Gardening Your Front Yard Projects and Ideas for Big and Small Spaces - Includes Vegetable Gardening, Pollinator Plants, Rain Gardens, and More!

by Nolan, Tara

• ISBN13: 9780760397305
• ISBN10: 0760397309
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780760364871
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780760364864
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-10-01
• Publisher: Cool Springs Press
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

Learn how to treat your front yard like a backyard without sacrificing beauty, from choosing the right plants to building walkways and setting up a front yard patio.

In Gardening Your Front Yard, author Tara Nolan (Raised Bed Revolution) of SavvyGardening.com uses her unique combination of DIY/building savvy and gardening expertise to weave you past the main pitfalls you may encounter when trying to fit a garden or gardens between your home and the street.

This beautifully illustrated and comprehensive resource shows how to accomplish several hardscaping projects, such as laying a mowing border and building a walkway; provides inspiration to create a rain garden; and gives DIY instructions for making your own raised beds, a bench, a privacy screen, and more—all custom-designed for the rigors of front-yard gardening.

Gardening Your Front Yard is a gardening book in every sense of the word, however. Choosing the right plants is even more important when you are dealing with a small, highly visible area sometimes with less than ideal growing conditions. You will find advice on:

• Planting around foundation walls
• Dealing with road salt
• Planting boulevards/hell strips
• Shade gardens
• Privacy screening
• Security dos and don’ts
• How to intermingle edibles and landscape plants
• And much more

With the sage advice and step-by-step projects of this comprehensive guide, convert your front yard from a bland grasscape to a vital living space.

Author Biography

Tara Nolan, author of Raised Bed Revolution, is a garden writer and editor with a diverse background in publishing. Her work has appeared in the Toronto Star, as well as in magazines, including Reader’s Digest and Canadian Living, and on websites, like Design*Sponge. Tara is a co-founder, with three other garden writers, of Savvy Gardening (savvygardening.com) and was the award-winning web editor of Canadian Gardening magazine’s website (CanadianGardening.com) for six years. Tara does work for the Toronto Botanical Garden and the Canadian Garden Council, and volunteers for the Royal Botanical Garden. She is also a member of GWA: The Association for Garden Communicators. Tara is from the Toronto, Canada, area.

Table of Contents

1 The Front Yard Comes into Focus
Let the Brainstorming Begin
Front Yard Garden Inspiration
Hiring a Landscape Professional
Planting Around a Foundation
Getting Rid of Grass with Cardboard
Digging Up Sod
Reducing Noise and Addressing Security
Concerns in Your Front Yard Garden
Slope Style: Dealing with Properties That Have an Incline
 
2 Front Yard Living: A Return to Being Social in the Front Yard
Adding a Patio to Your Garden
Books, Blooms, and a Bench
Turning Grass into a Garden
Keeping an Eye on the Kids in Style
A Place to be Social—and Supervise
Patio Set Makeover
Rustic Live-Edge Bench
Vertical Privacy Plant Stand
 
3 Front Yard Flowers, Foliage, and Groundcover
Eco-Friendlier Grass Options to Investigate
Add a Cut Flower Garden to Your Front Yard
Pollinator Magnets
Meadows and Wildflowers
Plant for Four-Season Interest
Too Salty: Dealing with Salinated Soil
Container Gardening Ideas
Choosing Thrillers, Fillers, and Spillers
Accessorize the Front of Your House with Window Boxes
Trash and Recycling Bin Cover with Rooftop Garden
 
4 Growing Vegetables in Front Yards
Sneaking Veggies into Side Yards
Choosing Soil for Your Veggies
Design Tips for Interplanting Edibles with Ornamentals
Compact Plants: Perfect Sizes for Small Spaces
Driveway Gardens
Building with Front Yard Vegetable Gardening in Mind
Live-Edge Raised Bed
Adding a Raised Bed to a Slope in a Front Yard
Rolling Versailles-Inspired Planter
Mini Lettuce/Herb Table for a Front Patio
Garden Obelisk
Save Space with a Staircase Planter
Window-Well Raised Bed
 
5 Eco-Friendly Front Yards
Dealing with Rain
Tips for Capturing Rainwater on a Boulevard/Hell Strip
The Benefits of Rain Barrels
Installing a Rain Barrel
Make Your Own Rain Barrel Out of a Trash Can
Gardening for Insects and Wildlife
Assemble a Pollinator Palace
 
6 Front Yard Garden Embellishments
Plant a Sedum Carpet
Using Permeable Pavers for Driveways and Pathways
The Benefits of a Mowing Border
Create a Concrete Mowing Border
Build a Garden Path
Adding Hedges for Privacy
Pergolas and Arbors
Build a Picket Fence
 
Resources and Contributors
Acknowledgments
Meet Tara Nolan
Index