Side Yard Design Ideas

When it comes to landscaping designs, the focus is often on our front lawns and backyards. After all, these places are where we hang-out to enjoy our coffee and the morning paper, or entertain our guests and visitors whenever we hold evening parties. Rarely do we pay any attention to what’s in between these two – our side yards.

More often than not, our side yards only end up as areas where we stash our recycle bins and our rolled up garden hose, or serve as parking areas for our bikes and so on. However, our side yards, when dressed up properly and nicely, can become a wonderful space that can enhance our home’s aesthetic value. So what can we do to our side yards to give them that “wow!” factor?

One of the most common facelifts that you can give your side yard is to turn it into a lovely walkway, so you don’t have to cringe and close your eyes whenever you walk here from your front lawn to your backyard. You can have a small path constructed right in the middle of the side yard or along the sides of the fence or your house’s walls. You can use cobblestones, stone slabs, planks of wood, bricks, or even pave it with cement. As far as walkway materials are concerned, you will never run out of options.

To make your brand new walkway a lot more appealing, you can have flower boxes built along the sides of the path, or you can line them up with several pots of ornamentals. If you don’t like the idea of flower boxes and pots, then you can simply plant flowers or shrubs directly onto the ground. This idea works pretty well if your side yard is wider than usual, but if it is not, then what you can do is to hang orchids or hanging flower pots on the fence.

Want more? Then why not add and arching trellis over the path? You can have crawling vines run through the arch to add some garden like feel to it. And if you can spare some more cash, then you can add some lighting effects like down lights or ground luminaires to help illuminate the are at night and give it a more dramatic and romantic appeal.

There are so many things that we can do to our side yards in order to make them look much more pleasing the eye. With a little hard work and some creativity, we can turn our otherwise dull and boring side yards into a colorful and amazing space that we’ll definitely love.