Latest forecasts show summers will likely continue getting hotter so you'll be needing all the inspirational ideas you can find to keep your yard cool and comfortable when temperatures soar. You're no doubt familiar with instant ways to make your garden feel cooler in high summer heat, such as using a large parasol or shade sail and installing a retractable awning. But there are lots of more surprising ways that add to your landscape design as well as cool the space, creating an environment that is a pleasure to be in during the hottest months of summer. Late-season is the ideal time to add these cooling DIY landscape design ideas to your garden, as they'll be well established by the time next summer's heat arrives.

Taking a thoughtful approach that looks at all the different elements in your yard and how they interconnect is the solution to creating a cooler garden. Assessing smart shade ideas for your garden, reconsidering your planting choices and rethinking landscaping materials will collectively help to pull together a more cohesive approach that makes your yard feel cooler in heatwave conditions.

Which of these cooling landscape-design ideas will work best for your yard?

1. Choose a Planting Palette of Cool Colors

If your goal is a make your garden feel cooler in high summer heat, the color of the plants you choose is just as important as the variety. Opt for a color theme that relies predominantly on flowers and foliage in cooling shades of silver, gray, white, purple, blue and olive green, and steer clear of hot, bright colors like red, orange, and yellow, which have the opposite effect of visually warming up the garden.

Consider silver-leaved plants that reflect sunlight, too, naturally cooling the garden when temperatures rise. They also add an element of surprise with their magical sheen. Go for silver or gray-leaved perennials such as globe artichoke, eryngium and Senecio candicans.

2. Introduce Falling Water

There are many benefits of making water a part of your landscape design. The sound of trickling water is calming and boosts wellbeing, while adding a pond or water bowl also encourages biodiversity and will attract wildlife to your garden. A cascading water feature can play a key role in making your garden feel cooler in high summer heat too, both with its cooling sound and by directly pulling heat out of the air.

There are plenty of water features you can easily install yourself and the easiest option is an off-the-shelf water feature that runs on solar power. This means no landscaping work is involved, which keeps costs down if you're on a budget. Choose an unusual design such as this curved cascading solar water feature from Wayfair with a built-in planter and you create a standout patio focus, too.

3. Plant a Fast-Growing Shrub

It's always a good idea to look for lovely natural options to make your garden feel cooler. The delightful dappled shade cast by fast-growing shrubs will create changing patterns of light throughout the day as the sun moves round. This is one of the most affordable ideas for shade too, as the only outlay is the cost of the shrub.

Look for easy shade options like fast-growing crepe myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), which adds 2 to 3 feet of height annually if conditions are right. Small to medium varieties like 'Center Stage' Pink Crepe Myrtle, available from Nature Hills, grow to a mature height between 10 to 15 feet tall.

Another great shade choice is one of the taller varieties of oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) like screening favorite 'Alice', available from Nature Hills, which grows to 12 feet tall and has reliable white-blush pink blooms throughout summer.

4. Layer up an Airy Feeling with Screening Plants

Layering the planting with a combination of evergreen structure, ornamental grasses and seasonal perennials helps create a space that feels cool, fresh and welcoming. The trick is to bring a feel of airiness to your yard using multi-level planting.

Aim for a loose arrangement with plenty of ground cover plants to keep soil cool and moist. Then mix tall native perennials like coneflowers and achillea with airy ornamental grasses that move in the slightest breeze for a shape-shifting middle layer. Shrubs and multi-stemmed trees complete the top storey and ensure the layers beneath are kept shaded and cool. Pruning the lower section of shrubs to reveal the open structure of stems is a trick many landscape designers use to give gardens an airy feel, and you can also remove the lower branches of trees to raise the crown and create a lighter vibe.

Using layered planting has the added benefit of naturally screening your garden for privacy if you're overlooked by neighbours.

5. Create Dappled Shade with a Privacy Screen

One of the quickest and most affordable ways to add cooling shade as well as adding to your landscape design is by using a decorative screen. They can be made from a range of materials including metal like the Corten steel sunburst screen in the design above, and can be customised to match the style and aesthetic of your outdoor space. You may decide on using several.

Not all privacy screens need to be fixed in place and landscape designers regularly opt for strategically placed standalone screens to add style as well as shade. Choose a lattice style that will allow light to pass through so your patio will feel airy and not boxed in. It's an easy trick to copy, and one that will add a unique design element as well as a more secluded feel.

6. Hydrate Dry Patio Air with a Solar-Powered Fountain

Landscape designers recommend positioning a water fountain on or near your patio, deck or other seating area as it hydrates the air, and you can benefit from the cooling atmosphere it creates. It's easy to DIY your own solar fountain water feature with a cheap floating pump like this from Amazon , making this one of the easiest patio ideas to try.

Solar fountains work by constantly recirculating water and this keeps the surrounding air hydrated and oxygenated. Easy to create and hypnotic to gaze at, they are just what your patio needs to cool the air, while also providing a valuable source of water for birds, bees and other visiting wildlife to enjoy. A solar fountain also prevents water from stagnating and becoming a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

7. Grow a Living Canopy

Erecting a pergola is an obvious way to add shade to the garden, but creating a living roof is one of the more surprising landscaping tricks that's bound to be a conversation point. Planting fast-growing climbers to grow up and over a pergola helps prevent heat building up in the garden. The foliage blocks the sun’s rays, creating a cooler space to enjoy.

The living canopy you create will provide natural shade that's more pleasant for relaxation or dining in hot weather. It's an easy way to make your outdoor space feel cooler in high summer heat, especially if you choose fragrant climbing varieties like rose, star jasmine or honeysuckle as you will be enveloped in clouds of heavenly scent.

8. Landscape with Light-Colored Mulch

Stretches of hardscaping such as a paved patio tend to heat up the garden, especially if the pavers are charcoal gray or black. Dark-colored pavers absorb heat during the day, releasing it later once the air temperature cools, making your patio an unpleasantly hot place to be in the evening. And the smaller your garden, the hotter it will feel.

Instead choose light-colored landscaping materials that reflect sunlight such as pale natural stone and hardscaping finishes like these bone-toned porcelain pavers from Lowe's. Combine with buff gravel and white pebbles like these decorative river stones from Lowe's and you'll find your patio is considerably cooler in high summer heat.

9. Spritz your Patio with a Mister

Patio misters are a popular option for cooling down outdoor spaces. Easy to use, these systems are connected to a hose or outdoor tap. They can hang along the edge of your roof or be freestanding. The largest systems are designed to cover an entire patio or deck area, while others – like the 15-foot misting umbrella from Wayfair pictured – are big enough to cool a seating area.

Patio misters are designed to release a fine mist that's cooling without soaking you, and a great solution if you live in a hot, dry climate and are looking for smart ideas for patio shade and cooling. Mister systems are energy-efficient, providing a cost-effective solution for beating the heat without high electricity bills.

Another option is a misting fan like this Portable Outdoor Mister from Walmart which combines air and mist to keep you cool. In addition to moving the air around like a conventional fan they release mist. If you want hydrated air without the movement, a simple freestanding mister such as the Cobra Misting System from Walmart, a versatile solution for yard work and keeping pets cool.

Gone are the days that only those living in a hot, dry climate thought about drought-tolerant gardens: after this heatwave summer, with hosepipe bans up and down the country, we all need to consider how to make our yards less dependent on water. But don't worry, that doesn't mean you have to compromise on a great-looking garden. These landscape designer tricks for drought-tolerant planting can transform your backyard while cutting the need for irrigation.

The combination of choosing the right plants and enhancing them with complementary landscaping materials can result in a sustainable design that feels right for the local climate, plus works for you. As with any good landscape design, the focus is on texture, color and repeat planting, but landscape designers rely on plants that are self-sufficient once established and tend to self-seed, as well as native plants adapted to the local climate. Using plants that practically grow themselves means that a drought-tolerant garden is also a low-maintenance garden, requiring less of your time to stay in good shape.

The best ideas for drought-tolerant gardens (also known as dry gardens and xeriscape gardens) are so much more than simply practical solutions to the challenges of climate change. Instead, they're aesthetically pleasing designs that tap into the best sustainable ideas to create a dream outdoor space despite limited water resources. It's a natural fit for hydrozoning ideas too, the landscape design method that groups plants with similar water needs together into specific zones.

If you're wondering how to design a drought-tolerant garden, or simply make part of your yard less dependent on water, these are the key tips and techniques that landscape designers use.

1. Embrace Rockscaping

Rockscaping is a modern version of the traditional rock garden that's arisen from the necessity of creating low-water gardens, as the stone effectively locks moisture in the ground and shields the soil from extreme temperatures. Rocks partner beautifully with xeriscaping, creating visual interest and helping to define different areas of the garden. Using bold sculptural planting, a rockscape can be planted less densely than a traditional border, further minimising the amount of water needed.

Building a rock garden isn't as hard as you might think. The key to successful rockscaping is to create an initial structure with larger rocks, then add smaller pebbles, crushed stone and gravel to create a full, layered design. Begin with a few well-placed larger rocks to anchor the space, then allow space between the rocks for plants to grow, and use drought-tolerant groundcover plants to spread into crevices and knit the scheme together.

Lowe's has a good selection of landscaping rocks. If you're on a budget, look on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Craigslist and Freecycle for listings of surplus materials left over from landscaping projects. Using local stone for hardscaping wherever possible is more sustainable in terms of carbon footprint and naturally complements local planting.

2. Use A Dry River Bed as a Key Design Element

Dry river beds are an ornamental solution to drainage problems in the garden as well as being an aesthetically pleasing design. Also known as a dry creek bed, this is a type of landscaping that’s designed to resemble a pebbly stream without the water. It allows water to filter down naturally into the soil too, offering a landscaping solution where plants can thrive in drought-prone areas.

This is a budget-friendly way to improve your garden too. All you need to do is dig out a curved path to simulate the stream bed, cover the area with a landscaping fabric that allows air and water through like this weed barrier from Lowe's, then add pebbles. Use pea gravel such as this Landscape Rock from The Home Depot as it's rounded so looks more river-worn than conventional gravel, and mix in larger river pebbles such as these Landscape Pebbles, also from The Home Depot, for a natural finish.

Choose a mix of drought-tolerant planting to enhance the design. Consider tall accent plants like lavender and yarrow, softly textured ornamental grasses such as Mexican feather grass and feather tail grass, and low-growing plants that spread about in gravel like sedum.

3. Include Plant Accents as Bold Talking Points

The label 'drought-tolerant plant' doesn't sound very inspirational, but there's so much scope for including statement plants in your design without becoming dependent on regular irrigation. Adding an accent plant is a landscape designer trick that's easy to do yourself, and will give your planting design the edge.

Start your search for showstopper no-water plants with succulents, choosing from sempervivum, agave, aloe, and sedum. Crushed stone, gravel and rocks offer the perfect dry and gritty growing medium succulents like, too.

One of most spectacular succulents is aeonium, a showy plant that comes in a kaleidoscope of colors including black, red and lime green. These grow on tall arching stems that add a sculptural touch to your planting design. While known mainly for their waxy rosettes of leaves, many aeonium species naturally produce bright, star-shaped yellow flowers too. These form dramatic, cone-shaped, attention-grabbing clusters that last from late winter through summer.

4. Pair Big Planters with Resilient Plants

Although container gardens generally need more watering than plants in the ground, using resilient drought-tolerant planting choices in large planters reduces irrigation needs. To give these plants the fast-draining conditions they prefer, fill containers with a standard potting mix but mix in plenty of perlite, coarse sand or grit such as Jack's Gritty Mix from Walmart to create the right growing medium. Add a top-dressing of gravel mulch to containers to help retain moisture in the soil.

In a big-enough container, you can even grow a compact pine tree such as Pinus sylvestris ‘Watereri’, featured in the design above. This hardy, slow-growing evergreen conifer with distinctive blue-green needles and a rounded form is a dwarf variety, perfect for adding year-round structure and color to a container garden.

Standout Plants for Drought-Proof Planters

5. Plant Resilient Ground Cover that Slowly Spreads

One of the best landscape designer tricks for drought-tolerant planting is to use resilient low-growing ground cover plants that act as a living mulch in dry and xeriscape gardens. They prevent the evaporation of water from the soil and help protect against soil erosion, as well as blocking weeds that steal precious water from your plants.

Fragrant, resilient creeping thyme is a great pick for a drought-tolerant garden as it's happy in poor soil including sand, gravel and grit, and full sun, and once established requires very little water. With soft gray foliage, a touchable texture and showy pink blooms from late spring to early summer, it releases a cloud of fresh scent whenever it's stepped on, so it works well on path and driveway edges, too. At this time of the year, you'll get better results with young plants such as these 3 Red Creeping Thyme plants from Walmart, or sow Thymus Serpyllum seed, available from Amazon, in spring.

6. Blur the Edges with Distinctive Plants

When you're using lots of rocks, pebbles and gravel in addition to the usual amount of paving and paths, it's important to pay attention to softening the edges of all this hardscaping with planting. Don't fall into the trap of thinking these softening plants are the low-growing, unobtrusive ground cover we talked about in the previous idea. No, these are eye-catching plants that draw your focus away from hard lines with brightly colored leaves, airy flowers or stems that drape artfully.

There are plenty of showstopper low-water plants that landscaper designers use to soften hardscaping such as pink muhly grass, coral bells and creeping rosemary.

7. Ditch the Lawn for a Gravel Garden

It's hard to keep traditional lawns looking good when hot, dry summers regularly wreak havoc on them. With water restrictions in place in many parts of the country due to widespread seasonal droughts and heatwaves, it's no surprise lawns are out of favor, with landscape designers seeking more sustainable options.

If you're looking for an alternative to parched brown turf, consider replacing your lawn with a mix of gravel landscaping and plants. It can be surprising to learn which plants thrive with zero water once established, so it's well worth noticing what's still flourishing in your local climate in midsummer, as this will give you a wider choice of plants than simply those seemed across-the-board drought-tolerant.

It's easy enough to add this low-maintenance and water-wise choice to your garde yourself. Lift the turf, lay a weedproof membrane and cut planting holes to add the plants, then spread a thick layer of gravel. Water well while the plants grow their roots deep enough to source their own moisture but then gradually reduce irrigation.

8. Replace Water-Guzzling Grass with a Native Perennial Meadow

Another more sustainable lawn alternative is a native perennial meadow. This lovely idea is steadily growing in popularity, reflecting the shift towards our desire to create more wildlife habitats in our own backyards. This lawn alternative will enhance biodiversity and be appreciated by bees, butterflies and other beneficial pollinators, while bringing a loose, romantic and informal style to your yard.

Once you have removed your existing turf lawn, choose plants that are adapted to dry conditions, have low water requirements, and are suited to your local soil and climate, as well as the particular growing conditions in your garden. Select a diverse range of plants with different textures, colors, and sizes to create visual interest. Try native perennials like yarrow, coneflowers, black-eyed Susan and bee balm. Add fine-textured ornamental grasses as a filler to create a fuller, more layered, look.

You can also scatter the seed of perennial wildflowers to create a naturalized meadow, if you're on a tighter budget.

Meadow Flowers That Pollinators Adore

9. Add a Drought-Tolerant Tree to Shade Plants

Introducing a tree that offers dappled shade makes a beautiful addition to any outdoor space but also has a practical purpose as one of the best landscape designer tricks to shade drought-tolerant planting from the heat. Integrating trees into drought-tolerant landscapes helps protect your garden's ecosystem during dry spells. Tree canopies reduce moisture evaporation from any plants beneath them as well as the surrounding soil. They can disperse the sun’s hot rays, giving shade to cool the air and allowing life to thrive beneath them.

Choose small shade trees that are drought-tolerant themselves such as palo verde, crape myrtle and olive. Resilient varieties will perform well as the climate warms, and be able to cope with rising temperatures and drought, thriving in both urban and country gardens experiencing excessive heat in summer.

Although xeriscape and dry gardens with drought-tolerant planting are require far less maintenance than traditional gardens, they're not maintenance free. All plants need irrigating while they establish themselves in their new home and grow a supportive root system to find their own moisture source. Drought-tolerant gardens need weeding, mulching, irrigating and occasional pruning, too, to keep them looking their best.

However, creating a yard that isn't reliant on regular irrigation long-term is a smart move in our current climate, and you don't need to compromise on style.

Now is the perfect time to put a few plans in place to make sure your garden looks good for the next few months and sails into fall with style. A pretty autumn-blooming vine here, a refreshed hanging basket there, a DIY run of stepping stones to keep your lawn looking good once the rain arrives and a sprinkling of fast-to-flower bulbs, and your garden will look a thousand dollars come October. And you’ll have achieved it on a shoestring.

Acting in August means plants have time to settle their roots into the ground before flowering, and you can take advantage of late-summer sales. The weather is warm enough for freshly-planted additions to grow strongly, and for you to enjoy spending a few hours over the weekend in the garden. Wait another month before you start thinking about your fall garden, however, and you’ll have to pay more for an instant upgrade.

All these ideas are quick, easy and don’t cost a fortune: which will be best to bring late-season style to your garden on a budget?

1. Bury Bulbs in Your Lawn For Flowers in 8 Weeks

Most fall-flowering bulbs need to be planted in spring, but get Crocus sativus into the ground in September and it quickly blooms in 6-10 weeks for blooms in October to November. The flowers are small, reaching just 3-6 inches high, but they’re the most beautiful azure blue color that’s a wonderful contrast to the fiery tones of fall.

You can buy 20 Croscus sativus bulbs from Jackson & Perkins for $17.95 and, by burying them in your lawn or the front of a border, create drifts of fall flowers very cheaply. You’ll have stopped mowing your lawn by the time the bulbs flower, and they’re hardy in zones 3-8 so will bring blooms for years. You can dig up and separate the clumps every 3-4 years, too, for free plants and lots more flowers.

2. Refresh Hanging Baskets With Cheery Pansies

After the heatwave summer we’ve had, your hanging baskets will be looking pretty tired by now, but it’s a quick and easy job to freshen them for flowers all through fall. The Plentifall series of pansies flower most profusely through fall, winter and spring in zones 6 through 8, but cope with chilly temperatures down to zone 3, so simply find them a sheltered spot in colder zones for lots of blooms. The 1” flowers are edible for attractive garnishes on sweet or savoury dishes, too.

Plentifall pansies have a trailing habit so will spill from a hanging basket, growing 8-10 inches high and 18-24 inches wide. Burpee is currently offering four plants for $13.95 with three varieties to choose from: Plentifall Lavender Blue Pansies have pretty blue to deep purple petals; elegant Plentifall White Pansies have dainty yellow and purple centers; Plentifall Frost Pansies fall between the two with a range of pale tones from white to lavender.

There are so many creative ways to turn cheap bedding plants into fabulous garden details, so as well as refreshing hanging baskets, consider using Plentifall pansies to add some other accents to your fall backyard.

3. Forage for Natural Accents

Topping patio pots or borders with a pinecone mulch brings so much texture and autumn style to a garden, and doesn’t cost a penny. It’ll help insulate the soil, too, helping to protect roots from below-zero temperatures once winter arrives.

Another way to use foraged materials as fall garden decor is to wind colored yarn or twine around sticks pushed into the soil.

4. DIY a Water Feature to Light Up Evenings

Nights draw in surprisingly quickly in fall and by the end of October, the sun has set by 6pm across much of the country. A lovely way to light darker evenings on the patio is with a DIY illuminated water feature made with a solar-powered floating fountain with LEDs. All you need to is a watertight vessel such as this cheap polyresin tub from Lowe’s and a $15 floating fountain with LEDs and a built-in battery like this flower-shaped solar fountain from Amazon. Get creative and you could even make a water-feature planter to pretty-up your patio for fall.

5. Add Long-Lasting Flowers With Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’

Being a succulent, Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’ is one of the easiest fall-flowering plants to grow. It's a reliable bloomer from late summer all through autumn and practically grows itself, pretty much anywhere. The blooms change color, too, opening a pale pink before morphing into a rosier pink and finally turning a rich copper. While you can remove the faded flower stems after the first frost, most folk leave the dried flat-topped flowers as winter structure.

Happy in sun or partial shade in zones 4-9, perennial Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ plants in 1 gallon pots are available from Garden Goods Direct. If you love the long display of color-change blooms, Dutch Grown stock bare root Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ for a third of the price. While bare root sedums can be planted now, they won’t flower this year, this is an economical way to add lots of blooms for fall next year.

6. Add Fall Accents to Containers

While there are plenty of late-season heroes that reliably bloom through summer and into fall, year after year, buying full-size, ready-to-flower plants now can be expensive. Because these plants give an instant reward of bonny blooms, garden centers and online retailers are able to charge premium prices. Wait until spring to buy them, however, and fall bloomers will be far cheaper – and will establish far better in your garden to boot as they’ll have months to focus on growing a supportive root system before the stress of creating flowers.

So what to do with your patio pots if you’re on a tight budget? The solution is to buy better-value plants that rely on features other than flowers to add eye-catching details to containers.

7. Make a Foraged Wreath

It’s a quick and enjoyable task for a sunny afternoon to forage for stems to create a wreath. The advantage of doing this in August or early September is that the still-warm weather with allow the stems to dry in place and last for months. My foolproof method to create a wreath for my autumn garden is to use twine to tie small bunches of stems tegether, then attach those onto a wooden hoop with wire – the less attention I pay to making it pretty, the better it always looks!

Find a spot out of the midday sun to hang your wreath so lasts for longer, bringing fall style to your yard for very little effort or outlay.

8. Make a Stepping-Stone Path Across Your Lawn

This is a great job to do ahead of fall and winter and save your grass from being damaged as you cross your lawn in wet or frozen weather. You can often pick up end-of-line pavers very cheaply from hardware stores, or look for purpose-made stepping stones on online middleman retailers, such as this four-pack of stepping stones from Wayfair with change from $50.

Lay your stepping stones across your lawn at a comfortable stride width – and do practise walking up and down them to make sure of the distances – then use a drizzle of sand around the perimeter of each to mark their positions. Set the pavers aside then remove the turf and excavate enough soil to accommodate the depth of the paver plus around 1½ inches. Pack the holes with sharp sand then lay the paver on top so it’s a fraction below grass level, enabling you to run a lawnmower over the top.

9. Plant a Fall-Flowering Clematis

One the quickest and easiest ways to zhuzh up your garden for fall is with some fencescaping to turn a boundary from boring to beautiful. And one of the quickest and easiest ways to do that is to plant a fall-flowering clematis.

In a sunny spot, you won’t do better than the Happy Jack Purple clematis vine, available from Plant Addicts, trouble-free to grow in zones 5-9 and abundant with intensely-colored autumn flowers that turn into sculptural seedheads through winter. For a shadier spot, Samaritan Jo clematis, also available from Plant Addicts, is a surefire bet – it’s just as well-behaved and has silvery lavender-hued blooms in zones 4-9. Both these vines need cutting to a foot above the ground in spring so are easy to keep to a compact size.

10. Paint Your Shed or Fence

Late August or September is a great time of year to paint a fence or shed as wood has dried out through summer, lower humidity helps the paint dry evenly and moderate temperatures mean it doesn’t dry too fast and crack. Painting wood now also protects it from the wet weather to come, so check the forecast for a dry spell and get cracking!

Current trends are veering towards dark colors in a matt finish that make a small garden appear bigger and create a backdrop to show off flowers and foliage. Our choice for easy application and a good finish is Glidden Fundamentals Exterior Paint, available from Walmart in a wide range of attractive colors including smart Pine Forest Green, appealing Cavalry Navy Blue and go-with-everything Stone’s Throw Gray.

Do one, two or all 10 of these budget garden ideas in August or early September and your garden will look fabulous all through fall, and you'll enjoy maximum backyard style for your hard-earned bucks.

Few plants earn their place in a yard quite as elegantly as ornamental grasses, as landscape designers well know. These elegant grasses bring movement, texture, winter interest and a welcome sense of ease – some of the ingredients designers use to make planting feel intentional rather than simply filled in. August is an especially useful moment to spot what your garden lacks, whether that's privacy, a softer path edge, late-season color or connectivity – all of which can be stylishly solved with the right ornamental grass.

The design trick is to match the best ornamental grass to the job. Tall, upright grasses will screen an awkward view; blue grasses cool off a fiery color scheme; frothy grasses bring together an otherwise disjointed border. Landscape designers also use grasses where flowers cannot deliver: foliage adds structure from spring onwards, seedheads catch low fall light, and many retain their good looks through winter.

These 10 designer-favored grasses will help give any yard a more polished, professional feel, whatever its size or style. Each solves a particular design challenge, from blocking a neighbor's view to lifting a shady border or making a dry front yard feel purposeful. And don't fret: these are all non-invasive ornamental grasses, and these very well-behaved choices sill stay where they're planted so you can create a designer-worthy result with confidence this season.

1. Best Grass for Privacy: Totem Pole Switchgrass

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 6' high and 30" wide

Panicum virgatum ‘Totem Pole’ is the designer’s elegant answer to a neighbor’s all-too-visible window. Its dramatically upright habit creates a tall, leafy screen with plenty of softness and movement, but without swallowing the whole border. Stylish privacy plants to screen your garden are a great alternative to a privacy screen, and this is the best ornamental grass for privacy. Just tuck a row of these ornamental grasses beside a patio, use it to line a property boundary, or plant a small group to turn an exposed sitting area into a cosy, private retreat.

This is a clumping switchgrass so it makes a steadily fuller crown rather than sneaking across the bed underground. Give it full sun – six or more hours of direct light – and average soil; switchgrass is also more forgiving of clay than many ornamental grasses. Water regularly during its first year while roots establish, then leave the stems in place over winter for a lovely pale, airy living screen. In late winter, cut the clump back to 4-6 inches before fresh growth begins. Switchgrass Totem Pole plants are available from Plant Addicts.

2. Best Grass for Softening Hard Landscaping: Undaunted Ruby Muhly Grass

• Zones 5-9
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 24" high and wide

Designers love to use Undaunted ruby muhly grass (Muhlenbergia reverchonii ‘Undaunted’) to take the edge off hardscaping, so this is one of those divine low-water plants that soften hard landscaping without all the hard work. Plant this ruby muhly grass beside a patio, driveway, retaining wall or path and its fine foliage and airy fall flowers will create a soft, almost gauzy transition between paving and planting. For maximum designer vibes, plant it in a loose drift of three, five or more, allowing the individual mounds to mingle into one soft, billowy layer. The late-season pink-to-ruby plumes are a gorgeous bonus, particularly when low afternoon sun shines through them, and this cold-hardy alternative to classic pink muhly thrives down to USDA Zone 5.

Undaunted ruby muhly grass is available from Wilson Bros Gardensand is a dense, well-behaved grass, not a runner, so will stay where you put it. Give it full sun and well-drained soil; if your soil is heavy, plant slightly raised to keep water away from its roots in winter. Water deeply and regularly during its first season, then only occasionally once established. In late winter, trim the old foliage back to about 4 inches before new growth appears.

3. Best Grass for Border Movement: Brush Strokes Little Bluestem

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 36" high and 24" wide

‘Brush Strokes’ little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Brush Strokes’) gives sunny borders the easy, breeze-catching movement designers love, without the bulk or roaming habit of larger grasses. Its tidy upright clumps weave neatly among perennials such as salvias, while slender blue-green blades slowly turn a beautiful wine-red and copper as the season unfolds.

This native grass stays where it's planted, forming a neat tuft rather than spreading through the bed. Give it full sun and well-drained, ordinary-to-dry soil; shade is what makes little bluestem flop. Skip the fertilizer, water it while it settles in, then enjoy its tawny stems and bristly seedheads through winter before cutting it back in late winter. ‘Brush Strokes’ little bluestem plants are available from Plant Addicts.

4. Best Grass for a Hot, Dry Yard: Common Blue Grama

• Zones 3-10
• Full sun
• Flowers June-September
• Grows to 24" high and wide

Ornamental grasses offer some of the best drought-tolerant plant choices, and common blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) proves a climate-resilient front yard can still be full of personality. This compact native grass forms low blue-green tufts topped in summer with wonderfully quirky, eyelash-like seedheads and is ideal for gravel gardens, curb strips and xeriscape schemes. Plant it in loose drifts for full on designer effect.

A small, clumping grass, common blue grama plants are available from Plant Addictsand deliver a naturalistic look without wandering through the bed. It thrives in full sun, heat, wind, and fast-draining soil, and is one of the best choices for a spot that bakes in summer. Water until rooted in, then water only during prolonged drought.

5. Best Grass for a Cooling Effect: Blue Fescue

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun 
• Flowers June-July
• Grows to 18" high and 24" wide

Blue fescue grass, often sold as ‘Elijah Blue’ (Festuca glauca), is the landscape designer’s little color-cooling trick for borders full of fiery reds, oranges, and yellows. Its icy blue, spiky mounds make those warm shades pop even more, while adding a crisp, modern rhythm along a path or at the front of a border.

Each blue fescue grass forms a neat, non-running tuft, so try planting five or seven together, spaced about 12 inches apart, for a deliberate, repeated look. This little lovely appreciates full sun and excellent drainage so it’s perfect for gravel gardens, raised beds and sandy soil. Comb out any dead foliage in early spring and replace individual plants that may become bare in the center after a few years. Blue fescue plants are available from Plant Addicts.

6. Best for Brightening a Border: ‘Hello Spring’ Feather Reed Grass

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun or partial shade
• Flowers June-July 
• Grows to 4' high and 2' wide

‘Hello Spring’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis × acutiflora ‘Hello Spring’) is a designer’s answer to a border that feels a little too dark or heavy. Its bright variegated foliage catches the light, while its narrow, upright shape adds a fresh vertical accent. While it's happy in sun, it flourishes with only six hours of sunshine a day, so you can thread it through a border that moves from partial shade into sun for an instant luminous lift.

This feather reed grass is a disciplined clump-former so it stays put rather than wandering into neighboring plants. Give it reasonably moist, well-drained soil and water in dry spells, especially during its first year. Leave its soft, dried plumes standing over winter, then cut them back in late winter before new shoots appear. ‘Hello Spring’ feather reed grass plants are available from Plant Addicts.

7. Best Grass for Shade: ‘Aureola’ Japanese Forest Grass

• Zones 5-9
• Part shade to full shade
• Flowers July-August
• Grows to 3' high and wide

‘Aureola’ Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) is the designer’s way of making a shady path, set of steps or tucked-away seating spot feel brighter and more inviting. Its arching gold-striped leaves spill gently over the edge of a border, catching every bit of available light and naturally drawing your eye onward. Repeat it at intervals along a path or beneath shrubs for a subtle golden thread that makes the whole space feel more connected.

Unlike a grass that spreads by runners, ‘Aureola’ forms a low, graceful clump that slowly becomes more generous with time. Plant ‘Aureola’ Japanese forest grass, available at Nature Hills, in partial or dappled shade, in soil that stays moist but drains freely; hot afternoon sun can scorch its foliage. Water in dry spells, especially during its first year, and cut back the old leaves in late winter before fresh spring growth emerges.

8. Best Grass for Adding a Connecting Airy Layer: Golden Dew Tufted Hair Grass

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun to part shade
• Flowers July-September
• Grows to 3' high and wide

Golden Dew tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Goldtau’) is perfect when a border has lovely individual plants but still feels a little disjointed, or you have an awkwardly-shaped garden and wish to tie its various parts together. Landscape designers use its cloud-like sprays of tiny golden-green flowers to float between bolder shapes, cleverly softening the join between perennials, shrubs, and hard edges. It's particularly beautiful planted in small groups among hostas, heucheras, ferns and other plants with larger leaves.

Tufted hair grass is a tidy clump-former, not a runner, so it gives that airy meadow effect while staying beautifully contained. It is happiest in sun or part shade with reasonably moist, well-drained soil, and it is more forgiving of heavier ground than many ornamental grasses. Water during dry periods in its first season, then leave the faded flower stems for winter texture before cutting the clump back in late winter. ‘Goldtau’ tufted hair grass plants are available from Sunny Valley Farms.

9. Best Grass for an Informal Vibe: Prairie Dropseed

• Zones 3-8
• Full sun
• Flowers August-October
• Grows to 18" high and wide

Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) is the designer’s choice for creating a graceful transition from a tidy border to a looser meadow planting. Its fine, arching foliage forms low, well-behaved clumps that work beautifully repeated in a ribbon, linking your border planting with prairie-style favorites such as coneflowers, asters, and black-eyed Susans. And although this brings a relaxed, informal vibe, it's still a very well-behaved ornamental grass.

The real magic happens in late summer, when Prairie dropseed's airy flower stems release a warm, lightly sweet fragrance, often compared to coriander or buttered popcorn. This clumping native stays put, thrives in full sun and well-drained ordinary-to-dry soil, and needs regular watering only in its first season. Leave its foliage standing for winter texture, then cut it back in late winter. Prairie dropseed plants are available from Plant Addicts.

10. Best Grass for a Purple Color Scheme: Twilight Zone Little Bluestem

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers September-October
• Grows to 5' high and 3' wide

Landscape designers are favoring purple palettes right now, and filling borders with ravishing purple blooms. And their secret to keeping the purple color scheme going long after the flowers have peaked is the unusual ornamental grass, ‘Twilight Zone’ little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Twilight Zone’). Its cool blue foliage is brushed with purple in summer, then deepens into rich mauve, violet, and burgundy in fall. Use a few clumps through the middle of a border to echo dark dahlias, purple-leaved shrubs and plum-toned sedums.

This North American native grass forms a tall, tidy clump and is best placed in the middle or back of a sunny border as full sun brings out its richest coloring and helps it stay upright. Water regularly in its first season, then allow the soil to dry slightly between deep waterings. Leave the stems in place over winter for their handsome silhouette, cutting them back in late winter before new growth begins. ‘Twilight Zone’ little bluestem plants are available from Plant Addicts.

A polished, designer-look front yard doesn't require a major time commitment, nor risking losing expensive plants if you're too busy to water. With the right low-maintenance shrubs, you can bring color, structure and serious curb appeal without a high level of effort, for a front yard that looks great all year round.

This summer's drought and heatwave has shown us just how high maintenance some staples of landscape design are. Hydrangeas, for example, are a long-time favorite but they wilt in the summer heat and have high watering needs. And it doesn't matter how beautiful a plant can look, if it's struggling to survive, it's not doing your front yard any favors.

So, it’s time to ditch those thirsty plants and upgrade your curb appeal with these tougher, more resilient alternatives for a smart long-term strategy. Landscape designers love low-maintenance shrubs because, even if their clients aren't gardeners so don't give much in the way of TLC, they still look good. Of course, all these lovelies will need regular watering until they get established and grow a big-enough root system to source their own moisture, but plant them now or in early fall and they'll feel at home by the time next summer comes around. Which one of these resilient shrubs will suit your front yard best?

1. Blue Star Juniper

Juniperus squamata ‘Blue Star’ is a compact, slow-growing evergreen that provides year-round beauty. It’s desirable for its intense, silver-blue foliage and structured, sculptural shape. If you look down on the shrub, you’ll see that the clusters of needles at the ends of stems resemble small, blue stars.

Growing no more than three feet (0.9 m) tall and wide, this is a great option for planting under windows. Once established, Blue Star juniper is extremely drought-tolerant. In fact, it prefers light, sandy soil and is an attractive option for a small shrub in a rock garden. It grows best in full sun and is hardy in zones 4 through 8. If you’ll be planting it this year, wait until the worst heat of summer has passed.

2. Happy Face Pink Paradise Potentilla

Many of the showier flowering shrubs that gardeners love are finicky or need a lot of water. Shrubby potentilla, also known as cinquefoil, offers an easier alternative. It offers a long season of flowers on a compact, rounded, and attractive shrub that doesn’t require much maintenance as long as it gets at least partial sun and enough water after planting to get established.

Potentilla fruticose Happy Face Pink Paradise has semi-double flowers that retain color better and for longer than other potentilla varieties. It's a great choice for gardeners in cold climates as it's hardy in zones 2 through 7, and is well suited to smaller urban gardens as it grows no more than three feet high and wide. With an appealing rounded habit, it looks good planted in clumps to create loose drifts of flowering mounds. You can also use this potentilla as a low foundation planting or edging plant.

3. Kodiak Fresh Diervilla

If you’re looking for a native shrub with good tolerance to both drought and deer, Kodiak Fresh diervilla (Diervilla lonicerais) is your answer. Foliage is the star of this three-foot shrub, suitable for zones 3 to 8. New growth emerges in spring in shades of orange-red and turns chartreuse for summer, followed by a rainbow of classic fall foliage colors.

In addition to being native and suited to drought conditions once established, diervilla tolerates both sun and shade. Use it in a difficult spot where you might struggle to grow other shrubs in drier soil and shade or hot sun. Diervilla’s unique coloring looks best when grouped together, so plant a few, perhaps in a row to create an informal hedge.

4. Double Play Red Spirea

Spirea is known for being easy and reliable, and it also offers a lot of choices. Hybrid Double Play red spirea is hardy in zones 3 through 8, grows about three feet tall, and is very hands-off once established. You can plant it now, provided you give it a good start with regular watering. The soil should drain well, and a spot in full sun or partial shade is ideal.

This attractive shrub provides seasons of changing color. Spring foliage is a rich burgundy, summer flowers are reddish-pink, and the fall colors are varied and showy. If your front yard sits next to a busy road, then this spirea is a great choice as it tolerates pollution well.

5. Summer Wine Ninebark

For sophisticated color and contrast without relying on showy flowers to do all the work, choose Summer Wine ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius ‘Seward’). The foliage is a striking deep purple, which sets off the light-colored spring flowers and offers visual interest in winter. Ninebark is appropriate for zones 3 through 7 and is a native species that supports wildlife. Plant it now or in early fall in full sun and average soil. Water regularly to start it off right.

This shrub tops out around six feet (1.8 m) tall and wide and is a showstopper, so use it as a single planting and focal point in a bed where it has enough room to grow and display its graceful, arching branches.

6. Pancake Arborvitae

Evergreen option Thuja ‘Pancake’ has a low profile, growing about 18 inches (46 cm) tall, but its sage green foliage is appealingly dense and turns more blue in winter. If you’re looking for year-round interest but don't want a plant that'll grow into a massive hedge and block out the sunshine, it's a front-yard must-have. Pancake arborvitae is a favorite among designers looking for low-water plants to soften hard landscaping.

Grow this arborvitae in zones 4 through 8 and in a spot with full sun. As a drought-tolerant shrub, it prefers light, well-draining, even sandy soil. Use this arborvitae beneath windows at the front of foundation beds, or along the edges of walkways for structured, low-growing curb appeal. Now is a great time to plant arborvitae but be sure to provide plenty of water while it gets established.

7. Paraplu Violet Rose of Sharon

Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacusis) is a tall, dramatic shrub known for its pretty flowers, and Paraplu Violet has particularly large, violet-blue blooms. It'll bring a tropical look, though the plant is hardy in zones 5 through 9. Choose this Rose of Sharon for dramatic height and a long flowering period from summer to fall.

This variety grows up to 10 feet (3 m) tall with an upright structure so it's ideal for creating privacy, anchoring the corner of a bed, yard or house, and for creating height behind shorter shrubs and plants. It's a great choice if you're looking for wow-factor accent plants that are stunning yet simple to grow. You can plant it now, but give it plenty of water to get established. Later, you’ll be rewarded by its strong drought tolerance.

8. Good Vibrations Privet

Privet is an old standby for sturdy and tall – if a bit boring – hedges. This variety offers the same reliability and toughness in drought conditions but with far more personality. Ligustrum ovalifolium Good Vibrations has striking variegated foliage and only grows around two feet tall and wide, making it a better choice for more modern foundation plantings or narrow edges and beds. Its dense, compact foliage comes in slowly, too, so it doesn’t need a lot of pruning.

This privet will tolerate drought well if you give it the right start. Wait until the highest temperatures of summer have passed and plant in cooler weather, providing plenty of water leading up to winter to help it get established. It will grow best in a spot with full sun or only partial shade and is suitable for zones 6 through 9.

9. Midnight Wine Shine Weigela

Weigela shrubs are becoming increasingly popular in landscaping for their spring flowers, pretty foliage and low-maintenance needs. Of the many types, Midnight Wine Shine is a compact variety, growing less than two feet (0.6 m) tall and suitable for growing in zones 4 through 8.

This Wiegela florida has striking, glossy, and deep purplish leaves with abundant, bright pink spring and early summer flowers. Once established, it resists drought and also nibbling by rabbits and deer, while also attracting hummingbirds and other pollinators. Plant Midnight Wine Shine near plants with brighter green foliage for great contrast, a little later in the season to avoid lingering high temperatures.

10. Flower Carpet Mini Cherry Rose

Roses have a reputation for being fussy but many newer varieties are easy to grow. This pretty, low-growing shrub is more like a flowering groundcover, covered in an abundance of cherry red blooms from spring through the first frost. Once established, it's drought-tolerant and disease-resistant.

You can grow this rose in zones 5 through 10 in a spot with full sun or a little afternoon shade and rich, fertile soil. Wait until September, or when temperatures drop a little, to plant your new shrubs. They look best when planted in masses, along a walkway or the edge of a bed.

Getting designer landscaping doesn’t have to require maximum effort on your part. Choose shrubs based on form, flowers, foliage, seasonal interest, site conditions, and drought tolerance to enjoy gorgeous curb appeal without spending your entire summer watering. Just be sure to water any of these choices regularly as they get established to set them up for later success.

By August, many plants are exhausted by heat and lack of water and stop flowering – but not these tough-cookie late-season bloomers. They flower reliably all through August, September and into October, with barely any assistance from you. So don’t think you have to compromise on flower power because we’re having a hot, dry summer: you just need one of these late-season heroes in your garden.

Plants that practically grow themselves and keep flowering for months on end aren’t just appreciated by us humans, but by pollinators, too, many of whom will be fuelling up ahead of long migration journeys. Resilient plants like our superstar bloomers are particularly valuable, however. When a plant is stressed by heat or drought, one of its first responses is to limit water loss by reducing nectar production. So, by growing an array of tolerant plants that cope well with summer stressors, you not only provide flowers, but flowers that are still full to the brim of nectar.

Another factor to consider if you want plants that keep on flowering when everything else gives up is how palatable they are to deer and rabbits. As we approach the end of a long, hot summer, food becomes scarcer for herbivores so they may turn to garden plants they wouldn’t otherwise eat – and fresh flower buds are tender and packed full of nutrients. So, you’ll be happy to hear that neither deer nor rabbits like to snack on any of our plant picks.

Flower-into-Fall Blooms that Thrive on Neglect

All our late-season heroes are dependable perennials that will be back, year after year, and don’t require any fertilizing or feeding other than a spring mulch to flower well. Their highly tolerant, resilient nature means they’re suitable for a wide range of zones, so you have a great choice of plants to keep your garden packed with blooms.

1. Sneezeweed

Hitting its stride in August, Helenium autumnale is such a reliable late-season bloomer in zones 4-9 and powers through September and into October to the first frost. And what a show! The fiery shades of red, orange and yellow revive any garden, turning up the color just as many perennials fizzle out. As the flowers age, their sculptural centers become more prominent and the petals flex backwards, too.

Helenium does need to be watered, however, and taller varieties can need staking – which is why the Salud series is so appealing. Cultivars in this series are particularly heat- and drought-tolerant and, only growing to 16 inches tall, don't need staking. These are some of the heaviest- and longest-blooming sneezeweeds, and are ignored by deer and rabbits. Salud Yellow is a saturated golden tone, while Salud Embers boasts a mix of red, orange and yellow. Sneezeweed Salud Yellow plants are available from Plant Addicts, and Salud Embers plants are available from Fast Growing Trees.

2. Woodland Sage

Salvia nemorosa blooms for months because not only does it readily produce new flushes of flowers when spent stems are removed, but the individual spires bloom sequentially from bottom to top over several weeks. So, while it starts flowering way back in May, if you snipped off the flower spikes, it’ll likely be blooming now and continue through September.

There are all sorts of salvia varieties to try, generally suitable for zones 4-9 and tolerating heat and drought once established. The Marvel series is particularly valued both for its larger flowers that keep their intense color and exceptionally long bloom-time from spring to frost. ‘Blue Marvel’ is available from Nature Hills, and ‘Rose Marvel’ is available from Plant Addicts. Growing to around a foot high and spreading up to 18 inches wide, these dependable, showy salvias are just as happy in a pot as the front of a border. While pollinators will flock to the nectar-rich flowers, deer and rabbits don't appreciate the aromatic foliage.

3. Russian Sage

Russian sage is another Salvia no garden should be without. This trouble-free plant flowers summer into fall and provides a valuable nectar source when many other plants are fading. Long after your lavender spires have finished flowering, Salvia yangii will still be boasting beautiful blue blooms. While common Russian sage (available from Plant Addicts) tends to flop in late summer, those clever plant breeders have been busy creating more compact cultivars that bring even more flowers on immaculately-behaved stems.

‘Denim ‘n Lace’ is a Proven Winners cultivar available from Nature Hills that has a denser growth habit for lots more flowers, growing to 2-3 feet tall and wide in zones 4-9, with sky-blue flowers held in amethyst calyxes. ‘Blue Jean Baby’ by Plants that Work, also available from Nature Hills, brings similar benefits but with lavender-blue flowers that deepen to purple, and more finely-cut foliage. Both are simply sublime.

4. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’

Being a succulent, Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’ isn’t phased by drought and its dense bud clusters form slowly through summer, bursting open just as most other border perennials are starting to wind down. Sedum 'Autumn Joy' blooms change color, too, opening a pale pink before morphing into a rosier pink and finally turning a rich copper.

Happy in sun or partial shade in zones 4-9, this late-season bloomer will grow pretty much anywhere, and bigger pollinators appreciated the flat-topped flowers that act as welcoming 2-foot-high landing pads. Rabbits dislike the fleshy foliage and deer are unlikely to take more than a nibble of the bitter-tasting leaves. Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ plants are available from Fast Growing Trees.

5. New England Aster

It’s not just us humans that can rely on the abundant summer-to-fall flowers of the New England aster, but migrating monarch butterflies, for whom this resilient plant provides vital fuel stops on their journey south. The vibrant daisy-like flowers begin to show their cheery faces in August and continue until the first hard frost.

While all New England asters are reliable late-season bloomers, ‘Grape Crush’ is a particularly good choice as it naturally grows into a self-supporting mound 2-3 feet high and wide – and some other varieties are guilty of flopping once stormy fall weather hits. The dark purple hue of the petals is intense, too, and looks all the more saturated against the flowers’ golden centres, delivering a good punch of color for months to come. Deer and rabbits dislike the dense foliage, too. Suitable for zones 3-8, Grape Crush New England Aster plants are available from Nature Hills.

6. Black-Eyed Susan

Want flowers in August? Flowers in September? Flowers in October? Look no further than black-eyed Susan. While older varieties of rudbeckia are often troubled by leaf spot and powdery mildew which can cut short the flower show, some modern cultivars are virtually immune and will continue blooming for months.

If you want the classic black-eyed Susan look, then American Gold Rush, available from Garden Goods Direct, should be your go-to as it has been bred for incredible disease resistance, growing to a foot high and 1-2 feet wide in zones 3-8. ‘Little Goldstar’, available from Nature Hills and suitable for zones 4-9, is a shade taller at 16" high and boasts the heaviest bloom density of all black-eyed Susans, also flowering through August and September into October.

Both have stems and leaves covered in fuzzy hairs that save it from being nibbled when food is scarce, yet pollinators adore the nectar-rich flowers.

7. Japanese anemones

It’s true, Japanese anemones can be as thuggish as they are beautiful in the garden and, though they’re not classed as invasive, do spread through underground rhizomes. In a large planter, though, they’re the most reliable bloomers and a real backyard asset.

As well as keeping these enthusiastic plants corralled in a container, you'll want to stop them self-seeding around your garden, which is easily done by choosing a modern hybrid cultivar that’s been bred to have sterile, unviable seeds. These have typically been bred to spread far more slowly, too, so you don’t have to worry about the plant escaping from its pot. Sterile variety Fall in Love Sweetly is available from Plant Addicts and grows to 2 feet high and wide in zones 4-8 with semi-double rose-pink blooms, creating a container packed with flowers for months on end.

If you'd rather grow Japanese anemones in a border, then choose a dwarf variety that won’t spread as quickly as its taller cousins, such as Fantasy Red Riding Hood, available from Nature Hills which grows 1-2 feet tall and wide in zones 5-9. Even slugs don’t tend to like chewing Japanese Anemone’s fibrous leaves, and deer and rabbits leave them well alone.

Urn planters are everywhere this summer, and there’s no doubt who’s leading this huge garden trend as Anthropologie just expanded its already-excellent range of pedestal pots. These shapely vessels have been status symbols since Romans first commandeered storage urns to decorate their swanky villas. Centuries later, once European royal families favoured using them as planters, urns became a stylish staple of landscaped gardens.

Now this classical shape is enjoying its most recent resurgence, and because of their long history and associations with high society, urn planters will bring an air of effortless elegance to any garden. As container gardening ideas go, this is such an easy upgrade that will suit every backyard.

While you may need a pretty opulent pay packet to afford Anthropologie urn planters, ravishing as they may be, there are plenty of dupes that can give your backyard the look for a whole lot less. I’ve rounded up the very best urn planters to match the dreamiest offerings from Anthropologie, so we can all enjoy this timeless trend – and the cheapest of these good value planters is currently on sale for less than $5. So, if you want to enhance your garden design on a budget, now's the time to add some iconic style to your patio without splashing the cash.

Antique Elegance

Stately Swags

Charming Chalices

Grecian Good Looks

Ancient Opulence

What to Plant in an Urn Planter

Any happy-in-a-pot perennial that brings maximum flowers for minimum effort, year after year, is an easy win in any container, and an urn will elevate the most humble of plants to stylish new heights. But urn planters invite you to break the rules, too. Their iconic shape speaks of centuries of style so you can afford to be bold with the planting. These on trend planters afford all sorts of opportunities regular pots don’t, too, so you use their height to dramatic effect.

For a start, as well as planting your usual pot thrillers and fillers, any container plants with trailing stems will spill dramatically over the rim of an urn planter. Or how about planting a fall-flowering clematis in your pedestal planter so the vine cascades over the container rim to pool in a beautiful sea of blooms around its base?

Plants with a naturally arching habit work so well in urn planters, too. Feather Falls Carex grass (available from Burpee) boasts an evergreen fountain of soft, variegated blades for a container that looks luxuriant all year round. Growing Blue Cascade Rosemary (available from Nature Hills) in an urn planter is also a delight as the stems of this low-maintenance shrub grow up as well as down, and its evergreen foliage is joined by blooms in the most beautiful blue hue from spring to fall.

Because the pedestal elevates the planting, you can create layers of vertical interest, too, especially if the urn is to be positioned on the patio – or a smaller, squatter design on a table – where it’ll be viewed from a seated height. Pair a standout evergreen ornamental grass such as Blue Whiskers Blue Fescue (available from Plant Addicts) with Plentifall Lavender Blue trailing pansies (available from Burpee) for a texture treat that’ll delight all through fall and winter.

More Dashing Dupe Urn Planters

Earthy Vibes

Beautiful Bowls

Classic White

Stately Gray

Bronze Beauties

Golden Greats

Woven Textures

Use an Urn Planter to DIY a Water Feature

A bowl-shaped urn planter can be used to make a stylish DIY water feature using a solar-powered floating fountain by sealing the drainage hole with a marine silicone sealant such as Star Brite Waterproof Sealant from Amazon. Or how about standing your urn planter in a wider container to make a standout planter with a water feature at its center?

There are so many quick and clever ideas for container planting that work in an urn planter, so get creative and treat your patio to a standout display, without breaking the budget.

Fall-flowering clematis are a joy, filling September with colorful blooms to refresh gardens after a long, hot summer. Most start blooming months earlier, so their fabulous flowers will carry a garden through that late-season gap when summer-flowering perennials are exhausted but many fall bloomers are yet to reach their peak. Some varieties even bloom through to the first frost, making these late-flowering clematis vines an indispensable element of designing a garden for great fall color.

What’s more, late-season clematis are the easiest of all vines to prune, even for beginner gardeners who’ve never picked up a pair of hand pruners before. In February or March, just as new growth appears, all the stems need snipping to around a foot or so above the ground, just above a bud – and that’s it! Because these vines all flower on new growth, this no-nonsense annual prune means blooms grow along the full length of the vining stems for a standout display. And, by reducing the stems to such a short length every year, the growth is easily controlled.

Fancy an abundance of showstopper fall flowers, year after year? Here’s our pick of the very best fall-flowering clematis vines to plant in every spot – plus the one you should never introduce to your garden.

1. Best For Fragrance: Sweet Summer Love Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Part or full sun
• Grows 10 feet high and 6-10 feet wide

Don’t be fooled by the name of this fabulous climber, because while its heavy flush of flowers in July and August earns it a spot on our pick of best clematis vines for stunning summer flowers, it steadily carries on blooming all the way into October. While the myriad 2-inch flowers are very pretty, opening a cranberry-red and maturing to purple for a fabulous color-changing effect, their divine fragrance is the reason you should add this vine to your garden.

The scent is sweet and comforting, mixing warm vanilla with a nostalgic hit of almonds and cherries that will remind you of Jergens Original Scent Cherry Almond Lotion. And when you consider the size of this vine and what a heavy bloomer it is, you can begin to imagine the wonderful cloud of fragrance it brings to any backyard.

This clematis is better grown in the ground on account of its size. Don’t worry, though, as although it’s a vigorous grower it’s not invasive and was intentionally bred to be well-behaved, and has won numerous gardening accolades. By pruning it hard in early spring, you can easily control its size, too. And use its abundance to your advantage by allowing this vine to smother a sturdy archway, scramble over a pergola or disguise an ugly shed.

2. Best for Shade: Samaritan Jo Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Full to partial shade
• Grows 4-5 feet high and 3-4 feet wide

Think all clematis need sun? Think again! Samaritan Jo clematis has been bred to flourish in full to partial shade, doing best with less than four hours of sunlight a day, and its silvery purple-edged petals light up a dark spot a treat. This vine is tough, too, and hardy down to -30°F, so don’t worry about it getting chilly in a shady corner. Because of its compact size, this beauty can be grown in a large planter as well as in the ground, adding to its versatility.

This well-behaved vine begins blooming in May and is still going strong in September, and often into early October for plenty of autumn flowers. Snipping off faded blooms and treating it to a diluted liquid tomato feed such as Espoma Organic Tomato!, available from Amazon, every couple of weeks will keep it flowering for as long as possible.

3. Best for Beginners: Happy Jack Purple Clematis

• Zones 5-9
• Part to full sun
• Grows 6-8 feet tall and 3-4 feet wide

If you’ve never grown a clematis before, or simply want an easy life, then you really can’t go wrong with Happy Jack Purple Clematis. It’s a new and improved version of the well-known Clematis ‘Jackmanii’ – which is already considered to be one of the most dependable clematis cultivars in the world!

Happy Jack Purple brings bigger flowers, measuring 3-5 inches across, and more intensely-colored plum-purple petals that almost look like they’re made of velvet. Its contrasting yellow stamens are brighter than its predecessor’s, too, and it flowers all the way from June to the first frost. And even then it’s not done! While the leaves fall from this deciduous vine as temperatures plummet, its seedheads have long, plume-like tails that become more fluffy and feathery as winter goes on.

Because Happy Jack Purple flowers on both new and old wood (yes, for double the flowers), prune it a little higher – to two feet from the ground – than our other fall picks in February or March.

This is one of those fabulous flowering plants that look like you spent hours gardening but practically grow themselves. So, if you have a friend with a birthday in August, you’ve just discovered the best-ever present!

4. Best For Flower Size: Lindsay Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Part to full sun
• Grows to 4-5 feet high and 2-3 feet wide

If you want your friends, family and neighbors to stop in their tracks when they step into your garden, Lindsay clematis is for you. The elaborate flowers measure a whopping 6 inches across with vibrant violet-purple petals and magenta-red anthers. You’ll be surprised just how many blooms this vine can fit on its compact frame, too, making this a great choice for a small garden, and one of those easy-grow accent plants that landscape designers love.

While the main blooming period of Lindsay clematis is from May to July, it reliably produces a second flush in September that can last into October. Its compact size means Lindsay clematis will flourish in a pot as well as in the ground, and just imagine these showstopper blooms in a container by your front door.

5. Best For a Patio Container: Gisella Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun
• Grows 4-5 feet high and 3 feet wide

Gisella clematis is a real sun-lover, so won’t mind baking on a sundrenched patio or deck in a large container one bit. And it’ll put on quite the show, blooming from May right through September and into early fall. Because this clematis flowers on new wood, its five-inch flowers smother the plant from top to bottom, and they’re the most beautiful dusky pink hue that no cottage garden should be without. Its foliage is a darker green than most clematis vines, too, setting off those showstopper flowers a treat. As quick and clever ideas for containers go, this beauty is a winner.

Because of its compact size and shrub-like shape, Gisella clematis makes for a fabulous accent patio planter, too. And while this plant needs full sun for the most abundant display of flowers, it’ll appreciate having cool feet and well-draining but moist compost – easily achieved by regular watering and strategic positioning in the low shade cast by an outdoor sofa.

6. Best for Low-Maintenance: Jolly Good Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Part to full sun
• Grows 6-7 feet tall and 2-3 feet wide

Living up to its name, Jolly Good is one of the most easy-going clematis vines to grow, and is another hybrid of the dependable ‘Jackmanii’. While it needs something to hold onto, it happily scrambles up a fence, trellis or post, using small leaf stems called petioles that act like miniature hands to hold onto supports. Because of its natural habit to grow tall but not very wide, Jolly Good tends to stay where you want it rather than rambling off in other directions, making this one of the best fast-growing vines that don't scramble out of control.

Its lovely lavender flowers begin in June and continue through September. Plant it in the ground and, as long as the soil is well-drained and you water it regularly, it won't care a jot if you’re on clay, loam, sand or chalky ground. Jolly Good is one of the best perennials for patio pots that bring maximum flowers for minimum effort, too.

7. Best for Abundant Blooms: Pink Mink Clematis

• Zones 4-9
• Partial to full sun
• Grows to 9-10 feet and 5 feet wide

Developed by Polish clematis master Szczepan Marczyński who is known for breeding hybrids with tremendous flower power, Pink Mink clematis was introduced 15 years ago. Since then, it’s certainly proved itself to be a prolific bloomer. Each of its bright pink flowers, the curved petals sporting a magenta stripe down their centres, measures 2-3 inches across, and a mature plant may boast a hundred flowers at any one time at its peak.

Pink Mink clematis starts with a heavy flush of flowers in June, then steadily repeat-blooms through till the end of September. This vine is the perfect Goldilocks size to grow over an arch or trellised garage wall, filling a once-bare spot with fabulous flowers, without ever getting out of hand.

And One Never to Plant: Sweet Autumn Clematis

While Sweet Autumn clematis isn’t classed as invasive in every state, it’s a fast and vigorous vine capable of reaching a huge 20-30 feet high and 10-20 feet wide, forming a dense blanket that can block sunlight from other plants. The real problem, however, is its overabundance of seeds that germinate far more easily and quickly than most other clematis.

Sweet Autumn clematis has become a major ecological concern across the eastern United States, Florida and parts of Canada, where it’s escaped from gardens to affect natural ecosystems, and is classed as an invasive species.

While this self-seeder is still widely sold for garden use in many states where it’s not considered invasive, it’s a thug and there are plenty of other fall-flowering clematis that are just as beautiful but won’t cause you any headaches. If you're shopping at a garden centre, be careful not to pick this Clematis terniflora up thinking it's the native Clematis virginiana, too: while the flowers of both are almost identical, the leaf margins of the native clematis are toothed while those of sweet autumn clematis are smooth.

Expert Tips For Planting Clematis in August

• All clematis need trellis or support wires to enable the vine to climb, or you can grow this vine up through a shrub or tree. Stems will twine themselves around their support, so there's no need to tie them in, unless you want to encourage them to spread out. You may need to guide new stems towards the trellis with bamboo canes.
• Clematis like moist but well-draining soil. So use a large planter that's at least 18 inches deep and wide, filled with a container potting mix such as Expert Gardener Potting Mix for Potted Plants available from Walmart. In the ground, dig a hole that's twice as wide and slightly deeper than the pot your clematis comes in, and improve the soil with compost or well-rotted manure, such as Black Kow Organic Compost and Manure available from Walmart, before planting.
• All clematis do better if their roots are kept cool, so use mulch, pebbles or low annual plants at the plant base. In a pot, you can arrange patio furniture to cast shade onto the container.
• Water deeply and regularly, immediately after planting and then once or twice a week.
• When adding a summer- and fall-flowering clematis to your garden in August, you'll want to avoid transplant shock, which may temporarily halt blooming. The more mature the plant, the less vulnerable it is, so buy the biggest container size you can afford. Stand the clematis pot in a bucket of water for 20 minutes to soak the rootball before you plant it. Try to disturb the rootball as little as possible when planting, and plant it 2-3 inches deeper than the original soil line.

A standalone privacy screen is such a cost-effective way to cool a patio while screening a seating area from neighbors’ gazes. Light enough to move around on a whim but heavy enough to stay put in a breeze, garden privacy screens add style, too, and you can choose a laser-cut pattern to suit the vibe of your backyard. Bolting together for a near-instant garden upgrade, no cursing or Quikrete required, screens are a quick fix, too.

But the best thing about privacy screens? Their versatility. Once you’re the lucky owner of a standalone screen, you’ll find all sorts of ways to put it to good use in your garden besides improving privacy. From screening a pool to zoning a patio, creating a novel trellis for a clematis, cleverly disguising an ugly aircon unit, or simply carving out a quiet nook of dappled shade to relax in, a privacy screen has endless uses. Most standalone metal designs also come with a selection of fixers for hard and soft ground, so you can also anchor them in place, and use the screen as a more permanent fixture.

No wonder, then, that a simple, stylish screen is the number one item we all want in our yards this year. Ikea’s wooden outdoor privacy screen became an overnight bestseller earlier this summer, and now Target has just dropped a ton of laser-cut metal designs and – even better! – most are currently marked down. So, how are you going to use your new outdoor privacy screen this summer?

1. Create a Cool Pool of Dappled Shade

2. Divide a Patio Into Zones

3. Disguise an Ugly AirCon Unit

4. Create a Garden Sanctuary

5. Screen an Unsightly Storage Area

6. Erect a Stylish Standalone Trellis

7. Enclose a Balcony End

8. Add a See-Through Windbreak

9. Link Indoors and Outdoors

10. Create a Pergola Wall

11. Train Climbing Vines Up a Planter Screen

12. Upgrade Poolside Privacy

13. Block Nosy Neighbors

Spraying is the reflex. It knocks down whatever is flying at that moment and does nothing about why the yard looked good to them in the first place. Ticks, ants, and mosquitoes each want something specific from a property, usually moisture or cover, and a yard can be arranged to withhold it.

Not every problem takes the same fix. The common garden pests that chew leaves are a different question from the ones that bite people, and the layout answers differ too. Three changes handle most of the biting crowd. None of them involve a sprayer.

1. Make a Three-Foot Strip Ticks Won't Cross

Ticks do not hop or fly. A blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis) climbs a stem and waits there, front legs out, for something to brush past. That habit is the weakness. Where mown lawn meets the wooded edge, a strip of gravel or wood chips about 3 feet (1m) wide leaves them nothing to climb and no moisture to sit in. Most that try to cross dry out partway. Lawns with a buffer like that tend to hold fewer ticks.

The tick barrier only works if it stays bare. Leaf litter blowing across rebuilds the humid layer ticks depend on, so raking it through a few times a season matters more than which material went down. Landscape fabric from Amazon underneath keeps weeds from stitching the two sides back together. Nothing about this is a wall. It's a border they have to cross in the open. Most never finish the trip. In addition, white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) carry the ticks in to begin with, so woodpiles and bird feeders belong on the far side of the strip, well off the lawn.

2. Put the Scent Beside the Seats

Lavender is good for repelling pests, but a lavender plant (Lavandula angustifolia) sitting still in a pot does close to nothing. Oil has to reach the air, which happens when leaves get brushed or warmed by an afternoon sun. Placement is the whole trick. Aromatic plants earn their keep within arm's reach of a chair, or spilling over a path edge where people walk through them on the way by.

Mint (Mentha x piperita) and lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) both carry compounds that make a patio less appealing to Asian tiger mosquitoes (Aedes albopictus). Neither clears a yard. What they shift is the odds close in, which is where anyone actually sits, and that species hunts low and by day. Running a hand along the stems before sitting down puts more oil in the air than the plant manages alone. Mint can spread aggressively, so keep it in a pot to stop roots from wandering. Lemongrass is not hardy through most of the country. Treating it as a container plant that comes indoors ahead of frost solves that.

3. Leave a Dry Band Where Ants Expect Mulch

Mulch banked against a foundation is an open invitation. It keeps the seam where the wall meets the ground damp all season, which is the one condition odorous house ants (Tapinoma sessile) want. They nest in it. From there it's a short trip to any gap in the siding. Pulling the mulch back solves half of it. Filling the gap with a band of pea gravel from The Home Depot, roughly 12 inches (30cm) out from the foundation, takes the cover away too.

Depth counts for more than width. Two or three inches (5-8cm) of stone stays dry through most of the summer. A thin scatter still traps damp underneath, which defeats the point. Shrubs want cutting back from the siding for the same reason. Anything touching the house bridges the band, however wide the stone runs. None of this evicts a colony already inside a wall – but it does protect you from outside invaders.

4. Banish Standing Water

Mosquitoes need standing water to finish their life cycle, and not much of it. A bottle cap holds enough for Aedes albopictus. Saucers under pots, a sagging tarp, a clogged gutter, the rim of a wheelbarrow left face up – every one of those runs a small hatchery on roughly an eight-day turnaround in summer heat. Gutters are the one people miss, since the water sits out of sight and packed debris holds it there. Walking the property once a week and tipping things over disrupts more breeding than any spray manages.

Grading handles what cannot be tipped. A low spot still holding water a week after rain wants soil moved, or a shallow swale cut to carry it off. Point downspouts away from the house, not into the same puddle at the corner. Some water has to stay, though. A rain barrel counts. So does a birdbath nobody empties. Bti mosquito dunks from Amazon kill the larvae without harming fish or pollinators. Use them to make a mosquito bucket of doom, and you yard will be pleasant to sit in through the worst of the season.

Colors are so intrinsically linked to your gardening choices, you might not always realize you’ve got carried away until you see some of the results. Then one day, you’ll be sitting on the front patio and it will hit you: yikes. Maybe all those dozens of colors competing for attention in your flower beds and borders are a little bit much?

Maybe what started as the odd crayon-bright variety has become multi-toned chaos. But if it feels like your plants are clashing rather than cooperating, don’t panic. You needn’t settle for visual friction. A little mindful color selection will instantly help you achieve a calmer ambiance. And rethinking the way you approach front yard landscaping doesn't mean adhering to cold rules. Winning curb appeal just means simplifying your color pairings and combinations.

This sort of discipline might sound like it sucks a little of the fun out of growing flowers, but it’s quite the opposite. Limiting your palette can be freeing in terms of how you combine specific plants, textures, shapes, and sizes – and all with visual balance in mind. Find out how the 2-color trick can help you tame your yard and create high impact visuals that everyone will want to stop and admire.

Why Color Chaos Kills Curb Appeal

In color theory, pairing too many saturated warm and cool shades creates intense visual friction. When hot-pink magenta petunias, fiery orange marigolds, electric blue lobelia, and bright yellow zinnias are all squeezed into a single bed, their competing light waves bounce around chaotically. Under bright summer sunlight, this overload turns into visual noise. This jarring static makes a front yard look cluttered and messy rather than intentional. It can even make a yard look smaller.

When every bloom screams for attention, it’s hard to distinguish and appreciate their individual beauty. Collectively, it can feel like a jumble. Situated by a colored wall or front yard fence, the problems magnify, and none of this is great news for curb appeal. Instead of drawing the eye toward your entryway or porchway, an overactive color palette creates visual stops and starts. The overall effect can feel disjointed, dragging down curb allure instead of framing your property with purpose.

This doesn’t mean there is no place for a riot of blooms. Whimsical cottage gardens, meadow plantings and backyard pollinator patches can handle a colorful free-for-all, because their informal boundaries soften the impact. But landscaping for curb appeal relies on something else. This is where you need instant, clean legibility from the street, and where less can be so much more. Introducing simple curb color rules isn't about stifling expression. It’s just about giving plants room to breathe, so your front yard looks effortlessly put together. Here’s how it can work for you…

The 2-Color Trick (And Why It Works)

The two-color trick isn’t about stripping joy from your garden or banning your favorite blooms. But if your front yard feels messy rather than magical, capping your plant palette at 2 dominant hues works like a reset button. Forget the confetti mix seed pack that will create a lively mishmash of all the colors of the rainbow. Instead, select 2 colors that can play well off each other. A duo-toned front border will instantly upclass the yard, creating cohesiveness and a high-end, elegant look.

When you limit your palette with these color rules, your brain stops trying to reconcile competing color signals. The eyes shift their focus to subtle details, like variations in plant height, leaf shapes, and contrasting textures. By curbing the rainbow, you allow anchor plants, hardscaping features like brick walkways, and porch details to stand out rather than compete with your flower beds. Whether framing a tight bed beside a door or running a long border down a driveway, choosing a couple of harmonizing or opposing colors brings immediate structural focus, balance and harmony.

You don’t need to rely on just flowers to make this trick work. High-impact foliage can offer long-lasting contrast with less maintenance. For instance, planting a burgundy foliage plant alongside a lime-tinted companion creates a high-contrast border that holds its color all season without looking cluttered. Try rich burgundy Tiny Wine Ninebark from Nature Hills, and add Proven Winners Limelight Hydrangea Shrubs from Fast Growing Trees to offset those deeper wine tones.

3 Ways to Make it Work

Limiting yourself to two shades has a calming effect on the entire front yard. Instead of overwhelming passers-by with bouncing colors, a duo-tone approach focuses the attention on plant heights, leaf textures, and bloom shapes. So if you need to calm the visual turmoil and bring the harmony back, the trick is to find a simple color partnership that works for your space and aesthetic. Here are 3 smart color matches you can try. Treat these as flexible templates you can adapt according to your plant desires and your yard, to help you frame your space in style with minimal fuss.

1. Monochromatic Shift

Choosing two shades from the same color family, like a cool lilac paired with a rich violet, is the ultimate shortcut to a sophisticated yard. A monochromatic palette relies on tonal gradients to create depth across beds, borders, and containers. My favorite is monochromatic green. This approach allows you to focus on foliage plants, using a single, dominant base color while incorporating shades a bit lighter or darker. So you could pair white, off-white and silvery shades. This could blend tall Aruncus dioicus, white peonies, and trailing alyssum, backed by silver foliage.

The key to making this palette work is to vary plant shapes and heights. For a purple scheme, plant tall, dark spikes of Caradonna salvia (S. nemorosa) and airy purpletop vervain (Verbena bonariensis) at the back of a border. In the middle, try 'Walker's Low' catmint or drifts of Hidcote lavender. Add Supertunia Royal Velvet petunias or the lush folds of Plum Pudding heuchera at the front (or in porch pots) to tie the look together.

If you prefer a sunnier tone, try gold and chartreuse. Use medium-sized shrubs like Gold Mound spirea and variegated Emerald 'n' Gold euonymus toward the center of your bed. Surround them with butter-yellow Moonbeam coreopsis and Lime Marmalade coral bells. To soften hard driveway edges or stone steps, let golden Japanese Forest Grass and cascading creeping Jenny spill onto the paving. You can get both Lime Marmalade and Plum Pudding Coral Bells from Plant Addicts, along with a broad range of heuchera colors.

2. Clean White + Hero Color

For a crisp and sophisticated front border, use the classic aesthetic of white with another color (green works well if you aren’t sure). This is a clean, timeless look that looks cool and chic while brightening up shady corners. You might start with a snowy carpet of fragrant sweet alyssum, backed by iceberg rose varieties and white foxgloves. Fill in the corners with creamy hostas or silver ragwort.

Pairing crisp, light-reflecting white flowers, shrubs and even white flowering trees with a single, high-voltage hero color gives instant front yard curb appeal. White can act as a natural spotlight, bouncing ambient light into shaded entryways, softening dark masonry, and making fence lines pop from the street. However, using white alone can sometimes feel sterile or washed out in midday sun. The trick is layering subtle tonal variations of white, ranging from cool, apple-green whites to classic creams and soft silvers, alongside one intense accent color.

For a high-contrast “peaches and cream” scheme, try a lush Limelight panicle hydrangea or Foxy White foxgloves at the back of your border. In front, plant Tangerine Dream coneflowers (Echinacea) or compact Profusion Orange zinnias. Interweave some soft, velvety Silver Dust Dusty Miller, available from Amazon, along the edge. Then let bright white sweet alyssum spill out over walkway pavers. For a shady corner, opt for fluffy Vision in White astilbe to bring the look together.

Or, if you prefer a rich magenta-and-cream palette, frame your porch or gateway with white floribunda roses and wispy wand flowers (Gaura lindheimeri). In the middle, set punchy PowWow Wild Berry coneflowers with silvery artemisia. Pick up Perennial Farms’ PowWow Wild Berry Coneflowers from Amazon. Finish with magenta calibrachoa cascading out of front door urns. Just bear in mind that white petals and pale silver leaves show heat-browning and water spots faster than darker foliage, so select tough, self-cleaning varieties for summer planting.

3. Bold Designer Opposites

Is there room for bright colors anywhere in the 2-color universe? Absolutely! You can make this work with our color trick, as long as the eye only sees these bright shades. Backed by foliage greens, the result is upscale and elegant, which is a winning combination for curb appeal. If you want your front yard to command attention from down the block, just look to opposite sides of the color wheel.

Complementary color pairings create high-contrast energy, because our eyes process opposing wavelengths simultaneously, making both appear more saturated than they would on their own. For a look that gives balance but also feels deliberate, establish one of the pair as the dominant color across three-quarters of your bed, then sprinkle the remaining area with pops of its visual opposite.

Try one of these pairings that work in any border layout or size:

• Royal Violet & Gold: For a high-contrast classic, weave deep purple salvia or dark lavender spires with Goldsturm Rudbeckia, available from Plant Addicts, finishing with trailing Superbells Yellow calibrachoa. For an easygoing shrub, try a brilliant yellow weigela like Golden Jackpot (Weigela florida 'MonRigney').
• True Blue & Copper Orange: Another option that looks smashing is true blue and copper orange or hot coral. Offset soft nepeta 'Cat's Pajamas' or bright agapanthus with Totally Tangerine geum. You can get Hirt’s Gardens’ Cat’s Pajamas Nepeta from Walmart. Or try blue lobelia as a low-growing element, backed by coral bells, with true blue delphinium towering in the background.
• Magenta & Chartreuse: For a modern designer vibe, pair the punchy pink petals of Magnus coneflowers with the electrifying foliage of Lime Marmalade heuchera or Sambucus Lemony Lace by Proven Winners, available from Nature Hills.

Golden Rules for 2-Color Planting

Limiting the palette does raise the stakes in terms of layouts. You can’t just plant your colors willy-nilly. It’s important to plant with an eye to design, rather than just scattering seeds as you may have done in the past. This isn’t hard, though, and it’s fun to experiment. These easy rules ensure your 2-color theme feels intentional:

1. Master 60-30-10: This designer approach suggests that one color should be the primary, and over half of the bed should reflect that. The second shade takes a third of the space, while the remaining 10% is a varying texture or hue of the two primary colors. So if you had 60% green foliage, you could give 30% to sweeps of purple Walker's Low Catmint, from Nature Hills, with a 10% accent of fiery crocosmia.
2. Weave in Drifts not Blocks: Avoid static grids or rigid blocks of one species that make borders feel stiff and unnatural. Instead, use sweeping, intermingled plantings. Try feathering silver artemisia with spires of salvia, interwoven with purple coneflowers. Soften the boundaries with some purpletop vervain. You can get Perennial Farm Verbena Bonariensis from Amazon as live plants.
3. High-Contrast Textures: Color catches the eye from across the lawn, but tactile leaf forms keep it fascinating up close. Mix ferny foliage with rounded leaves, and contrast massive, powdery Halcyon hosta leaves with pops of curling wine-soaked coleus. You can buy CZ Grain Blue Halcyon Hostas from Walmart as live plants. Thoughtful diversity is key to make the most of your curb-friendly color palette.

Shop Summer Curb Heroes

Putting together a high-impact, two-color border is a lot simpler once you can hook your schemes around a clear, tidy planting plan. By focusing on a few well-chosen perennial anchors, you can set the foundation for stunning monochromatic, clean white, or bold designer contrast schemes that thrive season after season. Selected with popular color purple in mind, the following options bring instant wow factor.

Purple-Friendly Picks

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Boundary fences are an afterthought in most gardens, but integrating these backdrops into your yard design will upgrade the whole space. Fences come in all shapes, sizes and materials but all can be commandeered to help bring style and color to your garden.

Whether you opt for a decorative panel or painting the fence a dark color to show off bold border planting, or turn bare sections into textural treats with vining plants or natural screening, fence-scaping is a DIY project you can achieve yourself in a weekend. Some ideas enable you to use your fence as an extra planting area, too – a real bonus if your plot is compact.

Your boundaries serve a practical function, making your home safe and secure as well as screening you from neighbours. But once you have those essentials covered, there are all sorts of ways you can use your garden fences to improve your landscape design. And, as you'll see, you don't have to spend a fortune to get a stunning result. Here are 10 of the latest DIY fence ideas to inspire you.

1. Clad With Stylish Bamboo

Choose sturdy bamboo cladding to give a dull garden fence a natural and eco-friendly upgrade. This affordable option is quickly achieved by attaching rolled fenced panels such as this one from Wayfair to existing fence panels using cable ties or wire, making this an easy DIY garden project.

This natural bamboo fence has hollow stems that provide vital habitat for pollinators in your garden. If you love the idea of attracting bees and butterflies to your yard, design the planting around them too, choosing pollinator magnet plants such as foxgloves, salvia and yarrow. Go one step further and add a bug house to give wildlife a home and max up your green credentials.

2. Create a Focal Point With Colored Panels

Elevate your yard by slotting in decorative colored fence panels to define a seating area and add an elegant designer touch. This is an easy way to bring outdoor living vibes to your garden, giving it a more interior-led feel to match whatever style and aesthetic you want to create. It's also a budget-friendly option for upgrading standard fences into more of a feature.

DIY this idea yourself by using sections of pressure-treated plywood suitable for exterior use such as this Pine Ply from Lowe's. Priming the wood first will give you a smoother finish and richer colors, then apply two coats of an exterior paint. Take a look at the range of Glidden Fundamentals Exterior Paint at Walmart for an inspiring range of colors from Blue Oasis to Turning Oakleaf and Pepperberry Pink. There's also a range of exterior Glidden paints with primer if you want to skip that step.

Installed by pre-drilling them then fixing to the fence with screws, using a spirit level to check they're straight. A versatile option, it's easy to change the color when you want a different look, too.

3. Install Decorative Panels for Instant Results

You can buy decorative panels in so many different patterns, colors and sizes, it's easy to find a design that suits your garden style perfectly. There are tall, narrow panels and circular designs as well as the standard rectangles, so you can get creative.

Panels can be fixed to an existing boundary if it's strong enough, or how about using a panel to replace a short section of the fence? It's also possible to inset a smaller panel into a fence, as has been done here. Punctuating a long fence with several equally-spaced panels is a smart way to add rhythm and regularity to a garden.

Using the same design of decorative panel in different ways around your yard as well as fixing one to your fence brings a cohesive, prefessional look, too. Some panels are stronger than others so do check, but some are robust enough to be used between pergola struts to cast shapely shadows, or laid into gravel as a textured feature.

Decorative Fence Panels

4. Hang a Mirror to Make A Small Garden Look Bigger

If you're looking for small garden ideas, another trick designers often use is hanging a mirror on the fence. This will reflect your plants and make it seem like there are more of them, and is surely the easiest of DIY designer tricks to make a small garden look bigger. Outdoor mirrors help to bounce light around to create the illusion of space.

In this design a mirror is hung on a fence in a shady corner of the garden. It adds light and depth to brighten and open up the garden, adding the illusion that another space lies beyond. Find a round garden mirror design like this at Amazon. Most come with strong adhesive pads and are easy to fix to a clean surface, but it's smart to back that up with exterior glue.

5. Create Fence Shelves and Start a Curated Collection

A big trend at the moment is the idea of a curated garden. This means making more considered choices where plants, materials, and accessories are concerned. The aim is to achieve a cohesive look where everything fits together in a harmonious design that's entirely unique to you.

Integrating shelves into garden fence ideas is a great way of tapping into this trend, allowing you to add a unique customised finish with, for example, a collection of small potted plants similar to the look achieved with a plant theater. Or perhaps your DIY garden shelves could house your collection of rocks and other natural treasures?

It's an easy weekend DIY project, too. Attach sturdy outdoor brackets directly into fence supports, using exterior-grade deck screws, then secure pre-cut treated shelf boards.

6. Run A Raised Bed Along a Fence

The strip of ground in front of a fence often ends up as an underused space where nothing grows. But it's easy to add either an integral raised garden bed or a freestanding one right in front that allows you to maximise the space by adding a layer of planting to beautify the boundary.

Raised garden beds along fences add a visually appealing and structural element to your garden. Use a similar material for the raised bed as the fence, and the pairing will serve as a modern focal point. While it's smart to follow the recommended spacing guidelines for any plant variety to ensure there is enough room for growth to give your design longevity, it's okay to plant more densely in a raised bed as you can easily control moisture and nutrient levels.

7. Use Trellis to Add Texture

There are no rules to say trellis must be used solely to support plants and, as you can see from this small garden, it's an effective way to add an accent in its own right. Choose expandable trellis made from willow such as this Latticed Willow Trellis from Lowe's and you can use hand pruners to cut it into creative shapes.

Defining a space by fixing trellis to fence is quick and affordable, too.

8. Let Light in With Contemporary Slats

If you're gardening in a small space like a courtyard or patio garden it's important to let in as much light as possible. This is where airy wooden slat fencing comes into play, which is one of the biggest garden trends for 2026.

Characterized by neat horizontal planks that allow light to filter through, wooden slatting allows you to create a crisp, modern aesthetic while simultaneously softening the look of boundaries. This design is elegant and minimalist with the fence offering clean lines as a backdrop to the restrained planting.

There's no need to replace your entire fence, but switch out a couple of sections with modern horizontal slat panels such as these Nature's Composites Panels from Lowe's.If you're on a budget and handy at DIY, then you can cheat the look by removing a section of existing fencing and fixing treated roofing batons at intervals to fenceposts.

9. Cloak a Bare Fence With Climbing Plants

One of the easiest and most pleasing ways to turn a fence into a feature is by covering it with climbing plants. Choose the right varieties and they will grow vigorously to disguise fence panels with beautiful-looking flowers and foliage.

From fragrant climbing roses, scented honeysuckle and perfumed jasmine flowers to tropical trumpet vine and heavenly wisteria, there's a world of choice out there. When you're wondering what climber to grow on a fence, start by looking at fast-growing vines that won't scramble out of control. Clematis is always a great choice if you like flamboyant flowers, and there's a clematis vine to suit every spot.

Before making your choice take into account the aspect of your yard, and opt for either sun-loving or shade-loving plants accordingly. Next, check the plant's water and fertilizing requirements. Then be sure to offer something for them to cling to such as wires or trellis, to make their transformation of your fence even easier.

Pretty Climbing Plants For Fences

10. Paint a Black Backdrop for Dramatic Planting

The black paint trend is a big look for fence ideas right now, and one of the most dramatic garden ideas you can achieve in a weekend. Timber or metal fencing stained in shades of deep charcoal to jet black deliver a modern aesthetic that acts as a dramatic backdrop to visually enhance planting. With clever lighting and the use of accent plants that landscape designers love, you can really turn your fence into a feature.

A favorite among garden designers for offering dramatic impact and a high-end finish, black fences instantly make a garden feel more considered. It's an easy look to copy too. Choose an outdoor fence paint such as Fence Pro in Black from Lowe's that will deal with even the harshest weather conditions for a long-lasting look.

Pick up the black look elsewhere, too, with other details such as plant stands, pots and planters, and garden furniture or accessories.

There are a lot of good reasons to grow plants in raised beds. The most important is that they give you more control over soil conditions. You can create the perfect blend and ensure good drainage. Raised beds are also easier to manage, especially if you have any mobility issues.

On the other hand, raised bed gardening has one major issue: water. Like containers, the soil in a raised bed will dry out faster than soil in the ground. This means you need to spend more time watering, unless you use one of these nifty strategies or easy-to-find tools and materials to create beds that are mostly or entirely self-watering.

Here are the four easiest and most effective ways to turn your raised bed into a self-watering garden that can withstand summer heat and drought or that you can leave for vacation and not worry about wilting.

1. Build a Wicking Reservoir

A water wicking reservoir is an underground irrigation system. The reservoir stores water at the bottom of the bed. A wicking material allows the water to move upward into the dry soil as needed.

With this type of wicking raised bed system, you only need to fill the reservoir every few days or weekly, depending on the weather. It prevents overwatering and encourages strong, deep root growth.

You can find self-watering raised beds on Amazon that already have a water reservoir built in, buy a self-watering insert from Gardener's Supply Company, or make your own water wicking system from simple materials.

Line the bed with plastic sheeting or a pond liner to make it watertight. Create a reservoir on top of the liner using large, clean rocks or perforated drainpipes. Cover this with landscape fabric to act as your wicking material.

Finally, you just need a vertical PVC pipe on the side of the bed that reaches down to the reservoir. You’ll use this to refill the reservoir as needed. The wicking material allows water to be pulled upward into the soil, but only when the soil is dry so overwatering isn’t an issue.

2. Use Watering Spikes & Olla Pots

There is an even simpler solution to creating self-watering beds that is best for small raised beds. Watering spikes, olla pots, and similar products are an easy way to let your beds water themselves. They work in a similar way to a wicking reservoir, but are easier to install.

These devices are made from unglazed terracotta. You fill them with water and bury them in the raised bed soil. The clay of the terracotta is porous, so moisture slowly seeps out into the dry soil around it. This is a low-tech, easy option for watering beds. The downside, however, is that each pot or watering spike only covers a small area of soil.

One olla pot, like this one from Amazon, will cover a growing area of 4 to 6 square feet (1.2-1.8 m), so it’s a great solution for small raised beds. Watering spikes, which you can get from IKEA, are best for individual plants. So if you have a few thirsty plants, like tomatoes, a handful of spikes can keep them happy and reduce the amount of time you need to spend watering.

3. Set Up a Drip Irrigation Kit

Adding a drip irrigation setup to your raised bed turns your garden into a self-sufficient system in just one afternoon. These kits come in a range of sizes and those designed for smaller areas, like raised beds, can be as low as $30, like this simple drip irrigation kit from Home Depot that Content Editor Laura has used in her garden for years.

The kits include a hose or pipe system with multiple holes. You’ll install this in a bed and connect it to a hose. A hose-faucet timer, like this one that Laura also recommends, allows you to set the system to water at regular intervals.

Once installed, this is a hands-off watering system, so convenience is one of the biggest benefits. With some kits, you can even connect to an app and control watering from your phone.

Drip irrigation kits are also highly efficient, so if water usage is limited in your area, they are a great option. You’ll use up to 70% less water than using a regular hose and nozzle to water.

4. Create a Gravity-Fed Drip System

Instead of the pressure from a faucet and hose, you can use gravity to water your beds through a drip hose. You need an elevated source, like a rain barrel, and some tubing. Water moves down under the force of gravity and into the raised bed.

Like a drip irrigation system connected to a faucet, you get the benefit of water conservation, but you don’t need the pressure of the faucet. This is a good DIY drip irrigation option for a bed that isn’t close to the faucet.

Start with an elevated rain barrel, like this one with a built-in stand from Home Depot. If you have taller raised beds, you will need to place your rain barrel even higher. You can use cinder blocks, bricks, or old pallets to build a simple platform to lift your barrel above the height of your raised beds.

Next, add a drip irrigation system to get the water to your beds. You can make your own drip irrigation system or use a premade kit. Just make sure the kit you buy will work in a gravity-fed situation. Some drip irrigation kits need water pressure from a faucet or hose to function. But this drip irrigation kit from Amazon works with low or no water pressure.

No single solution for creating a self-watering bed is perfect, but one of these ideas might be better than others for your garden. You can also combine strategies to make watering easier. For instance, use a wicking reservoir with mulch to keep moisture in the soil longer. Or use a drip irrigation system with watering spikes for your especially thirsty plants.

Whether you install a simple drip irrigation kit, build a wicking reservoir, or just add mulch and a timer, these upgrades can dramatically reduce maintenance while keeping plants healthier and more productive. With the right setup, you can spend less time watering and more time enjoying your harvest.

A great solution for heatwave summers, low-growing groundcover plants act as a living mulch to lock moisture into the soil and protect roots from extreme temperatures. And groundcover doesn’t need to be boring! These fabulously flamboyant flowering groundcover plants will bring months of beautiful blooms to borders, and keep your garden full of color into fall.

If it’s been a while since you looked at groundcover plants, you’ll be astonished to discover some dazzling new varieties that combine all the benefits of traditional groundcover with the ornamental delights usually only seen in far taller plants. There’s even a groundcover hydrangea for goodness sake!

So forget the usual fodder of forgettable groundcover and try a showstopper instead. Here’s my pick of the most eye-catching groundcover plants to keep your soil cool and your borders packed with blooms into fall.

1. Groundbreaker Hydrangea For a Sea of Blooms

• Zones 5-8
• Full sun to partial shade
• Grows 12-16" tall and 24-32" wide

Let’s start with the plant most likely to cause serious neighbor envy, shall we? Because if you plant this groundcover carpet of color-changing hydrangea blooms, expect everyone to ask what is! The fabulous new Groundbreaker series of hydrangeas brings all the beauty of the perennial blooms we all know and love to ground level. The world’s first-ever spreading groundcover hydrangea, this plant grows out instead of up, only reaching 12-16 inches high yet spreading up to 32 inches wide. Well-branched stems mean lots of conical flowers, and the blooming period lasts a whopping 100 days.

Launched two years ago, Groundbreaker hydrangeas only became available to buy in the United States in July 2026, and they’re proving hugely popular. And no wonder: growing panicle hydrangeas is straightforward to begin with, but these have been bred to be especially low maintenance.

So if you want one, you’d better be quick as these beautiful hydrandgeas are selling out fast. At the time of writing, all three Groundbreaker hydrangea varieties are available from Plant Addicts. Groundbreaker Blush Hydrangea has large white flower panicles in midsummer that gradually develop blush pink tones. Groundbreaker Ruby Hydrangea also blooms white but its flowers deepen to a rich ruby red, while Groundbreaker Greeny Hydrangea transitions the other way with blooms opening a bright lime green then gradually softening to a creamy white.

2. Drift Rose For Three-Season Color

• Zones 4-11
• Full sun to partial shade
• Grows 1-2' tall and 3' wide

The series of Drift roses are a cross between full-size groundcover roses and miniature roses, so while they’ll bring abundant color to a border, they won’t take over. These rebloomers produce wave after wave of flowers from spring till late fall and are self-cleaning, which means you don’t need to deadhead. They’re super-easy to look after, too, being highly resilient against common rose issues including black spot and powdery mildew.

There are all sorts of fabulous colors to choose from, and some have transitioning tones. In fact, the only downside to these low-maintenance roses is that they only have a mild scent, or no fragrance at all.

Nature Hills stocks a great selection of Drift roses. Popcorn Drift blooms a golden yellow and transitions to cream, while Coral Drift, Peach Drift and Apricot Drift also have color-shifting blooms in a variety of warm tones. Sweet Drift is a ravishing pink with around 30 petals on each flower, while Pink Drift has simple single blooms that are better for pollinators. Red Drift holds its bright scarlet color even in a hot summer.

3. Blue Waterfall Bellflower for a Designer Look

• Zones 4-8
• Partial to full sun
• Grows 6-10" high and 24-36" wide

There are lots of good things to say about this pretty plant, but perhaps its finest asset is that it’s often employed by landscape designers, so instantly brings a professional look. While Campanula poscharskyana ‘Camgood’ is typically housed in a pot or a hanging basket, its trailing stems make excellent groundcover, speedily spreading around larger plants.

And this little perennial is sure to attract attention with its ice-blue star-shaped flowers that last through summer into fall.

While this perennial grows quickly, it doesn’t run out of control, and happily thrives in pretty much any soil, as long as it gets at least 5 hours of sunlight a day. The small, bright green heart-shaped leaves are super-pretty, too. Blue Waterfall Bellflower plants are available from Plant Addicts.

4. Firewitch Dianthus For a Small Garden

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Grows 4-8" high and 1' wide

Yes, small gardens need groundcover too! Firewitch dianthus makes for brilliant groundcover in a small garden as it’s incredibly well-behaved but works hard to form a dense, weed-blocking mat of pretty silvery-blue leaves. With a flurry of pink flowers all through spring and summer – and fall, if you shear off faded blooms – Dianthus gratianopolitanus was bred to give maximum color for minimum effort.

What’s more, the spicy, clove-like scent of the flowers is a wonderful addition to hot summer days, while the foliage is evergreen in most climates.

Each plant spreads to around a foot wide so, depending on the size of your border, you’ll need to add a few, and single and multi-pack Firewitch Dianthus plants are available from Fast Growing Trees.

5. Silvery Sunproof Liriope For Rippling Leaves

• Zones 6-11
• Partial shade
• Grows 1-2’ high and wide

This variegated monkey grass forms clumps rather than spreads, so it makes excellent groundcover to underplant a border of bigger perennials or shrubs where controlling a more vigorous plant would be tricky. This drought-tolerant plant can even cope in dry shade once established, so it won’t mind a jot that trees and shrubs are sucking most of the moisture out of the soil.

The striped leaves are evergreen in most climates and, in midsummer, purple flower spikes add to the show and last through fall. Liriope ‘Silvery Sunproof’ plants are available from Nature Hillsand are tolerant of pollution so will thrive roadside, and is even rated as Firewise in several states. While monkey grass typically needs partial shade to thrive, this variety tolerates sunlight far better than most others.

6. Cool Wave Pansies For Instant Cheer

• All zones
• Full sun or partial shade
• 6-8" high and 24-30" wide

These little gems light up a tired border and don’t be fooled by the dainty, delicate appearance – they're tough cookies and bloom for months on end. In fact, this is one of the longest-blooming pansies available. While pansies are typically planted in patio pots and hanging baskets, this is a trailing variety so spreads to form groundcover in a border and quickly but politely fills gaps between bigger perennials. Pansies can be planted in summer in zones up to 9, so put this on your list of July garden jobs.

How Cool Wave pansies behave will depend on your climate, but they’re an excellent way to bridge the summer-to-fall gap in all zones. In zones 5 through 11 they’ll survive the winter: in zones 5-6, they’re dormant through winter but bounce back in spring; in zones 7-9, they’ll bloom pretty much continuously through all four seasons; in zones 10-11, wait for the intense heat of summer to pass before planting for endless cool-season flowers. In cooler zones 4 and below, treat these beauties as annuals and plant afresh each spring.

Pansies prefer cooler conditions and will fade in hot temperatures so, in a hotter zone, plant in a partially shady spot that doesn’t bake in the midday sun; in cooler zones, it’s fine in full sun.

Pansies can be challenging to grow from seed so it’s best to skip straight to the good bit with young plants. Cool Wave Morpho pansy plants are available from Burpee in a striking purple-blue and yellow combo, and the color intensifies as temperatures drop. Cool Wave Raspberry Swirl pansy plants are also available from Burpee, with a pretty mix of rosy, golden tones.

7. SunSparkler Dazzling Dynamite Sedum for Low Maintenance

• Zones 4-9
• Full sun
• Grows 4-8" tall and 1-2' wide

If you want to add color to a border without upping the workload, Sedum ‘Dazzling Dynamite’ should be your go-to solution. This well-behaved low-growing perennial is extremely heat- and drought-tolerant once established, and while pollinators love it, deer typically don’t touch it. That burgundy-red foliage is vibrant enough on its own, but when topped with bright pink flowers through summer and fall, SunSparkler Dazzling Dynamite Sedum is a real showstopper.

Unlike some sedums that fade in summer heat, this keeps its color well, and Dazzling Dynamite plants are available from Nature Hills. The succulent leaves slowly spread to form a dense mat, even on poor soil, making this one of the most low-maintenance groundcover plants you can get.

The challenge a boxy backyard brings is that its square shape makes the garden feel even smaller than it already is. But steal a few tricks from landscape designers and you can manipulate the space to your advantage, and transform it into a super-stylish yard that appears larger and less enclosed. The trick is to see a square garden plot not as a hindrance, but instead as an invitation to get creative.

To draw all eyes away from the boundaries, and make the space within feel more expansive, landscape designers use a number of clever techniques. Plenty are DIY projects you can do yourself to make a small garden feel bigger. One such trick is to separate the plot into multiple areas, each with a clear function, that segue together beautifully into a whole. A lot can be achieved by utilising vertical space for growing, too, which increases planting options as well as leading the eye up to make your garden feel less cramped. Add in some curves and a focal-point feature, and suddenly you have a garden to be proud of.

A few well-chosen contemporary small garden ideas is often all it needs to add the standout factor to your garden design. Here are all the garden design ideas you need to get the transformation underway.

1. Divide the Plot into Geometric Blocks

If you have a small boxy backyard, you'll want to make the very best of the space by turning it into a stylish extension of your home. One of the easiest landscape designer tricks to tap into is reconfiguring the space using the 'rule of three' technique to carve up a square garden into separate yet harmonious areas.

This is a clever way of stretching a small garden and making it feel more spacious with clearly defined zoned areas, like this design (above). With separate spaces such as a patio for dining and a deck for lounging, plus a hidden destination point at the far end, this boxy backyard doesn't feel square any more.

Using planting such as evergreen boxwood cubes and ornamental grasses to create softly sculpted divisions between the spaces adds a high-end look, as does subtle uplighting.

2. Plant Immersive Boundaries to Distract from Dimensions

It might seem counter-intuitive to enclose a small boxy backyard with vertical planting taken to great heights, but green walls can in fact work to your advantage. Lushly planted boundaries help small gardens feel bigger by leading the eye upward to create an immersive feeling. And it needn't take forever, as there are plenty of fast-growing vines that won't scramble out of control.

Planting climbers also helps to blur the boundaries so you're not sure where the garden begins and ends. Covering solid features like walls and fences in foliage softens hard edges and tricks the eye, rather than immediately revealing the limitations of a small space.

Wrapping a garden in plants such as evergreen climbers takes the gray out of an urban space year-round, or add some standout color with a clematis. Another bonus is that this increases your privacy, especially helpful if your garden is overlooked by neighbors' windows. You can also used climbing plants to break up stretches of straight horizontal lines on the tops of fences and walls.

Climbing Plants for Boundaries

3. Create an Eye-Catching Centerpoint

Creating a standout garden feature in the center of a square garden distracts from the restricted dimensions. Adding a focal point is a great way to make a small boxy backyard feel bigger, as your eyes will be pulled away from the edges into the center.

A circular feature integrated into a square shape immediately stands out. This eye-catching design features a firepit sunk into a round deck, surrounded by wraparound planting.

Other ideas for a centerpoint include an elegant DIY water fountain, or there are plenty of water features you can install yourself, or a piece of sculpture. Adding a circular lawn in the center of a square garden will also transform the feel of the space. A circular design feature breaks away from the boundaries, helping your garden feel more intentional and aesthetically pleasing. Circles blur harsh boundary edges and pull together the space in a gently cohesive way.

4. Add a Dazzling Accent Plant

Another way to draw attention away from the outer boundaries is to add an accent plant that landscape designers love. As far as small backyard ideas go, this is such a quick and easy win but will have a huge impact. An ornamental multi-stem tree such as 'Little Gem' magnolia, available from Nature Hills, is perfect for small yards as it adapts well to being pruned to stay compact.

Cornus kousa 'Satomi', pictured above and available from Nature Hills, is another showstopper tree that commands attention but can be pruned to stay in shape.

5. Design a ZigZag Path that Tricks the Eye

Another way to disguise a square-shaped garden is to add a feature that forces your gaze to change direction, as this distracts from the standard boxy outline dictated by the boundaries.

It's time to forget boring straight lines and draw the eye with something clever. Setting paths at changing angles so they zigzag or have a dog leg makes a garden feel both wider and more interesting, as well as being a design feature in its own right.

This elevated decking pathway zigzags between landscaping elements such as a pond, carefully positioned boulders and decorative border planting, which combine to distract the focus from the limitations of the space and reinvigorate a small boxy backyard.

6. Banish 90° Angles For a Softer Look

Sometimes the smallest details can make a big difference when you're working out how to improve a garden. Obtuse angles like the one in the raised bed above create and optical illusion: because the line is longer than if a 90° angle had been used, the feature appears bigger. In an urban garden that has lots of hard landscaping, this is particularly effective trick.

A design like this also feels so much more relaxed than one that relies on sharp corners. Take a look at your small boxy backyard and it's likely that you'll spot myriad 90° angles. Banish them, and you'll make much more of the space.

7. Use Asymmetric Focal Points to Your Advantage

Asymmetrical garden design is a real asset if you need fresh ideas to make more of a small boxy backyard. This informal technique simply involves repeating one focal element around the garden, but staggering their position so the two sides are asymmetrical.

The aim is to deliberately create an imbalance that makes a garden layout more interesting, such as alternating trees along a path rather than placing them directly opposite each other, as would be the case in symmetrical garden design. In this design, small clipped evergreen trees are staggered along the path instead of opposite each other. The planting in the beds on either side of the path are similar but aren't an exact mirror of each other, either, a further example of how asymmetric planting can make a small garden more interesting.

In a small yard, this can be as easy as strategically placed pots, creatively planted with standout container ideas.

Asymmetric planting schemes tend to feel less predictable, another way of offering a visual distraction from less than ideal garden dimensions.

8. Interrupt Sight Lines

Designers use 'sight lines' to direct the gaze through a garden. A sight line is simply where most people might look when viewing a garden, the visual path from a starting point such as a patio. If the sight line in your garden takes you directly to the back boundary, then creating a longer, more meandering journey will make the space look far bigger.

It's easy to achieve by strategically placing an element that interrupts the sightline, and partially blocks the view. Your eye stops at this destination point, pauses, then looks past it, so the visual path is far longer. In the garden above, graceful ornamental grass Miscanthus sinensis intentionally interrupts the sight line.

The tall ornamental grass also prevents us from seeing what's immediately behind it, offering the possibility that the space may continue beyond what is immediately apparent, and there's more to the garden than is first perceived.

Tall Ornamental Grasses

9. Move Borders Away From Boundaries

The temptation with a square garden is to push the planting out to the edges of the plot in the hope that an expanse of lawn in the middle will make the space look bigger. But all narrow fence-side borders do is draw attention to the boundaries and emphasize the plot's square shape.

Instead, it's a good idea to shape deep flowerbeds that flow away from a boundary, such as the semi-circular bed in the garden above. This not only brings a more immersive – and professional – feel, but allows you to appreciate the planting from all angles.

Now get more insight on garden shape design to make sure you get the most out of your square garden.

Purple flowers lift a tired garden border from forgettable to fabulous, fast. By layering blooms with different shades of purple, contrasting flower shapes and foliage textures – a simple garden design trick that delivers maximum visual impact with minimal effort – you’ll quickly take your yard from lacklustre to lovely. No wonder, then, that purple flowers are an important part of how landscape designers use color in gardens..

Green and purple combinations alone provide a strong base for a border but one of purple’s greatest strengths is its unrivalled knack to harmonize with other colors. Purple flowers adapt to almost any garden mood from calming and elegant to bold and exuberant. Even better, many purple flowers are magnets for bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, making your yard feel as lively as it looks. So, whatever your garden palette, you really should be growing some purple blooms.

For a serene, cohesive look, purple combines beautifully with cool tones of blue, silver and soft pink to create borders that feel relaxed and dreamy. For stronger contrast and energy, purple appears vivid and luminous against yellow and lime green. Purple flowers threaded through warm orange, burgundy, or rich red blooms creates a dramatic, jewel-toned border, too.

So, whether you have a sprawling backyard or a compact urban plot, look no further for a curated collection of long-flowering, purple perennial plants that will help you build the most beautiful garden border yet. From tall, dramatic bloomers that add height and structure to easy mid-border plants that tie a look together, these purple picks will keep your beds bursting with color for months and, with a little TLC, well into fall.

1. Velvety-Spired Salvia

• Zones 3-8
• Full sun
• Flowers May-October
• Grows to 2' high and wide

Salvias earn their place in any garden by doing something many plants promise but few deliver: looking spectacular for months while asking for very little in return. Yes, salvia is one of those super-useful flowering plants that look like you spent hours gardening but practically grow themselves.

Our top pick of purple salvia varieties is May Night, and plants are available from Nature Hills. Electric violet-purple flower spikes rise like floral fireworks above tidy mounds of fragrant foliage, bringing bold color and a cool, saturated tone that makes neighboring plants glow. This bloom is especially gorgeous threaded through roses, coneflowers, catmint and ornamental grasses.

Pollinators absolutely adore it and, once established, May Night handles heat and dry spells with impressive resilience, making it perfect for sun-baked borders, cottage gardens, pollinator patches and low-water landscapes.

When growing salvias, well-drained soil and sunshine are a must. May Night starts blooming in late spring but snip off faded flower spikes after the first bloom flush and it will roar back for an encore throughout summer and into fall.

2. Fabulously Frilly Aster

• Zones 5-9
• Full sun
• Flowers July–October
• Grows to 1-2' high and wide

If your garden border needs long-lasting color and a lot less fuss, Honeysong Stokes Aster is an easy win. This compact perennial is beloved for its big, fluffy lavender-purple flowers that look like fringed pincushions that keep on coming through summer. The glowing blooms are powerhouses for butterflies and bees, making a border buzz with activity.

What makes Stokesia leavis ‘Honeysong’ especially handy in a border is its tidy, mounded habit. This aster stays nicely contained, slotting beautifully into the middle of a border without flopping everywhere or swallowing nearby plants. The soft green foliage also creates a calming backdrop that plays well with bolder flowers and ornamental grasses.

Honeysong Stokes Aster plants are available from Nature Hills. Surprisingly tough, this variety needs full sun and well-drained soil, and it’ll reward you with loads of flowers and very little drama. It handles heat and humidity better than many asters, and deadheading spent blooms encourages even more flowering.

3. Beautifully Scented Rose

• Zones 5-11
• Full sun
• Flowers May-October
• Grows to 2-3' high and wide

Roses are already garden royalty, but Ebb Tide is extra special on account of its deep, smoky purple blooms. Shifting between plum, velvet violet, and dusky magenta depending on the light, this rose variety also has an incredibly rich, spicy clove scent that drifts through the border, stopping you in your tracks every time you pass by.

But the biggest reason why Rosa ‘Ebb Tide’ is such a winner in a garden border is that it adds drama without stepping into high-maintenance diva territory. It stays relatively compact and, like most roses, mixes beautifully with perennials. Pop these dark blooming roses next to some contrasting silvery foliage or lighter flowers for a layered, designer look.

Like most roses, Ebb Tide loves full sun and appreciates good air circulation to keep foliage healthy. Water deeply rather than constantly sprinkling, and add mulch to keep roots cool and soil moist. Key rose-care tasks during the growing season, such as deadheading and a little feeding, will keep blooms coming. Ebb Tide roses are stocked by Nature Hills.

4. Oh-So-Purple Clematis

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun
• Flowers June-August
• Grows to 3-5' high and 2-3' wide

Huge star-shaped purple flowers with rich reddish-pink stripes down petal centers make Boulevard Olympia Clematis one of the best purple blooms to enjoy in your garden. Somehow managing to simultaneously pull off both elegant and dramatic, the blooms appear generously from late spring into summer, often with a later second flush.

Clematis ‘Boulevard Olympia’ is especially useful because of its manageable size. Unlike giant clematis varieties that seem determined to conquer the entire garden shed, this is a well-behaved climber that won't scramble out of control. It stays compact enough for smaller borders, patio trellises, obelisks and even large containers tucked into mixed plantings. It adds vertical interest without overwhelming nearby shrubs and perennials, which is incredibly handy when a border needs a bit of height.

Boulevard Olympia Clematis is available from Nature Hills. To keep clematis thriving, plant it where the vines bask in sun while the roots stay cool – use mulch or nearby low-growing plants to shade its base. It prefers rich, well-drained soil and regular watering, especially during hot spells. Choose the right support for this border plant to climb and give it a light prune in early spring, and it’ll happily spend the season covering itself in pastel-perfect, velvety blooms.

5. Super-Cute Hydrangea

• Zones 5-9
• Full sun
• Flowers June-September
• Grows to 1½-2' high and wide

Hydrangea serrata Tiny Tuff Stuff might be smaller than your average hydrangea but it absolutely delivers when it comes to color and charm. Its delicate lacecap flowers appear in soft pinks, purples, or blues (the exact bloom color depends on your soil), creating that dreamy cottage-garden look. And unlike some hydrangeas that bloom once and call it a season, this one reblooms, keeping your border looking fresh and flower-filled for months on end.

Thanks to its compact size, Tiny Tuff Stuff is a versatile cutie that's perfect for edging pathways, softening the front of shrub borders or filling awkward gaps where larger hydrangeas would take over. The smaller foliage and airy blooms also blend beautifully with ferns, hostas and ornamental grasses, giving borders a lovely layered, relaxed vibe.

This mountain hydrangea is tougher than it looks too. With excellent cold hardiness and better bud survival than many traditional hydrangeas, it's more likely to bloom reliably, even after harder winters. Give it morning sun or partial shade, keep the soil evenly moist, and add mulch to help retain moisture. A little compost in spring goes a long way toward keeping this tiny powerhouse happy, too. Tiny Tuff Stuff hydrangeas are available from Burpee.

6. Space-Saving Rose of Sharon

• Zones 5-9
• Full sun
• Flowers July–November
• Grows to 10-15' high and 2-3' wide

If you want a shrub that brings serious flower power without hogging all the space, Rose of Sharon Purple Pillar is a total garden-border superstar. Unlike traditional rose of Sharon shrubs that can be a little unruly, Hibiscus syriacus ‘Purple Pillar’ grows tall but relatively narrow, meaning you can tuck it into tight borders or add height at the back of a mixed border without elbowing out neighboring plants.

Rose of Sharon Purple Pillar is available from Nature Hills and the flowers are total show-offs! Just as many other shrubs begin to fade, ‘Purple Pillar’ bursts into bloom with rich lilac-purple flowers and dramatic red centres – a striking display that’s sure to become a favourite stop-off for pollinators.

This is another refreshingly low-maintenance plant. Give it full sun for the best flowering and plant it in well-drained soil. Once established, Purple Pillar is pretty drought tolerant, though it appreciates regular watering during hot spells. A light prune in late winter helps keep that neat upright shape looking sharp.

7. Shade-Loving Variegated Liriope

• Zones 5-10
• Partial shade
• Flowers August-September
• Grows to 1' high and wide

Variegated monkey grass deserves a lot more attention than it gets. While the flashy flowers and dramatic shrubs grab all the attention, this striped beauty slips quietly into a border with its arching green-and-cream foliage, adding brightness, texture and contrast all season long. In late summer, slender spikes covered in soft lavender-purple blooms dance above the green-and-cream leaves.

Liriope muscari ‘Variegata’ is brilliantly versatile, working beautifully along pathways, at the front of borders, or tucked around shrubs where it illuminates darker corners of the garden. Repeating it through a border creates little waves of color, texture and movement that help connect larger flowering plants.

Thriving in partial shade to full sun, it’s just as easy-going as it is attractive and handles heat, humidity, and dry spells with very little fuss. Plant it in well-drained soil, water regularly while it gets established, and then leave it to get on with life. A quick trim in late winter or early spring freshens up the foliage before new growth appears. Variegated liriope plants are stocked by Fast Growing Trees.

8. Star Performer Agapanthus

• Zones 8-11
• Full sun
• Flowers July-August
• Grows to 1-2' high and 2-3' wide

If you want a plant that instantly makes a garden border feel a little more polished and upscale, ‘Poppin’ Star’ Lily of the Nile absolutely delivers. This Agapanthus produces gorgeous clusters of violet-blue flowers striped with deeper indigo tones, held high above tidy green foliage like exploding fireworks. The blooms have a crisp, architectural look that adds plenty of cheerful structure to borders.

What makes ‘Poppin’ Star’ stand out compared to older Lily of the Nile varieties, though, is its compact habit and impressive flower production. This cultivar stays much more manageable in size, which means you can easily tuck it into mixed borders without sacrificing too much space. It’s especially effective repeated throughout a border because those upright blooms create rhythm and movement, guiding your eye through the garden.

Growing agapanthus couldn't be simpler. This perennial thrives in full sun and well-drained soil and is surprisingly tolerant of heat and dry conditions. Regular watering during the first growing season helps it settle in, but after that, it’s pretty self-sufficient. A little cleanup of spent flower stalks is usually all it takes to keep ‘Poppin’ Star’ looking fresh and ready for its next performance. Poppin Star Lily of the Nile plants are available from Nature Hills.

9. Popping Purple Phlox

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun
• Flowers July-September
• Grows to 2' high and wide

Big on color and low on maintenance, Grape Lollipop Phlox is about to become your new favorite border buddy! This cheerful perennial produces clusters of vibrant grape-purple flowers that glow in the summer sunshine and, unlike some older phlox varieties, keeps a neat, compact shape that doesn’t flop halfway through the season.

Also known as Phlox paniculata ‘Ditomsur’, Grape Lollipop Phlox plants are available from Nature Hills. This easy-to-grow plant is perfect for the middle of the border where it can knit together taller shrubs and shorter edging plants. The bold purple blooms pair seamlessly with pinks, whites, silvers, and ornamental grasses, giving borders that lush, layered cottage-garden feel.

Thankfully, this variety has much better mildew resistance than many traditional garden phlox, so the foliage keeps on looking good. Prioritize full sun, decent airflow and consistently moist but well-drained soil when growing phlox, and you'll be rewarded with months of color.

10. Repeat-flowering Azalea

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun to partial shade
• Flowers July-September
• Grows to 4-5' high and 3-4' wide

Some plants give you one glorious moment and then quietly fade into the background. Autumn Color Encore Azalea is not that kind of plant! This hardworking shrub pulls off the rare gardening trick of blooming not once, but multiple times a year, with waves of vibrant flowers appearing in spring, summer, and again in fall. In a border, that kind of repeat performance is pure gold.

And yes, this beauty is right at the pinker end of the purple spectrum, its vivid violet petals light up any bed. This incredibly color makes deeper purple blooms pop, too, which is why it's one of the most popular flowers used by garden landscapers.

But what really makes this Encore variety shine is how dependable it is. The evergreen foliage keeps the border looking full even in winter, while the compact, rounded shape makes it easy to weave into a mixed border without being unruly. It works beautifully alongside hydrangeas, ornamental grasses, hostas, or dark-leaved shrubs, adding bright punches of color every time it blooms. Which, being a member of the 'Encore' series of azaleas, is often!

Plant this amazing azalea in partial sun or a spot with morning sun and afternoon shade, and make sure the soil is well-drained and slightly acidic. When growing azaleas, a layer of mulch helps keep the roots cool and happy, especially during hot weather. Then occasional watering during dry spells and a light feed for acid-loving plants is all that's needed to keep this azalea looking energetic and flower-packed for months on end. Autumn Color Encore Azalea plants are available from My Perfect Plants.

Homespun water features made with a floating solar fountain and a container are a huge trend this summer – but add some plants and you'll create a garden highlight that’s even more of a showstopper. It’s quick and easy to do and, by getting clever with the containers you use, budget-friendly, too. The water spray naturally cools the air, and the gentle splashing makes for a soothing soundscape in your outside space. And when there's no telling how long this heatwave summer will last for, that's just what your too-hot garden needs right now.

Solar fountains have taken water features out of the realm of expensive, professionally landscaped gardens and put them firmly within reach of us everyday gardeners. DIY microponds are fast replacing trad water features as the must-have garden feature for 2026, and there are so many creative ways you can use a floating solar fountain to make one. There are even solar fountains with colored LEDs so you can DIY a stunning water feature to light summer evenings in your garden.

A water feature with plants, however, tops them all and, as quick and clever container gardening ideas you can DIY on a budget go, you can’t beat it! Here’s exactly what to do so you can make one this weekend.

1. Choose Your Containers

You’re going to need two containers, one larger than the other.

The central water bowl needs to be at least 12 inches wide to contain most of the fountain splashes, though obviously the wider and deeper it is, the less frequently you’ll have to top it up. You don’t need to buy an expensive purpose-made water bowl, as planters intended for succulents don’t usually have a drainage hole and make a stylish alternative at a fraction of the price. It’s easy to seal the drainage hole of other planters with a marine silicone sealant like this from Amazon. Just don’t use terracotta pots as the clay is porous.

The outer planter needs to be at least six inches wider than the water bowl that will stand inside it, to leave enough space for plants to flourish. That means you need a pretty big outer container – but that needn't come at a cost. Resin (also called polyresin) or composite plastic planters commonly mimic the look of stone, metal or wood and are far cheaper than the real thing. This material is lightweight, too, so it’s often used to make big, wide planters.

Have a hunt around your local hardware store in your search for a suitable container as well. Animal drinking troughs and utility tubs are typically robust and relatively inexpensive, and it’s a quick task to drill drainage holes.

Container Pairings At Sensible Prices

Budget Combo

Designer Look For Less

Rustic Charm

2. Pick a Suitable Floating Solar Fountain

The amount of energy the solar panels of a floating fountain are capable of generating is measured in watts, which you’ll typically find in product descriptions as ‘W’. Many 1W fountains are designed for use in birdbaths so only produce a gentle water spray when the sun is shining directly on the solar panels. If you're using a similarly small, shallow container, that's fine. However, for a fountain that’s powerful enough to provide a decent-height fountain and a good flow of water in a larger container, look for a product that’s at least 2W.

If you want a fountain with LEDs, then the lights will use more power, so 3-4W is better. Don’t be tempted by more powerful 5-6W solar fountains when you're installing a water feature yourself, though, as these are more suited to bigger bodies of water. Too powerful, and the spray pattern will fall outside the container and you'll be forever topping up water levels.

A design with stabilising arms that prevent the fountain floating close to the container rim also helps minimize water loss.

If you want the fountain to operate on cloudy days and after dark, or if you want to position your water feature in partial shade, you’ll need a product that has a battery. A fountain with a 2000mAh battery will typically run for 3-4 hours without sun on a full charge.

For increased longevity, look for a fountain with run-dry protection so it automatically shuts down when there’s insufficient water, and a filter to prevent debris from entering the pump.

Our Pick of Floating Solar Fountains

3. Position Your Planter

Position your water feature before you begin planting. Any small body of water will heat up and evaporate more quickly than a larger area, so while you need sunlight to charge the solar panels and fuel plants, a little shade is a good idea. Around 6 hours of sunshine a day is the ideal compromise.

Consider what plants will be around and above your water bowl planter too, because you don’t want to be fishing out fallen leaves. Work out where your water feature will bring you the most enjoyment, too, to listen to as well as look at.

4. Plant Up The Outer Container

Because the plants are likely to get splashed, use a moisture-control potting mix such as Miracle-Gro Moisture Control Potting Mix, available from Walmart. If you’ve already got some potting mix, simply add some water-storing crystals such as these from Amazon or coconut coir, also available from Amazon, to enhance its ability to regulate moisture levels.

Position the water container as you’re filling the outer planter, making sure its rim is at least an inch higher than that of the outer vessel. It’s a smart move to put at least a thin layer of the potting mix beneath the base of the inner container, to give roots maximum growing room.

Then plant up the outer container, being careful to finish with the water bowl level. Any bedding plants suitable for hanging baskets are perfect for this project as they’re typically heat-tolerant low growers that bloom abundantly and enjoy sunny conditions. See what your local garden center has in stock, or you can plant pansies and violas in July that will last all through fall, and some are hardy enough to keep blooming in winter, too. Burpee currently has an excellent selection of pansy and viola varieties as young, ready-to-flower plants for a fast result.

A few easy-grow plants with trailing stems will add to the display.

Whatever you choose to plant, water them well, until it dribbles from the drainage holes, to settle the soil around the roots.

5. Fill With Water and Enjoy!

Now all that’s left to do is fill up the inner container with water, pop in the floating fountain, and enjoy your dazzling new water feature.

To enhance ripples and reflections, add a drop of pool colorant like this black pond dye from Amazon to the water.

If you have a long, narrow garden, it's likely that your outdoor space feels as if you have far less square footage than you actually do. While the planning stage is important when designing any outdoor space, it's especially important when you're working out how to make the most of a plot that's far longer than it is wide. Because there are plenty of clever ways that landscape designers use to make these corridor backyards feel far larger, that you can achieve yourself.

The challenge with this yard shape is to interrupt the view that runs down the garden to the end of the plot, so everything isn't seen immediately. By not revealing the whole of the garden as one continuous design, you add elements of exploration, surprise and mystery, making a garden more interesting and distracting from the plot's shape.

Reconfiguring the space creatively to offer partial glimpses beyond with carefully conceived sight lines is just the first step. Visual tricks that distort perspective to make the garden feel wider, and draw the eye across the space rather than straight down it, are also key. Using airy plants to create natural screens bring movement as well as staggering views, and dividing a long garden into distinct areas with different purposes brings outdoor living benefits, too.

So, if you're wondering how to design a long narrow garden to make the most of your space, here's all the inspiration you need.

1. Zone the Space to Distract From its Shape

Landscape designers often break up a long narrow garden into separate spaces or 'rooms', each with a different purpose such as a dining space and outdoor kitchen (like this design by Will Williams), relaxation area, zone for quiet contemplation, or utility space for tools and a shed. The size and shape of each 'room' should support and reflect the importance of the purpose it will be used for. Alternatively, the different areas can be compartmentalized according to what you grow in them, such as a vegetable garden, shade garden or wildflower patch.

With this style of design, it's really important that you don't fully enclose each 'room' but give a hint at what's going on further down the garden. The open-slat pergola defining the cooking and dining space in this garden is a perfect example. The idea is to create anticipation and offering a distraction from the narrow dimensions, without giving it all away at once.

2. Use Curves to Create a Meandering Journey

Another way of breaking up a long narrow plot is to introduce curves like this garden created by landscape designer Tom Hoblyn. An offset winding path in a pale sand or gravel tone is a great way to draw attention away from the linear boundaries and create more of a meandering journey through the garden. The curved theme in this design is continued with flowerbeds and raised beds.

An offset path is an easy idea to replicate, and one of the most effective landscape design tricks for a long, narrow garden. Think about adding a curving path to your garden together with raised beds and flower beds that have curved edges too, so they smudge the straight lines and layer up interest with grasses and tall, airy flowering plants.

Curves slow down movement through any space and create a more naturalistic, fluid, explorative feel compared to a straight view of the garden, too. They work particularly well in a long, narrow garden because your eye will naturally follow the curves from side to side, creating the illusion of wider plot.

3. Repeat Circular Shapes to Bounce the Eye Around

Circles are often used in rectangular, square and long plots to soften linear boundaries and introduce flow to the design. You can test this out for yourself by looking at this garden for a few moments: it's likely that your gaze from sphere to sphere. You probably looked across the image from fence to fence, too, rather than focusing on the summerhouse at the end of the garden first.

To create this effect in your garden, simply place multiple circular features so they overlap. Incorporate landscape features such as circular lawns, island flowerbeds, dining circles and round patios into the design, then add plants and accessories with circular or spherical shapes. Here, the table and hanging chair add to the strong circular look that's picked up in the planting by globe alliums and clipped evergreen balls.

Stylish Circles

4. Downplay Boundaries with a Dark Color

When it comes to color ideas for a long narrow garden, consider dark shades for boundary walls and fences, like the one featured in this design by Angus Thompson. Disguising a boundary with dark paint is just one of many clever tricks landscape designers use to make a small garden yard look bigger that you can DIY yourself.

Dark colors absorb light rather than reflecting it, so black or other dark colors visually push back the boundaries of your yard, making the space feel more open. Dark foliage will also contribute to this effect, tricking the eye into thinking a space is bigger than it really is, and this is such an easy way to bring depth and spaciousness to any garden. As well as retreating into the background, a dark boundary will highlight planting, too. For a durable black paint that delivers long-lasting color and protection try Evolve Barn and Fence Black Paint, available here at Amazon.

While black fences blend into the background shadows, making it difficult to see exactly where the garden ends, by contrast light-colored fences clearly define the perimeter of your garden, and draw attention to any limitations. So, by using a lighter tone for the end boundary at the bottom of your garden, too, you'll magically make a long plot appear squarer.

6. Stagger Planting to Create Natural Screens

Using planting as a screening device on alternating sides of the garden obscures the line of sight, causing the boundaries of a long narrow garden to disappear. It's a form of creative screening that has multiple uses, and no one will have a clue where the garden starts and stops.

It's a case of thinking diagonally. The idea is to alternate wide, generous planting beds with lavish planting on each side of the garden, so your attention moves from side to side. Staggered planting beds will also blur hard boundary edges and restrict views down the garden. It's a good way of including natural landscaping ideas, where everything can become a little more relaxed. Tall but airy plantings of ornamental grasses and flowering perennials such as Gaura 'Whirling Butterflies' will let light pass through so the garden doesn't feel blocked in.

Another method of adding planted dividers to the garden is with trellis ideas that cut across the width of the space. Clothed with fast-growing vines that won't scramble out of control like jasmine and honeysuckle, they'll create leafy screens.

7. Place Containers Strategically to Play With Scale

Pushing plants out to the edges and leaving an elongated rectangle of lawn down the center of the garden simply emphasises its long, narrow shape. Instead, try drawing attention away from the boundary with supersized containers, strategically placed away from the garden edges. Potted up with big shrubs or small multi-stemmed ornamental trees such as Japanese maple, these will be become focus garden features.

There are many beautiful drought-tolerant perennials that thrive in containers, too, or ornamental grasses typically do well in large pots. As they mature, the stems will help to obscure the sight line too. Or how about combining the two, with a small tree underplanted with smaller perennials? Containers are a great opportunity to add plants that you might not want to plant in the ground in a smaller garden, such as this clumping bamboo from Nature Hills. It grows up to 10 feet tall, making it perfect for screening, but flourishes in a container.

Do go big though, as a big plant in a big container plays with the sense of scale in a narrow garden, bringing the vibe of a much larger plot.

Another landscape-designer trick with containers in a long, narrow garden is to place a second pot that's smaller but of the same design closer to the house. Your brain will presume the containers are the same size and your garden will instantly feel shorter and wider.

Small Trees That Are Happy in a Large Container

8. Create an Inviting Destination Point

A common design trick with this shape of garden is, rather than positioning the focal-point outdoor living patio or deck directly next to the house or at the end of the plot, locate it two-thirds of the way down. As well as encouraging your gaze to stop travelling down a long garden at this point, positioning a main seating and relaxation area here, with a comfortable outdoor sofa and a fire pit to gather round, allows you and your family and guests to enjoy several different views of your backyard – all of which are shorter than if you were sitting at either end of it.

Frame the space with a pergola, add a DIY water feature or choose a wow-factor accent plant that landscape designers love, and the destination seating area becomes even more of a garden focus.

The stunning planting and curved seating area in this design by Tina Worboys is the perfect example of how to create a destination seating area that doubles as a garden feature.

It's a good idea to add a further, smaller destination point at the end of the garden, and perhaps one just outside the house, too. These should be quiet, cosy spaces to linger and relax. Think of a nook where you can get away from it all and enjoy a moment's solitude, a surprise element in your garden design that is slowly revealed.

9. Use Repetition to Pull the Design Together

Repeating planting, colors, shapes or landscaping materials adds cohesion to any garden, but that's a particularly important factor in a long, narrow garden design, especially if you're compartmentalising it into different zones or 'rooms'. Planting with repetition brings harmony, and is a trick that landscape designers use in practically every garden to pull the design together.

Planting with repetition also punctuates the garden, especially if you combine it with the new color rules used by landscape designers when choosing a planting palette. This encourages you to make connections and pause on your journey through the garden, again creating a meandering path rather than a linear one. As garden design tips go, it's a super-easy technique to capitalise on that will add a professional looking finish, too.

Now find out about the key garden trends for 2026 to give your refreshed garden design the edge.

Plants are no different to people: some put the effort in day in, day out with a smile on their face and zero complaints; others require fulltime management if they’re to function at all. And while there’s no escaping the full spectrum of humankind, you can sure fill your garden with low-maintenance plants that thrive on neglect, producing months of cheery flowers with hardly any help from you.

What makes any garden look truly amazing – and makes you look like an awesome gardener, too – is an abundance of flowers. And that doesn’t need to come at the cost of an equally high level of hard work from you. I only grow plants with a magic ratio of maximum blooms in return for minimal effort, and here I'm sharing some of the very easiest flowers to grow. They're all perennials so they’ll reliably return year after year, so you only need plant them once. And they’re all pretty drought tolerant so, while you’ll need to keep them well watered at first, until they grow their roots deep enough into the ground to find their own source of water, long-term they’ll thrive on neglect.

When I say I grow all these plants in my garden, what I should really be saying is that all these plants grow themselves in my garden. Apart from cutting down the old stems and pointing the hosepipe in their direction if there’s a prolonged spell of really hot, dry weather in summer, I very much leave them to their own devices. Do they sulk? Never. Do they keel over and die when I go on holiday? Nope. Can you plant them all now for easy color that'll last into fall? Hell yeah! Welcome to the world of star-performer plants that are perfect for low maintenance gardens and time-poor gardeners…

1. Salvia ‘Caradonna’

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun
• Grows 2 feet high and wide
• Flowers early summer to early fall

Purple is one of the best colors to have in your garden palette. It’s bright without being gaudy and makes the colors of all the flowers around it – blue, pink, yellow, red or orange – appear more vibrant. And Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’ is one of the very best best salvia varieties to bring purple into your borders. As well as violet-blue spires of flowers, its stems are a wonderfully dark purple, and its aromatic foliage grows into a compact mound.

Pollinators adore the nectar-rich flowers, but not as much as landscape designers! And no wonder – this hard-working beauty works in all color palettes and is simple to care for, even by beginner gardeners, yet brings such a modern, stylish vibe to any garden. Deer and rabbits tend to leave it alone, too, so it really is an easy win.

This perennial sage flowers from late spring into summer – and if you trim off the spent flower spikes with a pair of hedge shears, it’ll rebloom all over again. For maximum flowers and the strongest tones, if you like to use color in your garden, just give it a sunny spot with at least 6 hours of sunshine. And the secret to keeping Salvia ‘Caradonna’ performing well for years without much input from you is simply to ensure it has good drainage, easily achieved by mixing soil improver and a handful of grit into the ground when planting.

Salvia 'Caradonna' is available from the Perennial Farm Marketplace Store via Amazon, and is also stocked by Woodies Garden Goods.

2. Geranium ‘Rozanne’

• Zones 5-8
• Full sun or partial shade
• Grows 1-2 feet high and wide
• Flowers May to October

Here’s another purple beauty that brings abundant blooms to your garden for next-to-no effort. Geranium 'Rozanne' grows a profusion of violet-blue blooms veined with purple all through summer and autumn, which pollinators love. The great thing about this hardy cranesbill is that it’ll grow pretty much anywhere, in any soil, as long as it gets a little sun. It puts up with everything the weather can throw at it, too, so this tough cookie is a great way to fill a tricky spot.

But the best thing about Geranium 'Rozanne' is that it doesn’t produce seeds. Being sterile means it puts all its energy into producing flowers from spring to fall, and also doesn’t gift you a gazillion seedlings to pull up in spring.

A perennial, it tends to grow out rather than up, but it’ll happily weave its way through other plants without smothering them. I’ve paired it with ornamental grasses in a front yard bed that gets baked by the sun all morning then is cast into deep shade all afternoon, that I very rarely water (just once so far this summer!). And honestly, it’s effortless. Its informal habit also makes Rozanne one of those easy-breezy plants often used by landscape designers to soften hard landscaping.

Proven Winners Rozanne hardy geraniums are available from Nature Hills.

3. Gaura lindheimeri ‘Whirling Butterflies’

• Zones 5-9
• Full to part sun
• Grows 3-4 feet high and 1-2 feet wide
• Flowers May to October

Here’s a plant that we should all grow more of, because it will flower from spring through fall even if you ignore it entirely! What’s more, pollinators flock to Gaura lindheimeri 'Whirling Butterflies', and its thin stems shift on the slightest breeze, bringing so much movement to any border. I have three plants and while they’re not the main focus of the beds, the white flowers brushed with blush pink add real depth, whirling about just above the main flush of perennial blooms.

The stems naturally form an open, airy shape, so this is a wonderful plant to bring a more romantic, informal vibe to your garden. But be warned, everyone who visits your garden will want to know what it is!

This is another sterile plant, which is why it continually flowers from late spring through fall. Gaura is super-easy to grow, and to take cuttings from, even if you’re a beginner gardener. Because this fabulous variety is relatively uncommon in the US, it sells out quickly. Plants are currently available from RedCrocus via Amazon, and are usually stocked by Woodies Garden Goods. If you’re searching for this plant at your local nursery or online, it’s useful to know that it’s recently been reclassified as Oenothera.

4. Lavender ‘Grosso’

• Zones 5-9
• Full sun
• Grows 2-3 feet high and wide
• Flowers July to September

So many of my neighbors have asked me what I do to grow such big, healthy lavender in my front garden. You see, they think I’m just growing a regular lavender and it’s my green fingers that are making it grow so tall and aromatic. And yes, it’s true that I always give lavender a gravel mulch to get more flowers, but my other secret is that this is Lavender ‘Grosso’.

This hybrid variety is a cross between English lavender and Portuguese lavender, and it produces very large, plump flower spikes on tall stems. Lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso' has a far higher concentration of essential oils – three or four times as much as English lavender – which means it’s incredibly fragrant too, which is why it’s often grown commercially.

The more sun Lavender 'Grosso' gets, the happier it is, and as long as it has well drained soil, it pretty much looks after itself. I occasionally throw the plant a bucket of water at it but more often than not, I forget. Grosso lavender is another sterile plant, so it flowers all summer long, and doesn’t produce any unwanted seedlings. Its nectar-rich flowers are adored by pollinators, too.

Lavender 'Grosso' plants are available from Burpee.

5. Japanese anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’

• Zones 4-8
• Full sun to partial shade
• Grows 3-4 feet high and 1-3 feet wide
• Flowers August to October

Yes, it’s true, a lot of Japanese anemones can be thugs in the garden, but ‘Honorine Jobert’ is perfectly polite and well behaved. It does still spread through underground rhizomes but far less vigorously than most other varieties, and has shallow roots so it’s easy to pull up if it wanders too far. Put it in a spot that doesn’t give it optimum conditions to spread – rich or loose soil – and it’s not any trouble at all.

However, ‘Honorine Jobert’ still has that wonderful wish to live that all Japanese anemones possess, making this perennial very easy to grow. Its elegant petals, a fresh white softened by the faintest touch of pink on their undersides, will refresh a tired, heat-baked garden in late summer, year after year, and continue through fall. I particularly love how the flowers dance on their wiry stems as summer draws to a close and the wind picks up. The buds are perfect little spheres, too, adding to the joy.

While this plant copes fine in full sun, because it prefers consistent moisture, it’s more low-maintenance if you grow it in a partially shady spot. Its fresh green foliage and white fall flowers brighten up the shade a treat, too.

Japanese anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’ plants are available from Woodies Garden Goods.

6. Hardy Sedum Autumn Joy

• Zones 3-9
• Full sun or partial light shade
• Grows 1-2 feet tall and wide
• Flowers August to November

I grow this hard worker in a front-yard bed that I haven’t watered for two years now, and it’s thriving. So, other than cutting back the old stems, which takes about a minute, Sedum Autumn Joy takes up none of my time or effort – but it still puts on a bobby dazzler display. Its flat-topped clusters of star-shaped flowers start a pale pink in late summer, morphing into a rich raspberry then to a copper-red tone over a couple of months, bringing a heap of easy fall color. That’s a lot of flower power already, but if you want even more, you can cut a third of the stems back in May, which gives you two tones of blooms at any one time.

The stems and seedheads of sedum Autumn Joy are really robust, too, so you can leave them standing through winter. Deer and rabbits don’t touch the succulent leaves, which are a vibrant fresh green tone. Bees and butterflies love it, and it’ll grow pretty much anywhere as long as it has good drainage – while it will still grow fine in partial shade, full sun brings super-sturdy stems and the strongest color.

Generally sold as ‘Autumn Joy’, this plant goes by a handful of other names, so if you want to check you’re buying what you think you’re buying, it’s good to know that this hybrid stonecrop’s official name is now Hylotelephium x mottramianum ‘Herbstfeude’. Sedum 'Autumn Joy' plants are available from Nature Hills.

7. Aster ‘Raydons Favorite’

• Zones 3-8
• Full sun to light shade
• Grows 2-3 feet high and wide
• Flowers September to October

All aster varieties generally thrive on neglect, and ‘Raydons Favorite’ is particularly so. A lot of asters grow tall and, while they produce lots of flowers, those sprawling stems can get pretty untidy. Turns out that this aromatic aster is a little different, too, as it’s recently been reclassed as Symphotrichum oblongifolium – and thankfully, it’s a whole lot easier to grow than it is to pronounce.

What I love about this plant is that it peaks just as many other flowers in the garden are starting to fade, and powers through fall in a blaze of lavender daisies with cheery yellow centres. Deer and rabbits dislike its aromatic leaves, yet it’s a valuable source of late-season nectar for pollinators. It forms a neat, bushy mound that doesn’t need staking, and as long as it has good drainage so its roots aren’t sitting in soggy soil all through winter, will reliably return year after year.

Aster ‘Raydons Favorite’ plants are available from Woodies Garden Goods.

It's no coincidence that all these plants are commonly used by landscape designers. While their clients may have the money to pay for a swish garden design, they don't always have much gardening knowledge, so designers often reach for low-maintenance, highly tolerant plants that will survive, no matter what. So the added bonus of adding these hard-working flowering plants to your yard is that they'll bring a designer look without the associated cost.

All these low-maintenance plants can be planted now, and will bring color to your late-summer garden and into fall.

Whatever the size of your backyard, it's time to take a fresh look at the garden color palette you're using. Using color strategically is a staple of good garden design, making the very most of any plot. The right color combination can completely change your garden, making it less chaotic and more considered. So if your backyard feels cramped or cluttered, listen up! These new color rules are the solution you need.

The new color rules for landscape design are moving away from bold, contrasting tones and shifting towards calmer, more curated palettes that feel very modern. These color-based planting solutions work equally well in sunny and shady gardens, and are particularly useful for making a small garden feel bigger and drawing disparate parts of a bigger backyard together.

So, if you're looking for new ideas to make your garden design feel fresh and intentional, and are interested in ways to maximise your space, these modern designer tricks with color will set you on the right path. They're a great way to achieve a designer-look garden for less, and easy to implement yourself. Which new color rule will work best in your yard?

1. Prioritise Greens

We're often guilty of skipping straight past foliage tones to get to flower colors. But get the greens right first, and whatever the rest of your chosen color palette is made up of, your garden will feel calming, immersive, and continuous.

"Green is emerging as the defining color story of 2026," says Kevin Lenhart, landscape architect and design director at Yardzen. "Designers are layering tones from soft sage to deep forest across planting, materials, and furnishings to create depth and cohesion. Pops of color from flowering perennials, containers, and soft furnishings add moments of delight that echo the way color appears in nature: surprising, seasonal, never dominant."

Fabulous foliage was one of the biggest trends at this year's world-famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show. And no wonder, as research shows that exposure to the color green can soothe, heal, and rejuvenate our mental and emotional wellbeing. Make green therapy, also known as ecotherapy or nature therapy, central to your design ideas, and add sense-soothing elements to your garden, and you'll tap into the power of the natural environment to promote wellbeing.

2. Create a Monochromatic Base

A monochromatic color palette uses just one color, but many shades of it so it doesn't become monotonous. For example, if were to choose purple as your base tone, you would use multiple shades from palest lavender to deepest plums. And while it's perfectly possible to create an entire monochromatic color garden using just one tone, most modern designs simply use this rule as a starting point to ensure cohesion.

Designs with a monochromatic base shine in both compact and expansive plots. In an enclosed courtyard garden, the cohesion that using a base tone brings ensures a small area appears uncluttered. In a bigger garden, that base tone ties the various parts of a design together.

Taking advantage of different plant heights, shapes and structures as well as various shades lets you create depth and movement in the planting scheme. You can also use the various shades to create some clever optical illusions, such as planting lighter tones at the edges of borders to make beds seem bigger.

Your paving, fencing and garden furniture should fit into your monochromatic base, or at least have a neutral palette of cool cream and charcoal gray to keep the focus firmly on the plants, rather than opting for bright or warm colors that deflect attention.

3. Color-Drench For Impact

With the basics of your color palette established, it's time to build some highlights to create impactful garden moments. Layering up lots of different plants in the same bold, saturated shade by color drenching is a hugely effective way to make a focal point in your planting. It adds a very modern touch to a garden design, too, especially if the chosen tone extends beyond the planting with cushions, throws, and painted details such as accent walls. You don't need to use this rule across your whole garden, but perhaps color drench one central border, then use another rule to echo that tone elsewhere.

How landscape designers use this rule to garden with color in a contemporary space is far from dull. To add depth and interest to this one-color palette, they use a variety of contrasting flower shapes such as spheres and spires, and textures, too. The current color-drenching tone of choice is purple, which offers a wonderful array of textural blooms to choose from.

Essential Color-Drenching Purple Blooms

4. Chroma Layering to Create the Illusion of Space

Although it might sound like a technical concept, chroma layering is in fact the pretty straightforward practice of using colors of differing intensities to give the illusion of more depth. You can use this with varying colors, placing vibrant tones like orange, yellow and hot pink at the front of a border, and less intense shades like pale blue, white, gray and silver towards the back. You can also use chroma layering with a monochromatic palette, placing bolder, brighter shades at the front and calmer tones at the back.

Whichever, the more intense colors feel closer while the less intense shades appear further away, which has the effect of lengthening the view and making the space feel bigger than it is. As well as making a garden feel more spacious, this also creates a very modern look.

Chroma layering relies heavily on foliage as well as flowers. Darker purple foliage such as Smokebush 'Winecraft Black', available from Nature Hills, can be used at the back of a border, while leaves in a brighter zingy green such as those of Coral Bells 'Lime Marmalade', also available from Nature Hills, are placed towards the front.

5. The 70/30 Harmonious Living Rule

The 70/30 harmonious living rule has been big in interior design for a while now, used as a way of curating a more visually appealing space. Now the idea is shifting outside, and the principle works equally well when using color in a garden. The idea is that 70% of your color (plants and other design elements such as painted fences) forms a calming, harmonious backdrop for the remaining 30% of bright, bold color.

Sticking to this ratio means you can still use bright, impactful colors, while ensuring the garden remains calm, cohesive and considered. Using the 70/30 rule is also a great way to make your money go further, placing a few choice accent plants beloved by landscape designers among less expensive foliage plants.

6. Color Echoing For Continuity

Garden designers love to repeat color, form, or texture through a landscape to provide rhythm and unity. Color is an especially powerful tool when used in different parts of a garden as a linking device to create visual cohesion. This is one of the easiest garden design tips to put into practice, but also one of the most effective. It's known as color echoing, and involves choosing foliage, flowers, hardscaping or garden accessories in colors that mirror each other.

Weaving one color (or all the various shades of it, such as all the tones from deep magenta to palest blush pink) throughout your design leads your eye smoothly through a space, making a garden feel larger and more intentional. In this design, the color of a distinctive purple-leaved beech is picked up and echoed throughout the rest of the garden by dark purple granny bonnets, plum poppies, and Jerusalem Sage 'Amazone'.

Using the same tones in plants that soften hard landscaping is a particularly effective trick that landscape designers use. Another clever pro move is to use foliage for color echoing, as it's a more constant source. Unlike most flowers, foliage holds color all season long, sometimes even year-round. Plus of course, there's such diversity of foliage tone to draw on to play around with color echoing.

7. Color-Matching Tone and Aspect

There's a fine line between cohesion and monotony, so it's important to vary the moments of intensity in any garden design, to create a rhythm. Color matching tone and aspect is one way to achieve this. It involves positioning plants with bright, vibrant, warm colors like orange and yellow in sunny areas, and placing those with cool pastel tones such as white and pale blue in shady areas. You can also use it in conjunction with the monochromatic base rule, using brighter, bolder tones of a color in sunny areas and paler, lighter shades of the same color in shady areas.

This has the effect of creating an airy, open ambience, as the contrasting warm-colored sunny areas will feel further away from the cool-colored shady areas.

Use hardscaping to add to this rule, too. Sun-loving drought-tolerant plants like red hot pokers and gaillardia daisies in a hot, dry area pair well with gravel. In a shady area, a dark mulch will make ferns, hosta and astilbe appear lusher.

8. Color Wheel Asymmetrics For Balance

Modern garden design still pairs tones on opposite sides of the color wheel, but does so in a far more intentional, asymmetric fashion. Using opposite colors such as purple and yellow, blue and orange, or violet and lime green to make both shades appear more vibrant is one of the oldest garden design rules in the book. However, employing an equal level of the contrasting colors means they will all compete for your attention, which can feel overwhelming. For still-bright results with a soothing rather than stressful vibe, the new rule dictates we use an uneven split of 80% of one color and 20% of the other.

The idea behind this ratio is that it lets you create visual tension, depth, and highly intentional focal points, without overwhelming the senses.

Red Flowers to Pop Against Green

Whatever palette you choose, mix and match these new color rules to create a cohesive garden design that looks like it was created by a professional landscaper. Remember that there are many different ways to add more color to any garden, such as clothing a bare wall with a stunning clematis, or painting your patio pots in a shade to match your planting palette. Or how about sowing some pretty groundcover to keep weeds out of your borders, or adding a color-pop patio table?

We’re seeing a huge trend in container ponds this heatwave summer, and no wonder! Floating solar fountains have made it so cheap and easy to create a stylish water feature that brings cooling sound and movement to our too-hot gardens. And now, next-gen solar fountains lit with LEDs are allowing us to take DIY microponds to the next level, with illuminated cascades of water that will pretty-up any patio, looking beautiful at night as well as bringing a cooling soundscape by day.

Making your own micropond with a watertight container and floating fountain is so quick to do, yet the soundscape and soothing water movement can transform a garden, creating a focus to make small gardens feel bigger or adding a pleasing detail to a larger backyard. As container garden ideas go, it’s a winner for sure! Water features you can install yourself without calling in a plumber or electrician are so cost-effective, too. And there are lots of clever ways to get creative with a cheap floating solar fountain, so you can fashion a unique feature bespoke to your garden style.

You can even make a budget water feature planter with a $25 fountain, adding beautiful blooms to the water show!

Not all LED solar fountains are created equal, though, so it’s good to understand a few basics before you start to DIY your cooling cascade of water. Luckily, everything you need to know to get a great result is right here, so you can get cracking and DIY an illuminated water feature this weekend. I've included plenty of product links so you know exactly what I'm talking about, but do support your local retailers too. Here’s exactly what to do, if you want to make a stunning water feature this weekend…

1. Choose a Watertight Container

Any container will work for a DIY water feature, as long as it’s wide enough to contain most of the fountain splashes, though obviously the bigger it is, the less frequently you’ll have to top it up. Containers purpose-made for a garden micropond are often expensive, but there are plenty of more budget-friendly options to try.

Pots intended for succulents don’t usually have a drainage hole, and a wide bowl planter such as this from Amazon makes a stylish alternative at a fraction of the price. It's also worth looking at planters intended for both indoor and outdoor use such as this well-priced half-barrel from Lowes, as they often don't have drainage holes either.

If you’ve already got an old plastic, resin or metal planter then it’s a quick and easy job to seal the drainage hole with a marine silicone sealant like this from Amazon. The same goes for repairing patches of damage on a vintage vessel to make it watertight. Being able to seal drainage holes and seams also opens up the world of resin containers such as this amazing urn that's on sale at Target. Have a hunt around your local hardware store, too: this steel tub from Ace Hardware would make an awesome micropond, as would this utility bucket from Home Depot.

2. Work Out How Powerful Your Solar Water Fountain Needs to Be

A floating fountain is powered by its solar panels and there’s a huge range in terms of quality and capability. The amount of energy the solar panels are capable of generating is measured in watts, which you’ll find in product descriptions as ‘W’ and it’s important to match this, which governs the force and shape of the spray, to the size of the container you're using.

While you want to enjoy a decent water flow and fountain height, it’s also vital to also think about minimizing water loss so you’re not forever having to top up your micropond. Water loss happens when the spray pattern is wider than the container, but also because of wind, so is affected by the height of the fountain, too.

A 1W or 1.5W solar fountain is typically designed to operate in a birdbath so will produce a pretty gentle bubble. If that's what you want, great. But because there are LEDs as well as a water pump to power, an illuminated fountain rated around 3.5W or 4W is best for most patio-sized containers. You’ll also find fountains at 5.5W and 6.5W which suit a larger diameter vessel if you're making a sizeable water feature.