The best front garden ideas – smart, easy and cheap

Here is a round-up of my favourite front garden ideas.

Your front garden is part of your community. It’s what people see when they walk home from work. You can talk to neighbours while you’re working in it.

Your front garden also has an environmental impact. The RHS’s Greening Grey Britain campaign aims to prevent everyone from paving over their front gardens to make parking spaces. It also has good ideas for those who want a parking space but are prepared to share it with green space.

So, in no particular order, here are some front gardens that cheer people up when they walk past them. They’re (almost) all easy to adapt yourself and they’re not expensive.

The horticulturalist’s front garden

If you are mad about plants, then your front garden is a wonderful place to display them. This garden below is one of four gardens in a row near me in Faversham. Each of the four front gardens is completely different but delightful.

This front garden makes plants its priority. It’s always a pleasure to walk past. Angel’s fishing rods and agapanthus work well.

Another Faversham front garden for plant-lovers. It always has something in flower.

A formal front garden

This is the next garden in the row of four. It has a classic formal design, and is planted mainly with lavender. The blue of the lavender works well with the duck egg blue front door.

Classic rope edging works well in front gardens because there usually isn’t any lawn. It’s also appropriate if you have a Victorian house

Colour co-ordinated front garden

This row of four gardens shows an excellent use of colour. In this garden, the colour of the front door matches the colour of the garden gate. Even the box (for electricity meters?) on the side of the front door is painted in the same smart blue-grey. This looks great and is easy to do.

The twentieth century garden gate matches the Victorian front door and also the edging tiles.

A simple front garden planting

This is the last of the four gardens in a row. This front garden has a relaxed, easy feel and is wholly dominated by erigeron karvinskianus. This looks so charming – it just frothes up everywhere. Planting just one kind of plant in your front garden is often effective, especially when it’s a simple daisy like this.

Topiary front garden

The garden below probably cannot be described as either ‘easy’ or ‘cheap.’ But it does show how effective topiary can be in a front garden. You can buy box and yew from markets and grow your own topiary.

A traffic-stopping topiary front garden in Putney, London.

Choose your front path with the house in mind

If you have a yellow brick house, then have a yellow brick path. It’s such an easy thing to forget. In fact, it’s a good idea to remember that all the elements of your front garden ought to work together, from the colour of the front door and garden gate to the path and the planting.

Garden consultant Posy Gentles had a concrete path. She replaced it with a brick path more in keeping with the house.

Think about colour themes

A simple blue and white front garden scheme in Faversham. A white door, blue pots and blue flowers all add up to a charming sight.

I love the way this front gardener seems to have planted her front garden to match the street sign!

This is our front garden, mainly planted by our predecessors. They chose a pink theme. In summer, Rosa bonica flowers for months on end. We also have hot pink wild gladioli (self-seeded) and pink nerines. I have underplanted with nepeta as I think that looks good with the railings.

The pink Rosa bonica flower endlessly, and many commuters have told me that they love seeing them on their walk home.

Miranda Alexander has painted an obelisk in her front garden. It’s in harmony with her front door.

Upcycled front garden ideas

Fern Alder started Full Frontal, a community front garden initiative which spread all over the country. She believes in making the most of front gardens and encourages people to do interesting things, such as recycling unusual objects as planters.

Fern has planted a rusted old dustpan with succulents and hangs it beside her front door.

Old wellie boots planted up at Doddington Place Gardens.

Grab a pot of paint and transform your front garden now…

I hope that’s given you some ideas. Let me know your pretty, smart or unusual front garden ideas. And do share this, using the buttons below – thank you!

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