Best Shrubs to Grow in Front of House

Add some evergreen shrubs for the front of your house to add some curb appeal today. Many cultivars are available for the front of your house, from flowering shrubs to deciduous shrubs.

So, increase your home’s curb appeal by choosing some of the beautiful shrubs on our list.

Choosing Evergreen Shrubs For Foundation Plantings

The front of your house displays unique qualities and needs some evergreen foliage to match it.

For the back, you can be more relaxed to brighten up the entertaining to activity areas. But for the front yard, you want to create picture-perfect landscaping leading to your main door. For this reason, you want more defined shapes to showy blooms.

Hence, foundation plantings for the front garden are essential to bringing out the home’s walls, borders, and beds. Still, it all depends on the size of your yard, and if it is small, you can still get away with a bed, borders, and some screens softening the front windows to the main entrance.

But how do you choose the right shrubs for your foundation plantings? Here are some easy steps to follow:

Choose an Evergreen Shrub in Proportion With Your Home

The truth is you do not want to end up with huge bushes covering the whole facade but also do not want dwarf shrubs for the front growing flowers. So, for foundation plantings, it helps to choose a medium-sized shrub that is a slow-growing shrub.

Some common shrubs for the front are your low conifers, boxwood shrubs, and rose bushes.

Choose Shrubs With Clear Shapes that do Not Hide Windows

Yes, you want to mix and match the heights of the outdoor plant for the front to display the beauty of your home. These can be round bushes and more. If you want taller bushes, you can add them close to walls and grow shorter ones in front of windows.

Choose Flowering Shrubs Adding Interest Year Round

No one wants their garden to look barren during a winter landscape. Hence, choosing an evergreen shrub mixed with other plants helps. Also, select showy shrubs with colorful flowers and foliage to make the front of your house more attractive.

How to Use Your Shrubs For The Front Yard

• You can use an evergreen shrub to the edge of the front entrance path to make it look beautiful.

• Or grow your shrubs for the front as a hedge to give it privacy.

• Shrubs also work well to delimit areas like at a side entrance or the garage growing low bushes detached from the flower beds and the front lawn.

• You can even plant shrubs in flower beds or at borders to give height and structure to them.

• Lastly, choose your shrubs to match the house’s landscaping and design.

Best Dwarf Varieties And Other Shrubs For The Front of Your House

With an evergreen flowering shrub, you can get a year-round structure. Still, incorporating deciduous shrubs adds exciting texture to colorful blooms. These add visual interest to plantings year long.

So, choose some foundation plants with a long blooming season and add color from late spring to early summer and early fall. Some shrubs that come to mind are your deciduous shrub displaying attractive berries with winter foliage and lush foliage in summer.

Here we have an array of low-maintenance shrubs for the front yard to enhance your home’s entry inviting everyone in.

Several Varieties of Flowering Shrubs For The Front Yard

If you want to make a big impression, then a flowering shrub is eye-catching to have become the focal point to the main entrance. So, here are some of our best ones to choose from.

The Reblooming Rose Shrubs

Rosa spp comprises many varieties that work well as landscaping shrubs. The best part is you can grow them as hedges, create an entire rose garden with enough space, or in containers.

But you do not want tall varieties, and a popular choice is the hybrid tea roses, Floribunda varieties, and your English shrub roses. Roses is a perfect foundation plant growing about 5 feet tall.

The shrubs mentioned above are reblooming varieties that start in late spring to keep flowering through to fall and even in frost. Hence, you have colors and fragrances throughout the seasons.

Still, roses are high maintenance, need full sun exposure, and work well in well-lit open spaces. These shrubs grow well in partial shade in hot climates but are suitable in USDA zones 5 to 9.

Roses also need well-drained soil with organic matter. It needs slightly alkaline to acidic soil with regular watering and constant humidity but not soggy. You can find them available with red, pink, and white flowers.

Hydrangea For Front Yards With Partial Shade

In the Hydrangea spp, you can find different color varieties with large and showy blooms with green foliage. In addition, these shrubs display pastel colors ranging from violet-purple to white flowers.

The evergreen indoor plant can grow tall, while you can find a dwarf shrub under windows. Its dark green leaves display freshness year-round from spring to fall. The dense shrub has a natural round growth habit and a herbaceous yet informal look.

The multi-stemmed shrub grows well in the USDA zones 5 to 9 in the dappled shade of trees but can also grow well in full sun. The blooming time is summer; they can grow up to five feet tall.

The soil requirement is well-drained clay, loam, or sandy soil with a mildly acidic to alkaline pH level. But these house landscaping shrubs do need a fair amount of humidity.

Azalea shrubs and Rhododendron

The Rhododendron spp variety displays spectacular blooms, and your small varieties of Azaleas are perfect. Some flowers have a gorgeous smell, and some favorite colors are available. You find summer blooms in purple, red, oranges, violet, white, and even pink flowers.

The shrub grows dense foliage that is finely textured, covering it until fall and sometimes beyond. You find that most Rhododendrons are evergreen while your Azaleas are deciduous. The ornamental plant grows well in the USDA hardiness zones 5 to 9.

When pruned, you can grow them as a low-growing shrub, but they reach up to six feet tall and thrive in full sun to partial shade. The best soil is humus-rich, drains well, and needs moist soil but not excessive humidity.

English Lavender Is Perfect For The Front Yard

Lavandula Angustifolia is a drought-tolerant sun-loving flowering shrub. You can grow them as foundation plants, beside paths, and as borders. These species grow in a medium size and have an intoxicating fragrance with repeated blooms.

The colors range from lavender, pink, and violet, and the white flowers bloom in late spring to mid-summer, while they can bloom longer in warmer climates. It is a winter gem that has beautiful blooms and remains green year-round.

Another benefit is that it attracts pollinators and fits into any landscaping. Furthermore, it grows well in the USDA zones 5 to 9 with full sun exposure reaching up to four feet tall. The evergreen shrub prefers well-drained soil, and it is rocky soil tolerant.

Rosemary Evergreen Plants

These perennials, known as Rosmarinus officinalis, have many varieties available with loads of benefits. You see beautiful blooms in colder months, making it a great winter gem. The best part is you can use it for cooking, and it repels flies to mosquitoes.

The plant can handle the full sun, and the lilac flowers bloom in spring and winter. Furthermore, these species grow dense, aromatic foliage to liven up any front yard. The finely textured leaves are gorgeous while it has an upright growth.

Still, you can also find them in creeping varieties, like the Rosmarinus officials prostratus, and shaping the shrub is a breeze. It is an excellent choice for foundation planting on pathway sides and looks fabulous in a gravel garden. You can even grow it in containers.

The rosemary shrubs are ideal for growing outdoors in the USDA hardiness zones 8 to 11 and grow up to five feet tall and wide. The shrub thrives in fertile or poor soil but must be well-draining. To add to the benefits, rosemary is salt and drought-tolerant.

Rock Mallow With Dark Green Leaves

The Hibiscus moscheutos is another showy shrub with large colorful flowers to grow in the front yard. The blooms range in different hues, from white to purple, with large petals and dark purple centers on golden stamens.

Still, if you want to add a delicate look to your front garden, the Ballet Slippers, with their light pin magenta and white flowers, are extraordinary yet eye-catching. The light green foliage is lush, but you can find some of these plants with purple foliage.

These shrubs for the front yard make outstanding privacy screens or hedges. The rose mallow is cold-hardy, and you can train them to grow into a small tree with multiple branches.

The plant thrives in USDA zones four to nine, depending on the variety. You can grow them in full sun to partial shade, and they bloom from mid-summer to fall. Depending on your type, the size can range from four to eight feet tall with a spread of six feet.

Suitable soil is a fertile one that drains well, and they prefer a neutral alkaline soil.

Rock Rose is a Fast Growing Shrub

If you want to create a natural-looking front garden bringing a bit of countryside around the home, the Cistus spp is ideal. The blooms have a paper texture with gold and bright yellow centers with purple spots.

You find the shrub blooms magenta, white, and pink flowers with thick foliage with a round growing habit. It makes for an excellent border, hedge, or foundation plant with herbaceous vegetation remaining green.

You can expect long late blooms from these species, which grow well in zones seven to ten in direct sunlight. The stems can reach up to six feet tall and thrive in well-drained soil, drought to salt tolerance.

The Show-Stopping Bottlebrush

For warmer climates, the Callistemon spp variety is ideal. The bottlebrush species are frost tolerant and are woody shrubs to marathon bloomers blooming at different rates throughout the year.

The woody shrub has flowers that look like bottle brushes on the end of the branches in pink, white, or red. It gives your front yard an exotic look, complimented by the glossy green lanceolate leaves.

When rubbed, the leaves have a lemon fragrance, growing in a dense round shape forming a tree. The bottlebrush can thrive in gravel gardens to train as a small shrub. You can place them in the landscape in zones 10 to 11 with direct sunlight to bloom year-round.

The evergreen shrub can grow up to three feet tall and five feet wide, while others can reach up to 20 feet tall. The majority of shrubs prefer well-draining soil, and it is drought tolerant.

The Best Evergreen Shrubs For The Front Garden

Enjoying a green front garden helps to invest in evergreen shrubs to bring life to the structure in the colder months. You can find some slow-growing ones prized for only their foliage and not the blooms.

Bay Laurel Has Glossy Foliage

The Laurus nobilis displays green foliage year-round to provide privacy in the front of your house. These small shrubs are slow growing and also have culinary to medicinal use. Still, it does need a dry climate to thrive.

You can prune the bay laurel into a gorgeous shape, and during spring, it brightens up the landscaping with showy yellow flowers developing into purple-black berries, mostly on female plants.

Another variety you can grow is the cherry laurel which develops bright red berries. The shrub grows well in USDA Hardiness Zones 8b to 1ob in full and partial sun. It can reach up to 40 feet tall, but you can keep them small with some pruning.

The shrub prefers rich, moist soil, but it must drain well, and you can even grow it in sandy soil while it is salt tolerant and ideal for coastal gardens.

Stricta Chinese Juniper

The Juniperus chinensis Stricta is ideal for front gardens where you want greenery all year round. The aquamarine foliage brings visual interest to any yard. The branches remain covered by leaves growing upward to create a vertical accent.

With its natural pyramidal shape, it lifts any landscape, whether grown as an ornamental plant or foundation plant. Another exciting thing is you can find different varieties to display different hues in the garden.

The shrubs are suitable to grow in zones 4 to 9 in direct sunlight, but it does not bloom, reaching up to four feet. Nevertheless, it can grow in most types of soil and does not need a lot of watering.

Red Robin Photina

The Photinia x fraseri Red Robin is a low-growing shrub with warm, passionate colors. You see these low-growing shrubs with older leaves topped with a deep ruby red with shiny younger leaves below.

The two different shades will make you think it has variegated foliage. The plant grows round and is covered with white flowers turning into bright red berries in early spring. It is an adaptable shrub as it trims easily to form a square if you want.

These low-growing shrubs are hardy in zone 7 to 9. Red robin prefers bright light to full shade and bloom in spring in fertile, well-drained soil and can tolerate short periods of drought.

Ferox Argentea English Holly

The Ilex aquifolium Ferox Argentea is another of the best shrubs to have and is a broadleaf evergreen with glossy spiked leaves with a deep dark green shade and butter-cream edges. The leaves are on purple branches, growing in a dense form to create a privacy screen.

To add to the color, white flowers bloom in spring, making way for berries to turn bright red in fall and remain through winter. Hence, many people use foliage as Christmas decorations. The evergreen plant grows well in zones 6 to 10 in bright light to dappled shade.

The plant can reach up to 25 feet, but you can prune it to keep it small. Plant the English Holly in well-drained loam soil with minimal watering and is deer resistant.

Evergreen Shrub For Formal Gardens

The following shrubs you can turn into topiaries to square hedges to become winter gems and colorful displays the rest of the year.

Boxwood Shrubs

Boxus sempervirens is a classic evergreen suitable for formal gardens growing in a dense form. The leaves to stems display in a mid-green shade with oval leaves. The leaves hide the branches to warm a wall making it excellent as a privacy screen. 

You can use it for foundation planting or shape it for ornamental display. Then, as spring arrives, you are gifted with inconspicuous white flowers followed by small fruits looking like capsules. It is perfect for formal design settings in zones 5 to 9.

The boxwood needs direct sun and can thrive in partial to full shade. While the boxwood can grow up to 20 feet, you can maintain its shape by pruning it, and it thrives in soil that drains well. Once it establishes, it can withstand some drought. 

Anglo Japanese Yew

Taxus x media Hicksii are low-growing shrubs you can shape into different forms. The Anglo-Japanese yew is a hybrid between the English and Japanese yew, making it a popular variety to grow as a hedge. 

Another fantastic thing is you can give it a sculptural shape to form a statue if you have the artistic skills and patience. The texture of the foliage is dainty, with soft needles covering the branches.

Unfortunately, it is a high-maintenance plant but worth the while, producing beautiful red cones that add a twist of color to the bush. Even when you leave it to grow naturally, it looks gorgeous. So, with some early pruning of the branches, it helps to thicken them, but it is on the toxic side. 

You can grow the boxwood shrub in zones 4 to 7 in direct sun, complete shade, or even part shade. It can grow up to 20 feet, but pruning maintains its size. It grows best in fertile soil with regular moisture 

Create a Beautiful Shrub Garden in Front of The Home

As you can see, you can pick a few varieties that are best suited for your garden. Yet, you can find many others that even form a ground cover.

When choosing the best shrubs and you have a busy schedule, it helps to select a low-maintenance one to make your gardening a breeze. Choose your beautiful shrubs wisely for your front yard so that all envy your garden.

Another last note is to choose non-invasive species that will not cause havoc in your foundation planting. Happy gardening!