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Ideas for Front Yard Landscaping | A Before and After

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During the month of July, I will be posting a before and after series with a variety of home projects I know you will find useful.  Today’s post contains ideas for front yard landscaping you can complete yourself!  Or, if you’d rather hire someone, do it!  Just make sure you trust them.  More on that later!

I will show lots of before, during, and after photos that I hope will inspire you with your landscaping projects.

Ideas for Front Yard Landscaping.

Get more ideas for outdoor spaces.


Curb appeal can make all the difference in leaving a good impression on guests you invite to your home.  Unfortunately, we got busy with life and let our front landscaping get a bit out of hand.  It was definitely not a look we were happy with!

BEFORE:

Front of two story home.

The crabapple tree on the far right was dying.  It’s difficult to see just how bad it was looking in the above photo.  At one point it was full and beautiful, but those days were over.

In the photo below, you see a close up of the Alberta Spruce (right by the steps) that was dying.  The bamboo shrubs in front of the boxwoods were looking pretty bad as well.  It was time for some updating!

ANOTHER BEFORE:

Boxwood plants.

Take a peek at those blue doors. They were Black Fox by Sherwin Williams a few weeks ago.  On a whim, I painted them Naval.  I’m not loving them.  I’m still deciding what color to use, but I’m definitely planning on changing them.

Initially, we were just going to hire someone to do all of the work for us.  This did not go well.  The company we used overcharged us for work that was less than optimal.  We definitely needed help getting the trees pulled up due to their deep root system, but the rest was all feasible to do ourselves.  As you will see, we eventually did!

DURING PHOTOS AFTER TREES WERE TAKEN OUT:

Holes in ground when doing landscape work.
Front yard sidewalk with landscape.

You can also see different plants I had just stuck into this area through the years.  There were mums and hostas that didn’t look right in the space.  I was able to transplant the hostas to some shaded spaces in my backyard.
Of course in the above photo, I have paint brushes drying on the porch!  Always some project going on here.  My dog, Bentley was excited to find his ball that was lost under the boxwoods months ago.

Front windows of home with boxwoods in front.

As I mentioned before, we hired someone to put in plants for us.  That did not go as we had imagined.  This is the AFTER the landscaping company gave us:

Pruned boxwood.

Ummm, not exactly the “after” impact we were hoping for.  The plants they used were dianthus, which I love.  But, this look was not working for me!  So, I finished the project myself and the following photos are my after!

FRONT YARD LANDSCAPING AFTER:

Arborvitae by front door.
Front yard landscaping Veronica Perennial, Daylily.
Front yard crabapple tree.
Veronica perennial, begonia.
Red begonias in front yard flower bed.

I used Veronica Perennials, daylilies, a hydrangea, and Bronze Leaf Red Begonias.  The begonias were the only annual I planted as I want this to be fairly low maintenance in years to come.  I added black mulch and more rock as well.

The dianthus were moved to a different location:

Dianthus.

It’s so much better than when we started.  We had a few hiccups along the way, but the extra work was worth the end result.

Have you completed any landscaping projects lately?  I’d love to hear about them!  I hope you got some great ideas for your front yard landscaping today.

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20 Comments

  1. The after photos look great! A little landscaping goes a long way. Love the little pops of color against the green. 🙂

  2. I can’t believe that’s what the landscape company left you with! You after is a thousand times better! I love the whole look and feel the same with planting as many perennials as possible! Annuals are lovely but I am all about low maintenance!

  3. I like the black mulch! It makes such a statement. This looks lovely to get to come home too!

  4. It looks great now!!!! So clean and crisp!!! Our landscape is all perennials and I love it!!! The only annuals I can keep up with are the vegetables in the garden:-) hahaha. Looks amazing and clean! Now I have the urge to go trim all my shrubs and bushes!!!
    Jillynn

    1. Thanks, Jillynn! I agree that perennials are the way to go, I just couldn’t resist the begonias! BTW, I think a new baby warrants not trimming shrubs and bushes…they’ll still be there next year!

  5. Wow, it looks great! Landscaping really does make so much of a difference. Thanks for sharing thebtupes of flowers you used as well! Picking out flowers and plants can be so intimidating for me. Having a picture to go with the name helps so much.

  6. Beautiful after shots. I love the border grass and the touches of purple. I just moved and my yard is in desperate need of attention, but I have to get the inside up to par first 🙂

  7. That looks so good! We are about to try to replace all of our mulch with gravel and add a couple of different plants.

    1. Thanks, Jessica! I’m so glad to have the rock in portions of the landscape now. It will cut down on work in the future replacing some of the mulch. Good luck with your project!

  8. Looks beautiful! Your after…much better than other company. Stinks that didn’t work out for you. Some great inspiration.

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