25 Flower Bed Ideas That Are Bursting With Color
Trying new flower bed ideas is one of the quickest and easiest ways to spruce up your home’s landscaping. Just by changing the colors and textures in your flower beds, you can add character, color, and personality to your home and give it instant curb appeal. (Just make sure to choose plants that suit your climate and your willingness to water, deadhead, and maintain them.) There are so many ways to plant a flower bed, whether you’re looking for simple, low-maintenance greenery or overflowing color, that you may not know where to start, where to put a flower bed, or even what to plant.
Below, we’ve gathered 25 flower bed ideas that range from Nantucket traditional with hydrangeas and hostas to English cottagecore with herbs, vegetables, and, well, a little bit of everything. Whether you’re starting with a blank canvas or an established garden that’s needing a change, these flower bed ideas will help you get your yard looking great.
For more front-yard inspiration:
Carve Out a Courtyard
Believe it or not, this garden used to be a parking lot. Designer Gary McBournie surrounded a curved brick path with flower beds and hedges to transform his own Nantucket property.
Let Them Overflow
Lush plantings along the stone path leading up to the front door of architect Peter Pennoyer and designer Katie Ridder’s weekend home Millbrook, New York, sets off its bold color: Umbria Red by Benjamin Moore.
Related: The Prettiest Colors to Paint Your Front Door
Leave White Space
The contrast Patrick Wade created by using boxwood hedges and bushes and gravel in the garden behind the 1930s Spanish Revival bungalow he shares with Dave DeMattei looks fresh and interesting. (Plus, it's lower maintenance than a lawn.) The dark greenery and light rocks make for a stunning visual from the terrace above.
Opt for Low Greenery
The guest room porch at this L.A. home feels like “vacationesque getaway,” says designer Jeremiah Brent, partly thanks to the minimal but effective landscaping. Simple flower beds filled with dark mulch and low-growing succulent plants tie in with the climbing plants and contrast with the home’s exterior.
Surround a Sculpture
A flower bed filled with free-form roses and shrubbery surround the garden sculpture at this country estate designed by Thomas Jayne. Add a trellis covered with climbing vines and roses, and you have a very romantic front yard.
Related: 25 Easy Trellis Ideas for Your Garden
Frame a Game
Play with nature outside your home by lining your yard games with plants and flowers like Denler Hobart Gardens did outside this California home designed by Mark D. Sikes. “We tried to open up the property and then divide it into multiple areas that all flow into each other,” Hobart says. The flower beds, which are framed in bluestone and brick, contain “a mix of traditional and drought-resistant plants” like boxwood and hydrangeas.
Go for a Gate
A charming garden gate welcomes visitors into the front yard flower beds of this Charlotte, North Carolina, cottage by Pursley Dixon Architects. The simple hedges contain a hidden rose garden.
Surround Them With Hedges
If you want to enhance the sense of nature while edging your flower bed, go for hedges. These green borders define the space while adding more life to your garden. Plant them around the border as well, and they'll give you more backyard privacy too.
Related: The Best Plants and Trees for Backyard Privacy
Stick to One Thing
Hydrangeas can fill a flower bed all on their own. At his own home in the Catskills, designer Juan Carretero went classic with a row of white hydrangeas along the front walk. The grazing sheep on the lawn channel his partner’s childhood home in Sussex, England.
Line Them With Containers
At her family’s Catskills vacation home, called Pennyroyal, designer Amanda Reynal planted the flower beds with hardy greenery and brought color onto the patio in easier to grow and swap out containers.
Fill It With Something Fragrant
Maximize a flower bed by growing lavender. The perennial herb not only beautifies your garden with its color and fragrance, but it's easy to care for and is useful in cooking and other home projects. Take inspiration from the lavender beds at Wendy Owen’s Sonoma, California, property, which feels like it belongs in a laid-back, rustic French village.
Create a Cutting Garden
False sunflowers, yellow and pink coneflowers, rudbeckias, and zinnias fill the rustic flower beds around the edge of the fenced garden at Beanacre Farm, Gerard Pampalone and Arlene Carpenter’s home in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Local garden designer Paul Winsor helped conceive the plan.
Sharpen the Edges
Garden edging is great for keeping your flower bed healthy and weed-free, but it doesn’t always need a border. Give your flower bed a clean-cut appearance by sharpening the edge and filling the bed with dark mulch to contrast with the shrubs and flowers you plant.
Set It in Stone
Add an sharp-looking structural element to your flower bed with a stone border. For the fifth House Beautiful Whole Home in Atlanta, the flower beds along the front walkway were raised off the ground for visual interest. (You can keep what’s inside simple.) The light stone contrasts with the shrubs and lawn surrounding it.
Light the Way
Elevate the warmth and ambiance of your flower beds by adding landscape lighting. Solar-powered pathway lights charge during the day and turn on automatically at night, guiding the way to your front door and keeping feet off your plants.
Address Windows
Flower beds don’t have to stay in the garden. Add life and character to the front of your home at the bottom of windows as Sarah Bartholomew did for this row house in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood. Together with the small topiary, the white window box planters, flowers, and window trim look crisp and traditional.
Copy a Cottage Garden
There’s just something enchanting about English countryside flower beds, and Anne Hathaway’s cottage (Shakespeare’s bride, not the actress) has some of our favorites. Full of overgrown shrubs and flowers, this country flower bed checks off all boxes in terms of height, volume, whimsy, and color.
Combine Bright colors
Can’t decide on a color scheme? Plant a variety of colors for a lively flower bed. Multiple flower colors increases the visual interest of your garden and makes a space reflective of your personality. There are colorful options for every climate, even a desert landscape.
Add a Wood Border
We love flower beds like this one that aim to create a truly earthy design. The weathered wood material border of the flower bed in Johnny Le Huquet’s small London garden looks rustic but structured and cohesive with the deck.
Incorporate Trees
Who says flower beds have to be all about flowers? Jean Liu turned the exterior of this Dallas home into a shady outdoor living room by planting a flower bed with trees. The vegetation stands out against the home’s light exterior for eye-pleasing balance.
Fill Them With Ornamental Grasses
Susannah Charbin used one of our favorite low-maintenance flower bed ideas at her own midcentury Long Island home: ornamental grasses. These are native to the landscape, so the upkeep is minimal, plus the texture warms up the clean lines of the house and makes the front walk feel welcoming.
Related: The Best Ornamental Grasses to Add to Your Garden
Think Vertically
Suellen Gregory designed the exterior of Katie and Ted Ukrop’s 1892 townhouse in the Fan District of Richmond, Virginia, to be as charming as the interior. Flower beds filled with urns, flowering trees, and climbing vines set off the white brick exterior and floor-to-ceiling windows.
Related: The Best Flowering Trees for Your Yard
Elevate Them
Tiered stone flower beds elevate the front of a Wisconsin lake house designed by Summer Thornton. The mix of ornamental grasses and wildflowers planted in them makes them easy to maintain.
Plant a Pergola
Instead of flower beds along the foundation of the house, Gerard Pampalone and Arlene Carpenter laid down pea gravel and rely on window boxes and climbing vines for color. The lavender-and-cream Japanese wisteria climbs the pergola, flowering every May. The window box plants are updated seasonally.
Keep It All Green
Hostas fill the flower beds around this Nantucket beach cottage with interiors by Kevin Isbell. The plantings are casual and low maintenance, befitting the two-bedroom vacation home’s easygoing vibe.
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