Landscaping Ideas For Front Of House (Our Finished Yard Transformation)

If you’re searching for landscaping ideas for the front of house, including ways to up your curb appeal game in the garden, these certainly give you a few.

See the transformation of our Garden Retaining Wall in our front yard along with the rest of our landscaping ideas you can totally steal!

Finally, the day has come. Today I’m sharing the finished Makeover of the yard landscaping ideas we’ve had up our sleeve and now finishing. I’m so excited to share “The Big Reveal” on one of our latest outdoor DIY projects. You’ll definitely want to stick around for this flower bed retaining wall before and after, the transformation is STUNNING!

Landscaping Ideas For Front Of House: A Front Yard Makeover Overhaul

For the landscape design aspect, we went for a sloped front yard retaining wall due to the small slope our yard has to it. If you missed my previous post to get you all caught up you can check it out here–> Garden Retaining Wall

Ever since we moved in last year we’ve had an impulse for revamping our yard landscaping with some beautiful flowers, some landscaping rocks, and overall curb appeal. We only had shrubs the builder left us and we were long overdue for some color. Not to mention our mulch looked really drabby and faded. Over the past couple weeks that notion was granted by the way of pulling up our sleeves and getting a little dirty. So let’s get right into those garden before and after photos, shall we? An after looks extra glamorous with an obnoxious before sitting right next to it!

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Honestly, the after’s reached far past my expectations. I LOVE the final turnout. It was a toss-up prior to finishing to add the different style interlocking pavers to the very top but they really add charm and depth to the stone wall. In case your curious, here it is without topping it with the different stone pavers. We did add a lot of dirt after the retaining wall diy was built to fill up our raised flower bed.

The hubby and I have always used mulch in our past flower beds we’ve completed. It tends to be a high maintenance thing, with having to refresh it in our outdoor space every year. This time around, we Opted for black lava rock versus mulch. So indeed, we ditched the mulch this year. If you’re looking for low maintenance bed ideas (as we were) you may want to weigh rock vs mulch options. When we were looking into landscaping design ideas and advice, the rock was our go-to as we learned the lava rock is a mulch replacement and guarantees long lasting color. Plus it makes me think we might be in Arizona but logically still stuck in Ohio. It’s the little things, right?? At first, I was worried how the plants would do with rocks but I quickly found that plants don’t mind rock at all and there is actually many pros and benefits as well. I thought it also may be helpful to include a list of 18 Beautiful Plants That Will Thrive in Rock Gardens according to Better Homes & Gardens in the efforts that you choose rock vs mulch landscaping.

***UPDATED: We loved the rock landscaping so much we Landscaped around the A/C Unit and used it on the other side of the house to Pretty up the Garbage Can Space.***

Moving Forward, before we topped the flower bed with the lava rock, we staked down landscaping fabric(this link is similar to the one we used) to help with weed control and keep our bed even more on the low maintenance side. Who likes to pull weeds, raise your hand?

We cut a slit in the fabric where the flowers were planted and just worked our way around them. This may have been a little easier to put the fabric down before the flowers went in.

Once the fabric was staked down, we added the lava rock on top as we went.

We wanted to make around the tree in our front yard more attractive and give it the look of the rock to match the rest of the front garden beds. We used a No-dig edging kit to go around it and staked down some more landscaping fabric. Then added our black lava rock to the top. Using these couple materials alone for landscaping around trees with rocks it makes for easy landscaping ideas for front of house.

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Our front yard gets loads of full sunlight, so we had that going for us plus non-green thumbs (trust me, I know how to kill a plant or two). We chose low maintenance plants that are perennials (meaning they come back every year). Here are the plants we went with:

Pink Double Knock out Roses

Blue Spruce Sedum

Fruit Punch Black Cherry Frost Dianthus

Ice Plant (Which is more of a ground cover)

SuperTrouper Dianthus

Firework Fountain Grass

***UPDATED: The Firework Fountain grass grew out of control, it’s pretty much taller than me! You can see the updated pictures of it in my Fall Post.***

Hardy Hens and Chicks

Wine & Roses (these have yet to bloom)

***UPDATED: I know the wine & rose looks blah in this photo but don’t scratch it off your flower list just yet, it will turn into the most beautiful thing you’ve seen! To get an updated picture of what it looks like now check out this post.***

Bronze Scarlet Canna Lily

*** When we updated our flower beds we planted more of these lilies because they did so well in full sun—>look how Ginormous and Gorgeous they look!***

The other random bushes came with the home when we had it built so we embraced them, not sure what they are called.

…And there she is, folks! Our house landscaping is complete and our retaining flower bed walls look beautiful with all the flowers! From Drabby to Savvy 😉 I hope We have inspired you to tackle an area of your yard that needs effort and a little bit of muscle.

>>Want to skip over to our tips and tricks to building this step-by-step retaining wall garden bed (10 easy steps at that!)  click here for the how to build retaining wall garden<<

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