There are plenty but people need to know your location to recommend suitable plants. You also need to give us the dimensions you’re looking for. And you'd need to take into account that thorny plants are good at trapping litter, are painful to weed around, might scratch people walking up to the front door and would take a while to fill in completely. Also, if dogs can’t get to the lawn they might just pee on your newly planted shrubs.

I'm waiting see what others offer :-) Other than some spiny succulents or cacti - and those require a pretty specific climate - I can't think of much else that would discourage at least a male dog from lifting his leg. And a lawn is the most easily recoverable of any groundcover or low growing plant in that regard.

Zone 9b foothills outside Sacramento. Very hot and dry summers and a few weeks of overnight frost each winter.

I‘d prefer something very low growing like a ground cover. A male dog is not likely to lift his leg on something that isn’t growing high.

The other option is a spiked shrub that is extremely hardy against dog urine so that it wouldn’t matter if a dog urinated on it or not. It would still be serving the purpose of protecting the grass from the dogs either way.

There are are other lawns around. I don’t think a dog would try that hard to get to my specific lawn if there are plenty of other easier to access lawns available at neighboring homes.

Having owned a number of male dogs including my current furry partner, I can assure you that they will pee on anything regardless of height. If they scent another dog, they will even pee on a flat weed leaf rosette as well as just recently mowed grass :-)

I care less about a dog peeing and more about the dogs peeing on things that are damaged by dog urine.

Once one dog starts using it as a place to pee, it attracts more dogs that want to try to cover the scent with their own and the problem just gets worse and worse.

I want it to be a non-desirable place to take a pee break since more convenient options are all around and be hardy against dog urine if some dogs go there anyway.

I'm not sure you will find many plants that will be resistant. Nitrogen burn as a result of being doused with undiluted urine can - and typically does - damage any plant that comes into repeated contact with it.

If you just want to create a pee-free border, edge the sidewalk with a sufficiently wide border of river rick or gravel and then plant your barrier plants between it and the lawn. Won't stop free ranging dogs - nothing does outside of a fence - but will restrict the access of those on a leash.

I don’t understand the purpose of the river rock. On a lot as small as the first photo, even a leashed dog would easily walk over the river rock unless they don’t like walking on rocks for some reason.

Supposedly, there are some dog urine tolerant plants.

This guy starts talking about them, but runs out of time before he goes into much detail about suggestions . Can anyone name more?

.However, rather than just hoping the dog urine doesn’t kill the plants, I want to make the area the last place most dogs would even want to use as a spot to stop to pee when they can just walk a few seconds longer and go to the next neighbor‘s lot.

Most responsible dog owners walk their pets on a leash - it is actually the law in many municipalities - and will not allow them to wander freely into someone's yard. The gravel/rock border, which they can reach even on a tight leash, is impervious to dog urine so makes an effective border between sidewalk and lawn or other plantings.

And plants that tolerant dog urine - like grass does - will not preclude them from being damaged. It just won't kill them. Few plants - none that I can think of - will withstand a strong foliar nitrogen application without some signs of damage.

The dog owners are walking their dogs on a leash and they sometimes walk onto the lawns with their leashed dogs and allow the dog to pee on grass and plants, then walk off the lawn and continue with their walk. Otherwise, the owner stands in the street and lets the leashed dog wander onto the lawns.

Leashes are not preventing this issue. It would take a physical barrier to stop it.

I don’t think most dogs will urinate on the river rock. They would just walk across the rocks to get to plants and grass. So, I still don’t see the point of the rocks.

Try putting up signs, seeing if that spurs cooperation. Otherwise you will in fact have to install fencing.

Front yard fencing is not allowed by HOA. That’s why I want ideas for landscaping that can be used as a barrier.

I doubt you will find much that will work to your qualifications. Things like dwarf barberries, landscape/groundcover roses or various junipers will provide a barrier that many - not all - dogs are unlikely to cross but they can and will be damaged by repeated doses of dog pee. And will not recover as easily as the lawn would.

I'd add a couple of motion detecting sprinklers that will startle them when they approach. Try it for a while and you might be able to get them to bypass your yard altogether and you can then deactivate or remove them.

eta: here is another thread with some good ideas. River rock was suggested here, too, because dogs don't really like walking on it, with barberry planted between it and the lawn. I don't know if that grows where you are, but it's thorny. They say to avoid Japanese Barberry because it can be invasive. Another idea was to put up lawn chemical treatment flags - so people will not let their dogs approach.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5618346/help-front-lawn-has-become-the-neighborhood-dog-park

jaxo why are you so willing to show pictures of the neighbor's houses and looks like samples, yet so far have not shown an actual picture of your own house and lawn? Seeing YOUR house would have helped choose the right tree bush that will fit the space and determine after said planting of the tree bush, if you will even have a lawn left to pee on.

I'm getting the feeling this may not be the right neighborhood for you.

But to answer the question, plant a border of Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard'. That with the red leafed plum will suit the hood just fine.

The hose mounted sprinklers are too aggressive and will trigger for people passing by.

I wish I could configure the in ground lawn sprinklers to trigger when any animal or human stepped on the property line.

There would be a few seconds of scary noises while the line pressurizes before any water actually starts flowing which gives them ample time to get out of the way and it won’t get them wet at all if they aren’t on the lawn since the sprinklers are facing away from the street.

We planted Knock Out roses at about 3-ft intervals to form a privacy hedge on our back porch. Assuming you don't have deer to eat them down to the ground, that might work. And they seem to bloom during all spring, summer, and fall. We take them down to about 18 inches in January and they grow up to 4-5 feet depending on the rain. We have pink and red toward the right center of the pic.

If your HOA doesn't allow a front yard fence, are you sure they would allow a shrub border? What about one of those low, 12" wire garden fences that you push into the ground -- they are relatively unobtrusive. A neighbor has a row of it along her front lawn; it tells people that she doesn't want traffic of any kind on her lawn. It works, even though it literally is along the front edge only, doesn't go up the sides of her lawn at all.

About yuccas -- I have two different varieties. My dogs walk through the Yucca filamentosa without even noticing it. The larger plant, Yucca aloifolia, is robust enough that my dogs give it wide berth even when chasing each other through the garden.

A different approach to the problem may be chemical or odor. Many years ago we had a problem on neighborhood dog turning over our garbage cans. What resolved the problem was the baby diapers that we started having. A periodic spraying of the yard with ammonia my be all that is need. A dilute solution sprayed along the curb may stop solve the problem.

It does not take much ammonia to create a real stink.

The idea is to chemically mark the area so the dog thinks it belongs to a bigger dog.

Shrubs and other landscaping changes can be approved after review by the HOA landscaping committee. Fencing is just banned in the CC&Rs.

Ammonia and other dog and cat repellent chemicals, cayenne pepper etc. just don’t work. Even if something like that worked when first applied, you would have to keep reapplying it daily for it to have any meaningful effect.

If there are such stringent guidelines under the HOA's CC&R's for the front yards, then you should lobby the governing body to invoke stricter dog walking rules. If no dogs allowed to roam off leash and leashed dogs are prohibited from entering property not their own, your peeing issue should become much less of one :-)

What about some kind very low shrub or high growing thick ground cover in the 1 to 2ft high range as a border around the lawn? It probably wouldn’t even need thorns to just be awkward enough for a dog to try to walk through that the dog and the person walking them would likely avoid it and take any easier path to get to grass somewhere else.

There is nothing so special and attractive about my lawn that any dog should be so determined to get to it past obstacles when there is a fully open and easy to access lawn at the next house.

Dogs are generally not roaming free. The issue is people walking leashed dogs and letting the dog onto other people’s lawns throughout the community while remaining leashed the entire time.

There are already rules about this, mostly about picking up after your dog, but there is no “picking up” of dog pee.

There will always be people who won’t follow rules and are lazy. It only takes one to cause damage. So, I’d just like to make my lawn inconvenient to access so that these lazy people will choose somewhere else more convenient to let their dog roam on leash.

I also want it to be something that looks good so I get some aesthetic benefit out of it.

Are you allowed something like this? https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/178244097731849654/ it’s not exactly a fence but an owner would have to be pretty blatant to allow their dog to cross a clearly marked boundary. Alternatively watch out for the culprits and just as they finish rush out with a bucket of water and make a big to do about sloshing it on the pee patch whilst grinning benignly at the owner and explaining that as long as you immediately pour ten gallons of water onto the front lawn their dog’s pee won’t do any damage at all. Try to look as old and decrepit as possible while struggling with your bucket. Shame them into behaving in a civilised fashion.

Signs would be a lot less bother and effort.

The posts with the single chain does look interesting, but could be a trip hazard.

Maybe a 1 foot river rock border from the curb, then that mini fence, then the grass.

Cats are a lot less bother and effort.

How about flags marking that you sprayed your lawn with chemicals ... whether it's true or not, it would cause me not to let my dog near that lawn for fear of her paws getting hurt by a possible chemical. Spray something with a chemical smell when you first place the flags (doesn't have to actually be all over the lawn, just a deterrent).

Do yucca filamentosa come in varieties that stay small at fully mature size and can they be planted close together to form a border?

Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' - Plant Finder (missouribotanicalgarden.org)

@Christopher CNC - your cat statement is only true for indoor only cats! Don’t get us started on damage caused in planting beds and to our song bird population by cats with homes but which are allowed to roam! Off topic here but just had to say.

@jaxo - I understand & totally am sympathetic to your issue. This is a universal problem and it is not the fault of the dogs - the blame lies fully on their people. I am a dog owner & my dog never would think of using our front yard as her toilet area. She is trained for back yard only & she is reliable. When she’s being walked - on her leash always - she is trained to curb herself if she cannot wait until we arrive at the area where she can roam, at the end of her leash always, to sniff and just be a dog.

OK, so they can grow up to six feet in size. That will be too large to have a row of them in my front yard next to the street.

@Embothrium - signs - my husband has placed them at both ends of our yard at the sidewalk which seemed to make him feel better & made me do an eye roll when his Amazon package arrived. Several neighbors have them is where he got the idea. Funny thing is - all the neighbors with these signs are dog owners as are we! Goes to my point made in last post - the dogs are not the problem - it’s their people, Dogs can’t read the signs & the people who are not respectful of property of others don’t care. Sad.

Does anyone have any idea what the plants are in the third photo in the original post?

There are some round puffy plants, something that looks like purple ground cover and something that looks like bright yellow groundcover.

Will those plants get much bigger and taller than they are shown in that photo?

The Yucca filamentosa get about 2 and half feet tall. For big dogs. Six feet is with the bloom spike. You can just cut them off when they bloom periodically.

I am not the OP but the buckets of fish emulsion fertilizer caught my eye. First it provided a good laugh at the dog owner realize what had happen when he got home. It is a very creative uses of my baby diapers idea, The difference is the diapers work on the dog the buckets of fish emulsion fertilizer works on the owner.

On the other hand, if you would like to fix your lawn so that dogs can pee on it without burning the grass, try this. For the existing marks, drop a heaping handful of table sugar on the spot and give it a little drink of water. In the future, fertilize with organic fertilizer, always, or at least once a year to keep your soil's microbiome healthy. The problem is the soil does not have sufficient population of bacteria to process the direct application of urine. Sugar fixes that in the short term, and organic fertilizer fixed it for the long term.

Blue-grey "puffy plants" look like they might be blue fescues (ornamental grass). The purple foliage is too hard to discern enough about for me to suggest what it could be. There isn't much definition on the yellow plant either, but it looks like it might be one of the yellow colored creeping junipers, such as 'Golden Carpet'.

Try barberry if it's not invasive in your area. There are many varieties, some that grow in low mounds. They're thorny and prickly, plus attractive. There are also very attractive low-growing nandina, again assuming they're not invasive in your area.

Agree that the ‘puffy plants’ are a blue Festuca. The purple may be Tradescantia pallida. I don’t think they’d bother a determined dog.

Consider using this plant as a low hedge: Ilex cornuta 'Rotunda' | Landscape Plants | Oregon State University