Landscape Design
Before and Afters
Order Meets Wildness in a Denver Front Yard Makeover
A landscape designer turns a basic builder yard into a terraced, low-water dreamscape with a Cor-Ten steel surprise
Before Photo
Before: The couple lived in their home for about a year before starting the landscape redesign. Back then, the front yard featured a sloping lawn and a direct concrete path to the front door, neither of which enhanced the yard’s function or aesthetic. “We almost never used the front yard before,” Kenney says.
Together the homeowners and the designer decided to completely redo the yard, aiming for a carefully considered design that would complement the home’s architecture and that could be admired from the street and from inside the house. “We wanted to get rid of the lawn and use as many native, low-water plants as we could,” Kenney says.
Together the homeowners and the designer decided to completely redo the yard, aiming for a carefully considered design that would complement the home’s architecture and that could be admired from the street and from inside the house. “We wanted to get rid of the lawn and use as many native, low-water plants as we could,” Kenney says.
Clean Hardscape Adds Architectural Structure
After: Asymmetrical terraced planters filled with native plants and low-maintenance grasses now fill the front yard, providing the home with more privacy, beauty and usability. Farmer worked with Lauren Bloom of Bloom Concrete & Landscape, who demolished and then built the garden, including the paving, decking and board-formed concrete retaining walls.
A new poured-in-place concrete path takes a jog, creating an opening to showcase the new 8-by-12-foot Cor-Ten steel raised bed fabricated and installed by Landwise Colorado.
From the street, the Cor-Ten planter blends in with the rest of the terraced design, but it offers something unexpected: Its top edge slopes down toward the house. “I wanted to bring an element of surprise,” Farmer says. By sloping the planter toward the home, the homeowners get to enjoy a private, green view from inside, and those on the street can admire the Cor-Ten planter.
After: Asymmetrical terraced planters filled with native plants and low-maintenance grasses now fill the front yard, providing the home with more privacy, beauty and usability. Farmer worked with Lauren Bloom of Bloom Concrete & Landscape, who demolished and then built the garden, including the paving, decking and board-formed concrete retaining walls.
A new poured-in-place concrete path takes a jog, creating an opening to showcase the new 8-by-12-foot Cor-Ten steel raised bed fabricated and installed by Landwise Colorado.
From the street, the Cor-Ten planter blends in with the rest of the terraced design, but it offers something unexpected: Its top edge slopes down toward the house. “I wanted to bring an element of surprise,” Farmer says. By sloping the planter toward the home, the homeowners get to enjoy a private, green view from inside, and those on the street can admire the Cor-Ten planter.
Plants Bring a Touch of Wildness
Farmer filled the beds with mostly low-water, low-maintenance plants, some of them native, that would add interest and privacy screening but that wouldn’t overpower the design’s structure. “Most of the yard is [in] full sun, which really lends itself to a more native, high-desert planting scheme,” he says.
Red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) grows in the gravel next to the sidewalk. “It’s a pretty tough plant,” Farmer says, a useful trait when it comes to the local climate and the many dogs that go for walks on this street.
Monzonite, a locally quarried stone, surrounds the yucca and fills in much of the outdoor open space. “It’s a lot more cost effective [than imported stone],” Bloom says, and it pairs well with the concrete walls and the home’s exterior.
Farmer filled the beds with mostly low-water, low-maintenance plants, some of them native, that would add interest and privacy screening but that wouldn’t overpower the design’s structure. “Most of the yard is [in] full sun, which really lends itself to a more native, high-desert planting scheme,” he says.
Red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) grows in the gravel next to the sidewalk. “It’s a pretty tough plant,” Farmer says, a useful trait when it comes to the local climate and the many dogs that go for walks on this street.
Monzonite, a locally quarried stone, surrounds the yucca and fills in much of the outdoor open space. “It’s a lot more cost effective [than imported stone],” Bloom says, and it pairs well with the concrete walls and the home’s exterior.
In the terraced beds, blue fescue (Festuca glauca ‘Elijah Blue’) pops against golden creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia ‘Aurea’) in the lower planter and complements the gray concrete retaining walls. The tendrils of golden creeping Jenny trail over the front of the planter for dramatic effect.
In the upper planter, an ‘Autumn Brilliance’ serviceberry (Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance’) anchors the space and adds height. It provides year-round interest, with white spring flowers, green summer foliage, fall color and winter berries loved by birds.
A native meadow — one of two in the front yard — surrounds the serviceberry, featuring a mix of low-growing grasses, gray sages and dwarf shrubs. “I wanted to bring a little more of wild nature into their garden,” Farmer says.
How to Find the Right Plants for Your Garden
In the upper planter, an ‘Autumn Brilliance’ serviceberry (Amelanchier x grandiflora ‘Autumn Brilliance’) anchors the space and adds height. It provides year-round interest, with white spring flowers, green summer foliage, fall color and winter berries loved by birds.
A native meadow — one of two in the front yard — surrounds the serviceberry, featuring a mix of low-growing grasses, gray sages and dwarf shrubs. “I wanted to bring a little more of wild nature into their garden,” Farmer says.
How to Find the Right Plants for Your Garden
A mass of ‘Blonde Ambition’ blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition’) grows along the left side of the entry path, completely filling the sloping steel raised bed. “You can leave it up all winter,” Famer says of the grass. “That color of the bright seed heads pops against the Cor-Ten steel.”
A small cedar deck greets guests at the end of the walk, also providing the homeowners with a place to sit outside. “In the summer, we drink our morning coffee and occasionally an evening cocktail on the front deck,” Kenney says. “We have also gotten to know many of our neighbors better just by sitting out there,” he adds. This corner is the shadiest portion of the front yard and will stay cooler, even in Denver’s hot summers.
The deck pulls more of the home’s architecture into the landscape, with the cedar element softening the mostly concrete hardscape. It functions as a step, bringing the concrete path up to the concrete entry stoop.
Browse outdoor lounge chairs in the Houzz Shop
A small cedar deck greets guests at the end of the walk, also providing the homeowners with a place to sit outside. “In the summer, we drink our morning coffee and occasionally an evening cocktail on the front deck,” Kenney says. “We have also gotten to know many of our neighbors better just by sitting out there,” he adds. This corner is the shadiest portion of the front yard and will stay cooler, even in Denver’s hot summers.
The deck pulls more of the home’s architecture into the landscape, with the cedar element softening the mostly concrete hardscape. It functions as a step, bringing the concrete path up to the concrete entry stoop.
Browse outdoor lounge chairs in the Houzz Shop
The home closely abuts its next-door neighbor; for privacy Farmer planted a row of clumping quaking aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) with an understory planting of bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi), seen on the left side of the path. “The idea here was to bring a bit of the Colorado mountains to the city. Once you’ve hiked through a grove of aspens, it’s hard to not want that in your own garden,” Farmer says. The plants eventually will fill in to form a screen.
The second native meadow grows on the right side of the path, with the blue grama grass growing in the background. To save on costs, they started most plants in the meadow from seed and selected smaller plants to start.
The second native meadow grows on the right side of the path, with the blue grama grass growing in the background. To save on costs, they started most plants in the meadow from seed and selected smaller plants to start.
From the deck, the homeowners can gaze at the native meadow, blue grama grass and Japanese maple. “The sun-shade mix in this garden bed allowed for a great location for a Japanese maple, one of the only plants [the homeowners] specifically wanted to see in their garden,” Farmer says.
While the yard does have an irrigation system, the goal is for the garden to eventually survive without much additional water. “With drought becoming more and more frequent in the area, I wanted a more resilient landscape,” Farmer says.
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While the yard does have an irrigation system, the goal is for the garden to eventually survive without much additional water. “With drought becoming more and more frequent in the area, I wanted a more resilient landscape,” Farmer says.
More on Houzz
Read other front yard design guides
Discover more landscape inspiration
Find a professional for your home project
Browse outdoor products
Front Yard at a Glance
Who lives here: Maggie Farrar, who does marketing for a tech company, and Clayton Kenney, a designer and marketer, and their golden retriever puppy, Ida
Location: Denver
Size: 875 square feet (81 square meters); 25 by 35 feet
Designer: Dustin Farmer, owner of Stems Garden Design + Maintenance, which also maintains the garden
In Denver, Maggie Farrar and Clayton Kenney’s new front yard balances ordered, contemporary design with loose, natural plantings. Designed by Dustin Farmer, the yard doesn’t have a bad side — especially with its new custom Cor-Ten steel raised bed that can be appreciated both from the street and from the home’s large first-floor window.
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