DIY front yard landscaping ideas on a budget

DIY front yard landscaping ideas on a budget

Choosing the right flowers, landscaping, and plants can leave a huge street-side impression on the front look of your house, making it more valuable.

If you’ve been thinking that this idea is money- and time-taking to do, here are some DIY front yard landscaping ideas on a budget to follow.

Petunias Hanging Baskets

Take advantage of floral hanging baskets is the best way to full and add colors to your porch.

Out of different beautiful flowers, the reason I picked petunias is because of their affordability, ease to plant, and low maintenance. Petunias is known as an annual tender perennial in zone 9 to 11.

There are two kinds of petunias: the Multiflora and the Grandiflora.

For hanging baskets, choose the second kind because they are more susceptible to rain damage to be best grown in hanging pots or baskets. Besides, the flowers of this kind are much larger.

This flower prefers heat to you don’t have to water it frequently, just once a week is okay. Besides, add fertilizers to the soil monthly to keep them grow healthily.

Front yard landscaping ideas on a budget: Log planters

If there are some logs or stumps in your yard, make use of them as planters to décor a specific area of your house’s front view.

They are a great eco-friendly alternative to plastic or concrete planters while costing nearly no money. Sometimes, a piece of rustic wood is another good choice as long as there is a hollow in it.

After picking the right size, just fill your planters with soil and plants with your preferable organizing.

For small front yards, on dark landscaping stone or ground, some planters with succulents and white cedar or sedums look great.

Or you can try filling it with a couple of single succulent small logs or paperbark log planters. If you prefer the rustic log planters, try planting some ferns and begonias.

For a larger front yard, décor it with a long, big log planter isn’t a bad idea. You can try to plant an array of multi-floral flowering plants to add various colors to your front space.

Simple lighted driveway bed

Nice DIY front yard landscaping ideas on a budget, a narrow lighted bed will complement greatly to driveways.

This is a versatile method to not only add lighting along the driveway length to guide visitors to your main door without being too flamboyant but also give your front yard a more appealing look.

Small lanterns, rope lights, stand-up lighting, or solar-powered stakes are some good options to go. While adding whimsical and fun, they are practical and affordable for people with a tight budget to try.

You can easily find them in any small boxwood shrubs or home and gardening stores.

With this creative decoration, you get one less problem with weeds or plant maintenance but still ensure the entryway is lively and interesting enough.

I’ll instruct you how to set up rope light in the driveway.

Start off by measuring the length of your driveway. My general selection is a 150’ rope light spool because it’s versatile enough to fit different driveway measurements. Not to say that it is easy to splice and customize while the leftover can be made use of on other lighting projects.

After splicing the suitable rope length, place it down at the desired position that you have marked before. Then, press the first garden staple at the end opposite the spool.

The more curved the driveway, the more staples needed to keep the rope in place. Now, add a power cord to one end of the rope and an end cap to the other.

Check how well it works and enjoys the beautiful lighting when nighttime arrives.

DIY front yard landscaping ideas on a budget: Gravel

The most budget-friendly way to decorate your front yard is by using landscaping gravel. This is particularly a perfect choice if you have several high-traffic places with very little vegetation.

A DIY 100’-long gravel path will cost you a mere $350 and might break out some shovels to finish these projects, but that’s worth it.

Required tools and materials:

  • Gravel
  • Hoe
  • Shovel
  • Wheelbarrow
  • Rake
  • Gloves
  • Twine or string
  • Landscape stakes
  • Weed barriers (optional)

To define the preferable path to gravel your driveway, use the stakes with twines or strings from the curb to its endpoint.

Next, remove topsoil or grass from the marked-off area to prepare the way for the gravel. If it’s just a short path, do it manually. Conversely, rent a bulldozer to speed up this step.

Now you need to measure the stones’ volume by determining the number of occupied cubic yard layers.

Number of occupied cubic yard layer = [Width x Length (of your driveway) x Desire Depth (of each layer)]/27

Scheduling the stone delivery for a gravel path is another important step. It’s best to schedule deliveries separately for each three-layer and stagger it several days apart to let the gravel layer address in turn.

If you intend to lay down a weed barrier, consider doing it after the gravel path project is done. Besides, remember to even out the dirt in the driveway path prior to the first gravel delivery truck arrives.

After spreading the bottom layer of stones over the driveway area, use a bulldozer or your car to compact them into the soil beneath for a stronger foundation.

Move on with adding the middle layer of driveway gravel and finally, is the surface layer.

Repurpose old tires

It’s a bit difficult to remove bulky tires because almost waste haulers don’t accept them. From that point, repurposing them to decorate your front yard seems to be a good DIY method.

While eliminating such troubles, old tires an easy and inexpensive to find.

They can be found popularly in your local recycling plant and each cost around several dollars. Not to say that the sellers are very willing to give away them.

Apparently, when receiving these tires, they might be filthy that you must clean them off before starting the repurposing process. Next, here are some creative, budget-friendly ideas to decorate old tires:

Turning your front yard into a playground for kids by creating a recycled tire climber.

  • Spray 2/3 the tire and let them dried out
  • Drill 4 holes about ½ depth of the tire
  • Stuck them in the ground, refilled the dirt, and press down the tires
  • Add some mulch to give a more consistent look to the playground

Use old tires as planters

  • Paint and décor the tires, let them dried out utterly
  • Use some burlap pieces as the backing to hold the dirt in the tires
  • Drill a few holes in the tires for drainage
  • Fill the tire with soil and plants

Similarly, try to create a hanging planter with old tires, but this time, fill soil in ½ the bottom part of the tire and attach it firmly to a fence or wall

Create a man-made garden pool

  • Use a shovel to dig a big hole enough to put a tire in. Add a certain amount of sand underneath the tire to fold the foil more easily.
  • Add some sand inside. Flatten the hole’s bottom perfectly by using a level.
  • Place the tire inside
  • Use a scroll saw and carefully cut the tire’s upper part to make it wider.
  • Before laying out the tire with foil, get rid of sharp stones. When wrapping it with foil, heap up space around the tire with gravel.
  • Place big, heavy stones tightly around the foil and leave for a day
  • Add water to the pond

Cover the ground with natural perennials

The best way to remove completely weeds in your yard is by planting other plants. And perennials are the best option to try because they last a solid 2 years, meaning no replacement needed every year, or at least within this period of time.

The best thing about this creative method is to reduce the use of weed killers – the too harsh chemicals to be safe for your health and pets’.

Here are a few affordable perennial plants to consider:

  • Early snow glories
  • Pansies and violets
  • Moss Phlox
  • Walk-on-me thyme
  • Creeping periwinkle
  • Lavender
  • Catmint
  • Daisies

Clematis Climbing Wall

If the front walls of your house don’t look much pretty, why not find a way to hide them? Like, creating a clematis climbing wall on your own.

There are a lot of climbing flowers but I find the clematis is one of the easiest to take care of while it comes up with over 300 different species in the genus. This is a heat-loving plant so, ensure to place them in the wall sides with as much sunlight as possible.

The flowers will grow healthily in most, cold soil.

It varies in different seasons – being evergreen during late spring-summer while deciduous within autumn and winter. Its blooming season is in summer. The best thing is clematis flowers deliver diverse shades from bright red to indigo to white.

To help clematis to climb up the wall, you can provide it something to support this process, like fishing line, twine, steel rods, wooden dowels, thin branches, or wires.

If you have got some quality trellis, cover it with some netting or insert a few twine “helper” lines.

Succulent Stone Planters

For low-water or xeriscape yards, you can try succulent display. These stone planters deliver uniquely dramatic and rustic but still modern look to yard space while requiring really less maintenance.

Besides, succulents provide different colorways to surely soup up the front view of your house.

Just make sure to use a mixture of types and textures consisting of small aloes or yuccas to add height. About littered gap spaces left, you can try some creeping succulents to fill out all of them.

While known for its heavily heat-loving features, succulents are a versatile plant to live and grow stronger in every climate.

The planting process is quite similar to the log planters’, but instead of seeding directly and wait until the plant grows and blossoms. It’d better buy succulent plants from your local planting stores. They are cheap to purchase while taking less time and effort to start with.

Plant a young tree

To make a focal point for your small front yard, how about planting a tree. Buy starting with buying a young one rather than an older tree, you will save around $150 to $1500 due to the plant you intend to grow.

In the long term, when it is fully grown, you can take advantage of its shade for other afternoon activities, the fresher air, and cooler temperature (down to 30%) to your house.

All you need for this small project is a young tree, some mulch, and some digging tools.

Mulch Alternatives

As mentioned, mulch is a great method to decrease the amount of weeding invaliding your garden while avoiding losing water from other plants.

For that reason, using mulch alternatives is an efficient money saver for front yard ideas.

Here are some options to consider:

  • Stone mulch
  • Old newspaper
  • Compost
  • Pine needles
  • Leaves
  • Grass clippings

Conclusion

The best way to determine which out of 10 provided options is the best for your front landscaping is to know your preference, the yard’s areas, and construction, and weather.

But the cheapest way is to recycle, reuse, and repurpose the old stuff or available things that you have. Of course, it must have some creativity of yours as well. I hope this article has been helpful to you. Thanks for reading!

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