Landscaping and garden ideas
Twenty-two guides built around the way people actually plan a yard: by the look they want, or by the part of the property they're stuck on.
By style
Styles
What the style is, the plants that carry it, and where it falls apart.
Mediterranean garden
Silver foliage, pale stone and heat-loving plants. A Mediterranean garden looks generous on very little water, as long as the drainage is right.
Full sun · Low water
Japanese garden
Fewer plants, placed with more care. A Japanese garden feels calm because nearly everything in it is green, evergreen and deliberately positioned.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Cottage garden
Generous, closely planted and slightly untidy on purpose. A cottage garden earns its looseness by having hard edges and real structure underneath.
Full sun · Moderate water
Modern minimalist landscape
A modern yard lives or dies on a handful of decisions: the paver size, one repeated plant, and how clean you keep the edges.
Full sun · Low water
Rock garden
Alpines die of wet, not cold. Get the drainage and the stone placement right and a rock garden looks after itself for years.
Full sun · Low water
Gravel garden
Planted into gravel and barely watered after the first summer. It's the lowest-input yard that still looks like someone designed it.
Full sun · Low water
Wildlife garden
A garden that feeds insects from March to October and still looks deliberate to everyone walking past.
Full sun · Low water
Shade garden
The hard part of shade isn't the light; it's the dry soil under trees. Solve that and shade becomes the easiest garden to keep.
Shade · Moderate water
Coastal garden
On the coast, wind is the entire design problem. Filter it rather than block it and a surprising range of planting becomes possible.
Full sun · Low water
Formal garden
Symmetry, repetition and clipped green architecture. The most demanding style to maintain, and the only one that looks finished in January.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Kitchen garden
Productive and good-looking aren't in conflict. A kitchen garden just needs its geometry settled before any seed goes in.
Full sun · High water
Tropical garden
The jungle effect comes from leaf size and layering, not from a warm climate. Most of it is possible a long way from the tropics.
Partial shade · High water
By space
Spaces
The awkward, specific spaces: the front yard, the slope, the balcony, the area around the pool.
Front yard
The front yard is the one everybody sees and nobody has time for. It has to look right in February and still hide the trash cans.
Partial shade · Low water
Backyard
Most backyards are one undivided rectangle. Splitting it into three clear zones is what makes it feel bigger, not smaller.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Small backyard
Small yards fail from too many small things. Fewer, larger moves are what make a tight space feel generous.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Balcony garden
On a balcony the pot is the garden. Get the container size and the wind right and nearly everything else follows.
Partial shade · Moderate water
Rooftop garden
A rooftop garden is an engineering problem before it's a design one: load, wind, drainage, and how anything gets up there in the first place.
Full sun · Low water
Patio
Most patios are built too small and too gray. The size of the table decides everything else about them.
Full sun · Low water
Driveway and entrance
A driveway is the largest hard surface most homes have, and the one most likely to be done badly.
Full sun · Low water
Sloped yard
A slope becomes an asset the moment you stop trying to flatten it. The real decision is how much to terrace and how much to plant.
Partial shade · Low water
Pool landscaping
Pool planting is chosen by what it doesn't do: no litter in the water, no thorns, no roots lifting the paving.
Full sun · Low water
Courtyard garden
Enclosed, sheltered and usually shaded. A courtyard is a microclimate, which makes some difficult plants easy and some easy plants impossible.
Shade · Moderate water
See it before you dig
Start with one photo, compare the result with the original, and try another direction when the first one misses the mark.
Scan to install
