Want to upgrade your home’s landscaping design? Try a DIY landscaping project! Whether you’re a beginner landscaper or looking for new ways to revamp your yard’s aesthetic, these 25 simple DIY landscape ideas can make your home stand out and help improve your curb appeal!
When planting flowers and shrubs around your home, don’t be afraid to play with levels! Staggering the heights of your landscaping can improve your yard design by adding visual depth. Try placing taller plants toward the back and smaller ones in the front to achieve a layered landscape design. Need ideas for plants to help differentiate the layers in your yard? Try peonies, boxwood shrubs, and hostas, all of which can provide a fuller look! Contrast with texture to your layered garden and mix with sparser plants like coneflowers, Russian sage, or salvia.
Need new mulch for your tree edges or flower beds? Fortunately, creating mulch isn’t a difficult process! Save time and money by making DIY garden mulch from natural materials already lying around your yard, such as lawn clippings and tree branches. Building a DIY composting bin is another great way to gather organic materials for making mulch. While adding mulch to your landscape may not be an adventure, it’s essential for keeping plants healthy by retaining moisture, regulating soil temperature, suppressing weed growth, and adding nutrients back into the soil after each winter.
If you’re struggling with soil erosion in your yard, a DIY retaining wall can help! Retaining walls give the soil a firm foundation to rest on and can prevent your yard from thinning down from heavy rain. When building a retaining wall, use interlocking blocks—this keeps the wall sturdy! Be sure to use backfill, drain piping, or filter fabric to assist with drainage and maintain a healthy lawn. If you’re not sure where to start, there are plenty of online resources to guide you on how to build a retaining wall.
Add style and structure to your home’s front yard landscape with a DIY walkway! This is an easy way to boost curb appeal and enhance accessibility for visitors. Design an eye-catching path with pavers or use gravel for a simple, budget-friendly front yard walkway. Create a mulch walkway with wood chips, cypress bark, and rubber mulch, and add a row of stones to turn it into an attractive stepping stone walkway. You can also repurpose brick, stone, and other materials for a DIY traditional walkway.
Looking to add a small but modern touch to your home that showcases a bit of personality? Adding a DIY house number sign is a great way to incorporate an upgraded look and unique style for your home. With so many options for house number sign ideas, choose materials and styles that complement your home’s aesthetic—such as a wooden or metal sign, neutral or bright colors, or one with a herringbone pattern.
Window flower boxes offer a range of aesthetic and practical benefits. Because plants are natural air purifiers, a DIY window box can improve air quality while also boosting curb appeal. Plus, window planter boxes give you extra space for flowers and can add depth and scale to the first impression of your home. Consider coordinating the colors of flowers you choose for your box with your home to help create a cohesive look. You can even use artificial flowers for a window box display that lasts all year long!
Searching for fencing alternatives for your yard? Get more privacy in your backyard by planting large evergreen trees like Italian cypress and Japanese yew or even tall shrubs around the borders of your landscape! These plants provide an additional layer of texture to your backyard landscape design while doubling as an attractive alternative to privacy fencing. There are even options like artificial hedges that require less-intensive DIY installation and upkeep!
Self-contained, disappearing, spouting—there are so many different ways to landscape with water fountains! Have old flower pots or ceramic bowls you’re not using? Repurpose them to easily create a DIY fountain in a pot. Assemble one of the many outdoor fountain kits available for purchase. Plus, water fountains can also be used as DIY birdbaths if you want to attract more wildlife to your yard.
If you enjoy the sound of flowing water and you love a bit of a challenge when it comes to backyard landscaping projects, consider creating a DIY backyard waterfall with a stream! Not only do waterfalls create a relaxing ambiance, but they also help improve air quality. All you need is gravel, stones, and a heavy-duty pump to make this vision come to life. Best of all, you can customize this DIY outdoor water feature to be as simple or intricate as you want!
You can design a DIY pond built into other water features or one that stands alone in your yard. Like a backyard waterfall, this landscape project can be as small or as big as you desire, and there are several types of garden pond designs to choose from. Dig a good-sized hole for your DIY koi pond or garden pond, and be sure to use ground liners, rocks, and pumps to keep water flowing!
Dry streams are great for directing or collecting rainwater runoff and make for an eye-catching addition to your yard. This simple DIY landscape idea makes it appear as though there was once a stream running through your yard. Building a dry stream bed is as simple as digging a trench, lining it with landscape fabric, and filling it with gravel, rocks, and stones.
Don’t forget about landscape lighting! There are several ways you can add DIY outdoor lights to your yard. Some backyard lighting ideas for ground lighting include line lanterns and garden lamps. Opt for hanging lights like string lights, lanterns, or flush lighting on pergolas or gazebos. Incorporate recessed LED riser lights for stairs or elegant footpath lighting. Highlight trees, flowers, and shrubs with front-facing solar spotlights. Or utilize underwater lighting in your homemade water features to really make them stand out!
If you want an outdoor landscape design that requires little to no maintenance, a rock garden is a simple DIY landscaping project for your yard that won’t break a budget. Use a variety of rocks—such as large boulders, small stones, riverbed rocks, and flat stones—to mix up the texture, color, and form of your DIY rock garden. This is also a great way to divert water to sections of grass that need it, especially if you incorporate different angular stone shapes and sizes.
Building a DIY paver patio is an excellent way to landscape your no-grass yard. Whether you use leveling sand and paver gravel or build your patio out of pallets, there are several ways to customize this DIY project to your style. Make your patio into an outdoor kitchen by adding a grill—or opt for an outdoor living room set-up by bringing in some furniture. Spruce up your space by mixing and matching varying designs, sizes, and layouts, and consider implementing other backyard patio ideas to create your outdoor oasis!
Transform your outdoor living area into the ultimate dream backyard by installing a DIY pergola. With a backyard pergola, you can get a striking architectural feature that also provides some protection from the weather—not to mention, you get to dress up the structure with hanging planters, vines, or string lights. For more consistent shade, consider other backyard shade ideas, such as installing a pergola shade cover.
You can DIY outdoor furniture pieces that are useful, modern, and customized to your household with just a few simple tools and materials. Decorate your outdoor living space by turning old tires and rope into an upcycled ottoman or DIY wooden coffee table. Welcome guests to your home with drinks from an outdoor bar cart. Of course, an outdoor living room isn’t complete without seating. Create simple DIY outdoor seating like tree benches and pallet chairs, and try a rustic look by arranging wood boards to craft a DIY Adirondack chair. Use pine wood, nails, and clamps to build garden benches, or go big with a DIY porch swing!
A simple garden landscaping idea—one perfect for those who want to grow a home vegetable garden—is trellis panels! These vertical panels guide plant growth and are essential for saving space—especially when landscaping a small yard. They can also provide barriers to help your yard feel more private. Make harvesting vegetables simple while creating a beautiful foliage wall or arched trellis. Your DIY trellis can be adorned with cedar wood, bamboo, or copper pipes for an added touch.
Bring lasting beauty and joy to your outdoor space by planting perennials like clematis, English lavender, and balloon flowers. Perennial gardens are a low-maintenance landscape idea that help retain soil, prevent erosion, and give your backyard landscape visual interest. By planting perennial flowers yourself, you’ll have full control over the colors, texture, and overall look of your landscaping and how it complements your other outdoor features. Plus, they’ll come back year after year!
Building a berm (a rounded mound of soil in landscaping) is a great way to add height to a flat or dull area in your outdoor space. It can even help trees retain water around their roots! If you want to incorporate a DIY berm into your landscape design, use materials like plant debris, sand, or soil to build the mound. Then, cover the berm with mulch or rock to finish the look.
Elevated planter boxes are an unforgettable addition to DIY backyard landscaping. DIY raised garden beds ideally measure roughly 3 to 4 feet wide and anywhere from 6 to 18 inches high, depending on whether you plan to grow leafy greens or fruiting plants. These beds are typically built with common wood, brick, metal, or concrete in a box-like structure. Raised garden beds are great for preventing soil erosion, adding structural support, and maximizing planting space. This landscape idea and garden solution is especially great for planting herbs, peppers, tomatoes, and more.
Have a tree or bush that stands out from the rest of your yard? Use stone, brick, or rock to lay garden edging. Placing a bordered edge around a plant or garden keeps lines crisp and visually appealing, which helps direct the eye to certain areas of your landscape. There are several benefits to laying tree or bush edging, including an aesthetically pleasing flower bed outline, having a natural container for landscaping mulch, and adding elegance to your home!
Xeriscaping is the perfect DIY idea for low-maintenance yards and eco-friendly landscaping projects! While this is more commonly implemented in Southwest landscape design, it can be a great addition to any yard—particularly since it reduces water usage by up to 80%! You only need drought-resistant plants like succulents, pampas grass, or wildflowers to plug into your rock gardens.
Flower pot landscaping is the perfect way to tie together a porch, patio, or walkway—and container gardens can be made up of a variety of different plants. Lavender is fragrant and drought-tolerant, offering a touch of elegance. Low-maintenance herbs like rosemary and thyme are practical for cooking and easy to grow in pots. Petunias bring vibrant colors and a long blooming season, while ferns thrive in shaded areas. There are also various types of ornamental grass, such as fountain grass and Indian grass, which are easy to maintain and add rich textures.
Create a backyard hangout and boost your home value by adding a DIY fire pit! This homey feature provides a space for families and friends to form warm memories. Simply dig a small pit, fill it with gravel, and then stack stone, brick, or pavers around it to finish the look of your outdoor space. Don’t forget to add lawn chairs around your landscaped fire pit so you have a comfy place to sit. There are plenty of backyard fire pit ideas to choose from that match your home!
Top off your DIY landscaping design by creating an upcycled garden with stunning DIY art! Handmade decorations, such as painted rocks, mosaic stepping stones, or other yard art ideas bring unique charm and character to your landscape. Upcycling projects like turning corrugated metal into flowers, reimagining utensils as wind chimes, or making candles from wine bottles saves money while showcasing personality. Making your own yard art allows you to tailor pieces to fit your style and theme, whether rustic, modern, or whimsical!
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