Designing a front garden: tips and inspiration
Rustic, Mediterranean or modern: be inspired by our front garden design ideas.
11.02.2025
Overview: designing a front garden
- Minimalist design and geometric shapes – ideal for a modern front garden
- Stone or gravel and undemanding plants – typical in a traditional rockery garden
- Herbs and features in natural stone and terracotta characterise the Mediterranean front garden
- Beds, trellises, planters and picket fences are features found in romantic, cottage-style front gardens
- Robust ground cover plants and native shrubs are often chosen for low-maintenance front gardens
All kinds of plants will grow in a front garden, from ground cover perennials and shrubs to ornamental grasses and trees. The size, orientation and layout of the front garden, as well as your intended style and maintenance level, will guide your specific choices.
In the front garden, you should mostly plant small or columnar trees. When selecting trees, consider the position and aspect of the front garden and the space available. Columnar trees such as pillar varieties of ornamental cherry and ash grow upwards and let a lot of light through. Small ball trees, such as maple and catalpa maintained in a lollipop style, are always a good idea for small front gardens.
The best time to plant the front garden depends entirely on your choice of plants. Robust, hardy winter plants are best planted in autumn before the first frost. Spring is the better planting time for evergreen or cold-sensitive shrubs such as hibiscus.
If your front garden is shady, you should fill it with plants that thrive without much sunshine. Examples include brunnera macrophylla (Siberian bugloss), tiarella (foam flower), hosta, bugbane, hydrangea and box honeysuckle.
When designing a shady front garden, make sure you plant the taller trees and shrubs close to the wall of the house so that they do not cast additional shadows on the other plants. The type of grass you plant should also be compatible with shady locations.
Designing a front garden: beautiful all round
A beautifully designed and planted front garden will make your house welcoming and vibrant. It greets you when you return home and offers a beautiful view out of the window.
In cities in particular, the greenery of plant-filled front gardens balances out the grey of the roads. They are also valuable from an ecological perspective, as they provide shelter and food for birds and insects.
Planning your front garden
Your taste and preferences are key when designing your front garden. You can use different styles or even combine several styles with each other. You will also need to consider practical aspects, for instance ensuring that the area remains accessible and that the chosen plants are suitable for the conditions.
Have an idea of how you would like your front garden to look and plan it well to ensure that the design process runs smoothly. The following questions can help with this:
Is there enough space for trees or are small plants the most appropriate option? To prevent plants from being lost in a large front garden or to avoid overfilling a small front garden, do consider the space available when choosing what to plant.
What types of garden paths should you lay and how wide should they be? Do you plan to keep bins or bicycles in the garden? Where is the letterbox? Can the front garden be divided into zones? Do you need to consider seating, and storage options for shopping deliveries?
If you want to keep maintenance to a minimum, you should design your front garden to include low-maintenance, robust perennials (geranium, daylily, heuchera) and shrubs (dogwood, privet, philadelphus). This means you will conserve valuable time, as well as water and energy.
If you want your front garden to stay in leaf during winter, be sure to plant evergreen varieties. Annuals are ideal for adding seasonal accents, but are also more maintenance-intensive than perennials.
How sunny or shady is your front garden? The right site conditions are crucial to ensure healthy plant growth and should be noted when planning your front garden design.
Front garden design: stylistic choices
The style you choose is also important when it comes to creating your front garden. Ask yourself what type of view you would most enjoy from your window: would you prefer a sea of colourful flowers or a gentler, monochrome effect?
Do you like modern design or do you prefer romantic cottage style? Which look best suits your home? For example, a half-timbered house with a naturalistic front garden looks particularly rustic and picturesque. On the other hand, a modern, minimalistic front garden is the better choice for a Bauhaus-style cube.
There is a wide range of front garden ideas and styles from which you can draw inspiration. We present some of these below:
Modern front garden
Creating a modern front garden means using pared-back design, geometric shapes and colour-coordinated elements. In this case, less is more. This approach will result in a minimalistic, high-quality overall appearance.
Clear lines are created, for example by using large-format concrete slabs for the paths, square planters or metal plant troughs (e.g. corten steel with a patina finish or stainless steel). Beds are laid out in a strictly geometric pattern and filled with plants that match the colour of the house.
Grasses and ornamental foliage plants such as hosta and lamb’s ear give a harmonious look to a modern front garden. The same goes for small-crowned trees such as English hawthorn or the lollipop form of the Norway maple, which can be underplanted with geraniums or tiarella.
A metal fence or lush green hedges cut into clean shapes are also popular elements in a modern front garden. Find out how to trim a hedge correctly and learn what you need to bear in mind when maintaining your hedge.
DESIGNING A FRONT GARDEN WITH STONE
A front garden can be designed as a rockery with stone, gravel or stone chippings based on the Alpine model. Plants with low water and nutrient requirements are particularly comfortable in this barren environment. Sedum, aubrieta, alyssum, creeping phlox, acaena and candytuft are just some of the plants that naturally thrive in a stone garden.
Dry soil for rock garden plants
However, it is important to provide them with the right conditions:
Rock garden plants love dry soil and cannot tolerate waterlogging. To ensure that water can drain off easily, you should design a front garden on a stepped basis or with a slight incline. Uneven rock gardens also mimic hilly mountain landscapes.
Thin, stony soil covered with sparse and equally stony plant soil is suitable as a subsurface. Heavily permeable clay soils tend to be unsuitable for rock gardens and sand should be added to improve these. This process simply involves covering the soil with coarse construction sand and working it in. A thin layer of fine gravel can be used as a mulch which you spread on the soil.
And of course, any self-respecting rock garden also needs rocks! The best thing is to use stones of different sizes, randomly distributed and at different heights. Water also complements a front garden rockery: when planning your front garden design, you might consider including a stream running among the hills.
Rock gardens are not gravel gardens
Traditional rock gardens should not be confused with the more-contentious gravel gardens. Gravel gardens are garden areas mainly covered in gravel and stone that contain few if any plants.
Unlike in naturalistic rock gardens, soil is removed for a gravel garden and covered with weed control fabric or film. A front garden which has no plants provides no habitat for insects and other animals, and so is worthless from an ecological perspective. On sunny days, the bare stones also heat up and warm up the surrounding area. Then water easily seeps through a gravel garden, overburdening drainage systems.
Are gravel gardens really easy to maintain?
Contrary to the common assumption that gravel gardens are easy to maintain, they actually require a great deal of maintenance – otherwise algae and dirt quickly build up. For example, fallen autumn leaves get stuck between the stones and cannot be removed.
Any weed seeds that have flown in also settle in the gaps and take root. Removing them completely is difficult, as the plants tear when they are pulled out, leaving roots behind.
Mediterranean front garden design
Bring the colours and scents of the Mediterranean coast to your front garden! One thing you should know in advance: Mediterranean herbs, flowers and trees love the sun. That means this design approach is most suitable when designing a south-facing front garden.
Suitable plants for Mediterranean-style front gardens
A Mediterranean-style front garden combines warmth, comfort and natural elements.
Typical plant candidates for Mediterranean front gardens include conifers such as columnar junipers, along with imposing perennials such as Mediterranean spurge and colourful echinacea and kniphofia.
Evergreen trimmed bushes (such as thuja or boxwood), flowering tree roses and aromatic herbs such as lavender and sage also work well in this style of garden. Plants that are not winter hardy, such as oleander, agapanthus or olive trees, thrive in planters and can be moved to a cool but frost-free location for the cold season.
Natural stone for a Mediterranean flair
Natural stone elements are a must-have in any Mediterranean-style front garden. Paths paved with natural stone, terracotta pots and birdbaths, and mosaic water basins and wall fountains will give your front garden a Southern European flair.
Designing a cottage-style front garden
A clear favourite for cosiness: the idyllic English cottage-style front garden. These front gardens are designed with a focus on playfulness, wild and natural beauty and informal shapes.
They are characterised by lush planters and beds planted without any clear design or order, which almost sink amid a colourful sea of flowers.
Plants and flowers for cottage-style front gardens
These romantic front gardens feature combinations of different roses (such as “Walzertraum” or “Rosenfee”), hydrangeas, foxgloves, lady’s mantles, columbine, peonies and lilac.
Low hedges of boxwood, Japanese holly, euonymus or privet make a lovely evergreen framework in this type of front garden. Arching obelisks supporting clematis or climbing roses help to create a picturesque environment. By the way, it is not difficult to build your own trellises and plant structures for your front garden.
Natural materials for rustic charm
A cottage-style front garden is often surrounded by a low wooden fence or a brick wall. Adding elements made from natural materials, such as wooden or clay planters, brick or natural stone paths, wooden wheelbarrows or cartwheels and small fountains gives this type of front garden a special charm.
Low-maintenance front garden
If you want to keep care, watering and weeding to a minimum, you can design your front garden so that it is easy to maintain. Densely growing and ground-covering grass alternatives will greatly help with this. After all, for a lawn to be beautiful it must be cut regularly and have healthy grass. Ground cover plants such as tiarella, geranium, creeping phlox, clumping sedums and saxifraga, on the other hand, are robust and undemanding.
They provide shade for the soil, keeping it moist for longer and thus reducing water consumption in the garden. At the same time, the dense growth of their leaves and roots prevents weeds.
Robust domestic shrubs such as lilac, meadowsweet, weigela, amelanchier and black elder (“Black Tower”) are also ideal for a low-maintenance front garden. Evergreen plants are particularly easy to maintain compared to annuals;
they don’t need to be replaced and will enhance your front garden with their greenery all year round. Drought-tolerant and sun-loving herbs such as lavender, sage and thyme require little water and fill the air with Mediterranean aromas.
However, even the most undemanding plants have requirements: in order to ensure that your plants remain comfortable and healthy, their specific location requirements must be taken into account when designing a front garden.
It’s a good idea to avoid arranging the plants for your front garden in small areas, and instead to group several plants of the same category together. This will allow you to care for your plants more quickly and more conveniently.
Designing a front garden: north-facing
North-facing gardens get little or no direct sunlight. It’s best to plant these areas with plants that love shade and moisture. Luckily, the wide range of suitable plants available gives you plenty of options!
- European wild ginger
- Heuchera
- Wolf’s bane (note: poisonous)
- Ivy
- Barrenwort
- Waldsteinia
- Calamagrostis varia reedgrass
- Robinia
- Box
If you are designing a north-facing front garden layout, plant the taller trees and shrubs close to the wall of the house so that they do not cast additional shadows on the other plants. The type of grass you plant should also be compatible with shady locations.
Designing a front garden: south-facing
The south-facing side of a property is the sunny side and offers a cosy home for all robust plant species that love dry conditions. A south-facing front garden is especially suitable for a Mediterranean or cottage-style design.
- Echinacea
- Nepeta
- Phlox
- Sea buckthorn
- Thyme
- Lavender
- Bay laurel
- Roses
- Oleander in a pot
- Lemon tree in a pot
