How to Make Your Driveway Part of Your Garden
Spruce up the borders along your drive to create a welcoming arrival to your home
Lauren Dunec Hoang
May 25, 2017
Houzz Editor; landscape designer and former garden editor for Sunset Magazine and in-house designer for Sunset's Editorial Test Garden. Her garden designs have been featured in the Sunset Western Garden Book of Landscaping, Sunset Western Garden Book of Easy-Care Plantings (cover), Inhabitat, and POPSUGAR.
Houzz Editor; landscape designer and former garden editor for Sunset Magazine and... More
The often-overlooked planting area running alongside the driveway can provide an opportunity to increase your home’s curb appeal and help tie in a paved area to the rest of the landscape. Browse these nine ideas for driveway plantings of all styles, shapes and sizes, whether you’re looking for neat and tidy trimmed hedges or abundant colorful flowers.
1. Colorful slope. Sloped gardens can be tricky to plant, sloped driveways even more so. Decrease runoff and soil-shifting from beds to the driveway by running a low rock wall a few feet back from the driveway down its length. This sloped planting in Oregon proves just how stunning a driveway strip can be.
Layers of foliage — including burgundy Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), silver lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina), wispy Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) and chartreuse spurge (Euphorbia characias) — and cool-toned blooms, such as globe allium and catmint (Nepeta sp.), create a tapestry of color. Bonus: The planting is pollinator-friendly and deer-resistant.
Layers of foliage — including burgundy Japanese maple (Acer palmatum), silver lamb’s ears (Stachys byzantina), wispy Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) and chartreuse spurge (Euphorbia characias) — and cool-toned blooms, such as globe allium and catmint (Nepeta sp.), create a tapestry of color. Bonus: The planting is pollinator-friendly and deer-resistant.
2. Stately elegance. Welcome guests with a grand, formal driveway bordered by a classic planting combination of evergreens and white roses (such as Rosa ‘Iceberg’). On the Santa Barbara, California, estate seen here, this approach skews Mediterranean with olive trees, oaks and Italian cypresses as well as white-flowering shrub roses and geraniums (Geranium ‘Rozanne’). East Coast gardeners can swap the olives and Italian cypresses for cherry laurels (Prunus laurocerasus), magnolias and boxwood topiaries.
3. Clean and green. Layer all-green foliage plants for a driveway planting that looks lush and inviting and requires less maintenance than flowering perennials. This driveway planting in front of an Illinois home looks subdued now, but come fall, the bald cypresses (Taxodium distichum) will turn a rich golden amber before losing their needle-like foliage. Yes, it takes a bit of effort to sweep up the needles, but this annual chore is well worth it for the fall show.
For even less maintenance, plant driveways with evergreen hedges like arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) and pittosporum.
See more evergreen hedges that add garden structure
For even less maintenance, plant driveways with evergreen hedges like arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis), cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) and pittosporum.
See more evergreen hedges that add garden structure
4. Colorful cottage garden. For driveways that take up a good-size chunk of the front yard, consider paving materials that feel less like a means from getting from here to there and more like a part of the landscape. Similarly, plantings alongside the driveway should be chosen to look less utilitarian and more like a garden.
For example, this gravel driveway in New England doubles as an entry courtyard and provides an attractive complement to overflowing cottage-style beds. Bursting with colorful roses, purple-flowering catmint (Nepeta sp.), chartreuse lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) and spikes of delphinium, this planting falls squarely into the category of romantic cottage garden rather than being simply a driveway border.
How to Create a Cottage-Style Garden
For example, this gravel driveway in New England doubles as an entry courtyard and provides an attractive complement to overflowing cottage-style beds. Bursting with colorful roses, purple-flowering catmint (Nepeta sp.), chartreuse lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) and spikes of delphinium, this planting falls squarely into the category of romantic cottage garden rather than being simply a driveway border.
How to Create a Cottage-Style Garden
5. Alternating border. This Houston entryway checks all the right boxes for driveway plantings: stylish, easy-care and in keeping with the home’s architecture. The neat row of white-flowering crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) trees and potted boxwoods breaks up what could feel like a hardscape corridor. Both the repetition and the height variation between the tree canopies and knee-high pots make this design particularly effective.
Maintenance-wise, boxwoods like these would need a bimonthly shearing to keep them in little balls, and the crape myrtles would require a semiannual pruning to keep them under 15 feet tall.
See more plants to grow in pots
Maintenance-wise, boxwoods like these would need a bimonthly shearing to keep them in little balls, and the crape myrtles would require a semiannual pruning to keep them under 15 feet tall.
See more plants to grow in pots
6. Minimalist. Keep things simple with a single variety of plant — this could be an evergreen shrub, an ornamental grass or a striking cactus, depending on your climate and preference — planted en masse along the length of the driveway.
Reducing the range of color highlights the plant’s form as an architectural landscape feature. This can work well with clean-lined, contemporary architectural styles as well as more traditional homes.
Reducing the range of color highlights the plant’s form as an architectural landscape feature. This can work well with clean-lined, contemporary architectural styles as well as more traditional homes.
7. Long approach. Use long, meandering driveways to create an interesting journey and a sense of arrival to the home. For example, this sweeping drive feels almost more like a stroll through a park than a trip from point A to point B, thanks to the varied plantings, short stone walls and canopy trees. To get the look, break up expanses of lawn or other open space with planting vignettes featuring an interesting mix of leafy evergreens, bright, variegated foliage (such as hosta) and colorful accents.
8. Short but sweet. Even postage-stamp-size driveways provide the opportunity to make a design statement with plantings. If there’s little room for border plantings, swap out some of the paved areas with walkable ground covers, leaving the load-bearing wheel tracks as hardscape. A few ground covers to consider: creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum), Jenny’s stonecrop (Sedum reflexum) and silver carpet (Dymondia margaretae).
10 Top Ground Covers for Your Garden
10 Top Ground Covers for Your Garden
9. Informal meadow garden. Bordering a gravel driveway in Vancouver, this meadow-like planting of ornamental grasses and pollinator-attracting flowers forms a natural, informal entrance. To mimic this look, choose billowing grasses, like ‘Blonde Ambition’ blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition’), and mixed flowering perennials, such as coneflower (Echinacea spp.), black-eyed Susan (Rudbekia hirta) and ‘Autumn Joy’ stonecrop (Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’). Plant them in a free-form arrangement, some inside defined planting beds, some outside and allowed to spill over the driveway edge.
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Here's an issue not covered: How to border your driveway if the border has to stand up to huge mounds of snow plowed up over the winter in a place like suburban Cleveland, Ohio.
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