Our Yard and Garden Tour: Simple Landscaping and Border Ideas

Today, for a change of pace, I’m excited to take you outside for a look at our front and backyard landscaping, as well as some landscape border ideas for the front, back, and around the sides of the house.

If you’ve been following along for a while, you might be aware I love gardening and getting my hands in the dirt!  My husband and I spent the last few years landscaping our front and back yard and sides of our house with curvy landscape borders, adding in shrubs, flowers, trees, and river rocks.

Since we live in an area with a well-traversed walking path running behind our house, we have lots of people (and dogs) passing by our back yard every day. So it’s important to us that both the front of the house and backyard landscaping look inviting and cohesive.

With that in mind, today I’m sharing a few photos of the landscaping around our house, along with some some simple ideas and tips for how to landscape around your home with borders, with front yard landscaping ideas, shrub and flower ideas, landscape curbing ideas, tips on how to make the sides of your house look good, easy landscaping ideas on a budget, and much more.

If you’re currently thinking of updating the landscaping around your house and are looking for some simple landscape border ideas, I hope you’ll find some great ideas and inspiration for all your outdoor areas.

Landscape Border Ideas

Adding landscape borders around the perimeter of your front yard, backyard, and around the sides of your house is a great way to make your home and outdoor space more beautiful, as well as increase its property value and curb appeal.

I like the natural look of curvy, free flowing borders rather than straight lines. And I think the soft curves give our home a more modern look, as well.  

Of course, you should plan your garden design according to your personal preference, growing season, and style of your home.

Landscape curbing ideas

When we moved in to our current home, we hired a professional landscaper to install the sprinkler system and add steel edging (with a rubberized lip at the top) to create a neat edge, separating the lawn edging from the landscape border.

Having a clear divider between the lawn edges and garden edging is the perfect way to keep unwanted grass out of your landscape design. It also gives you a neat, clean line and place to stop when you use your lawn mower or string trimmer.

In addition to metal landscape edging, there are many other edging materials you can use for decorative edging around your borders and flower garden space.

One excellent way to separate the edge of your lawn from the garden edge with a clean look is with concrete edging. While concrete garden edging is a great option, it does cost quite a bit more than metal edging or plastic edging.

And, for a more rustic look, you could also use natural stones to create a stone wall, add brick edging, or even cinder blocks to create a retaining wall.

Ground covers

For our landscaping, we chose to use river rock as the ground cover in our curvy landscape border areas. 

River rocks are a good option if you live in an area with a lot of wind, like we do.  In our last home, we used large bark as our ground cover, and it was constantly blowing into our yard (and the neighbors’ yards), which meant we had to replace the bark often.

However, I do think bark mulch is a great choice and good idea for a ground cover if you live in an area where you don’t have much wind, as it enhances the look of your home and provides great moisture retention. 

For that reason, we do use small bark mulch around our trees and shrubs.

Landscaping Ideas for Around the Front, Sides, and Back of the House

Simple landscaping ideas for the front of your house

At the front of our home we have a small garden bed in front of our porch and front door.

Because this entry garden is the focal point of our house, greeting guests in all four seasons, this small space was probably the trickiest for me to design, but it ended up being one of my favorite outdoor spots.

In addition to a hawthorn tree, which grows vertically and uniformly, I added orange day lilies, purple pin cushion flowers, pink weigela, a Russian almond, dianthus, and a few allium.

It’s a little wild-looking, but I kind of like it that way.

My day lilies bloom several times over the course of the summer, providing an almost constant infusion of color in our front garden bed.

Dianthus, also called “pinks,” are classified as an annual; however, mine come back every year.

Other small trees, like a Japanese maple, would also be a great idea in this type of front garden, as well.

Since our front yard garden faces east and receives partial shade, I also added in some hostas, or plantain lilies, which I love. 

They do get a little sad-looking when we have a hail storm, but they bounce back pretty quickly.

At the end of the summer, hosta plants send up long stalks filled with delicate white flowers.

I also added a bird bath to our entry garden as a focal point and a bit of a water feature.

We’ve had this one for years, and even though it’s cracked and a little wonky, I love it.

Now that the hawthorn tree has matured and is full and leafy, this is the perfect place to sit with my morning coffee and enjoy the birds, butterflies, natural surroundings, and occasional rain shower.

 

The other garden beds in our small front yard wind around from the front to the sides of the house, and I added several pink spirea (also spelled spiraea) in these borders.  I love the delicate leaves and blooms on these plants!

Backyard landscaping ideas on a budget

Whether you have a small backyard or a large area to landscape, one of the best ways to landscape your back yard without spending a lot of money is by using native plants and low cost perennials.

Whether you’re going for a more traditional or modern look, beautiful landscape borders are an easy way to add visual interest to your house and are a look that will stand the test of time.

In our back yard, we added a mixture of large trees, colorful flowers, larger shrubs, perennial plants and flowers, and large and small rocks. 

We also have a small arbor, which is the perfect spot to grow climbing clematis.

We considered adding a water fountain or other water element back here, but luckily our next door neighbor is a landscape designer and has several waterfalls and other water features in his yard, so we get to enjoy the beauty and sounds of trickling water without the maintenance and expense!

As you might have noticed, we have many varieties of spirea plants in both our front and back yards. 

In addition to being beautiful, spirea are easy to care for, drought tolerant, and very inexpensive, making them a great budget-friendly option for backyard landscaping.

Salvia are another favorite of mine.  They’re so vibrant and bloom several times over the course of the summer.  And I love the sage-y scent of their leaves.

How do I make the sides of my house look good?

When adding a landscape border around the sides of your house, it’s a good idea to consider how much sun that area receives.

On the south side of your home, the house walls will get extremely hot in the summer, so your planting beds on the south side need to incorporate the right plants that can handle full sun and a hot environment.

Similarly, if the side of your house faces north, you’ll want to choose appropriate foundation plants for those small areas.

Plants that thrive in shady areas with minimal sunlight are the best choice for the north side of the house. 

You can ask someone at your local garden center what they recommend for your region.

In the landscape borders on the sides of our house, we planted a mix of golden privets and hyssop plants.  

On the south side of our house, we planted several Russian sage plants.  They seem to love the warm temperatures and abundant sunshine.

Landscape Shrub and Flower Ideas

We live in an arid, semi-mountainous region, so we designed our landscaping around the sides, front and back of the house to be simple, drought tolerant, and low maintenance.

However, you might want to incorporate a vegetable garden, a rock garden, a natural environment, or a traditional colorful flower garden area for a classic look.

The nice thing about landscape borders is they provide endless options for incorporating any type of plant, water feature, or natural element to enhance the look of small yards or large areas.

In our former home, we had colorful flower beds circling all around the house.

However, when we moved to this house we decided to incorporate more of a garden border, with a variety of plants, large rocks, flowering shrubs, a few beautiful flowers (all of which are perennials), and some large boulders for a natural and fresh look.

One last thing: I highly recommend keeping a garden journal and/or garden folder, where you can jot down notes for next year, make a map of your garden, and keep track of plant care tags and receipts.

I hope you found this post informative and helpful! In my opinion, landscape borders are the best way to add sculpting lines and low maintenance, free-form landscaping all around your house.

Please let me know if you have any questions about landscape border ideas or landscaping the front yard, backyard, and around the sides of your house. Have a wonderful day! xo jane

plants and landscaping ideas:

Looking for more outdoor and patio ideas? 

If you’re looking for ideas for decorating your patio, porch, or other outdoor living areas, you might be interested in my post, Modern Patio and Backyard Decor Ideas for 2024.  

Pure Salt Interiors

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