Minimalist Front Yard
A minimalist front yard is dedicated to the principle of less-is-more
It relies upon low-growth plants that suggest the conservation of organic energy are used to create a sense of conservatism. These species tend to also be very slow-growing in nature, so less basic maintenance like fertilization and trimming is needed to maintain their shapes.
Trees have a lot more freedom in a minimalist yard than gardens do.
Whereas gardens are supposed to suggest strict control and limitation, trees are only limited by the demand of appearing proportional to the home and other outdoor elements. Many different kinds of trees can be used to ornament a front yard without obstructing the façade of the home.
Smaller trees are very useful in accenting the linear movements of house walls, driveways, and hardscapes. For example, you can have a walkway built that runs from the sidewalk along your street all the way to the front door of your home. Shrubs can line both sides of this walkway that add symmetry, order, and system to the scene.
Another way to ornament the sides of a minimalist front yard is to plant fruit trees and ornamental trees like crepe myrtles. These species are taller than shrubs, but they are typically slender and avoid creating a crowded look. They are also ideal for creating boundary walls along the front lawn property lines.
The less-is-more principle can still be followed with large trees as long as their limbs are high off the ground and do not grow across the façade of the home. In fact, proportionally trimmed overarching limbs providing shade from a home works adds vertical impact
A driveway in a minimalist front yard works to support the geometry of the home and establish geometric patterns for other hardscape designs in the yard.
Driveways also draw the eye through the landscape and introduce the home to the newly arriving visitor. As such, driveway design here is a very important part of the overall landscape master plan.
In minimalism, driveways tend to be conservative in décor, but they are not as strictly limited by less-is-more principles as are gardens and flower beds.
In fact, hardscape is needed in a minimalist scheme to help contain plant life and create a sense of controlled vitality that poses no risk of overgrowth. This allows for landscape designers to construct driveways using a wide range of design styles and materials that add a sense of structure, proportion, and balance to the surrounding softscape scenes.
Popular materials for this include decorative concrete, concrete paver driveways, and even gravel driveways made of crushed high-grade stones.
Flowers are an ideal way to ornament a minimalist front yard with vegetation that is low-growth but very eye-catching at the same time.
Many flowering species can be mixed together to provide year-round coloration. It only a takes a few professionally designed flower beds that have been planted with carefully chosen species to create a flower garden that is low maintenance in nature but highly aesthetic in its form.
