Put a white picket fence around a young tree in a circle, or add L-shaped picket fencing with decorative finials to trees on your property corners.

Grotto

• Create a grotto on one side of your front yard with rocks, a small fountain or waterfall and some outdoor lighting. Plant ferns and place a few potted bonsai trees in the grotto. Create unobtrusive sitting spaces near the grotto out of slabs of shale or small wooden benches. You can invite guests to gather together and enjoy your front yard grotto, or you can use it as a meditation space for some alone time.