21 Front Yard Landscaping Ideas With Rocks Anyone Can Copy

You have many choices when it comes to designing an inviting front yard to help welcome guests to your home. From lush flower beds to symmetrical garden designs, but a landscaping feature many people may not consider is rocks.

Not only are landscaping rocks a timeless design feature, but they have other pros, too. Adding rocks to your front yard is a low-maintenance landscaping option—no green thumb needed. It's also great for leveling sloped yards.

Below, we share our favorite front yard landscaping ideas with rocks, from large stones and boulders to small, smooth pebbles, that anyone can try in their front yard.

Budget-Friendly Gravel

Gravel is one of the most budget-friendly landscaping materials. Not only does it add texture to a minimalist home exterior but it adds a color on contrast with the plants and trees. There are many types of gravel available, so you can choose one that fits your home's style.

Smooth Pebble Garden Border

A smooth pebble border for your garden is a more visually appealing alternative than brick or plastic edging. Plus, using pebbles makes it easier to adjust the size and shape of your front garden by simply moving the pebbles.

A Desert Front Garden

This front yard is a great example of how you can add a combination of different landscaping rocks to help make your garden stand out. The desert garden features large stones as well as gravel that create the perfect backdrop for succulents and bright color through garden art.

Nothing But Rocks

If you love the idea of a completely maintenance-free garden, landscaping rocks are the way to go. A few large succulents can go a long way when it comes to adding greenery, and garden features like a raised cement garden bed and large boulders add visual appeal and interest without the maintenance.

Rocks Instead of Mulch

At first glance, you may think the landscaping rocks in the plant beds of this front yard are only for visual appeal. But, these rocks are functional as well. Adding rocks to plant beds helps suffocate weeds and keeps topsoil in place.

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Landscaping Rocks for Sloped Yards

A sloped front yard is a great opportunity to create a stunning garden. This sloped yard features boulders to help level the garden while also adding a one-of-a-kind design feature.

A Small Sitting Area

You can still add a place to relax even if your home's front exterior is too small for a porch. The landscaping rocks at this home allow this space to be used as a makeshift porch as well as a garden bed.

A Polished Look

The perfectly manicured lawn of this California home gets some color with small shrubs and succulents and a bubblegum pink door. Landscape rocks make up the garden pathway instead of mulch for a more polished look.

A Seamless Look

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Low maintenance doesn't mean low on style. This home features beautiful concrete pavers that blend seamlessly with the rock garden leading up to the home's front entrance.

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Minimalistic Driveway

From the tall privacy fence to the simple, white exterior, this bungalow features a minimalistic design aesthetic. Landscaping rocks and concrete slabs for the driveway and front entrance stay true to the minimalistic design of the home.

A Breezeway Pathway

This home features a breezeway that leads from the front yard to the backyard. A simple pathway made from landscaping rocks and concrete stepping stones helps tie the two spaces together.

More Rocks, Less Mowing

Landscaping rocks are a great choice if you want to spend less time mowing the lawn and more time enjoying your backyard space. The variety of rocks in this yard add interest and texture and requires minimal gardening, which means more naps on this hammock.

Stone Througout

The stone facade on this contemporary home is carried through to the front garden beds where you'll find small succulents bordering the home. The peach front door adds a splash of color.

Complementary Colors

This front yard features many lush plants from shrubs to matching topiaries. The large walkway up to the front door features landscaping rocks that complement the home's white exterior and light blue front door.

Natural Surroundings

A garden thrives when its an extension of its natural surroundings. This modern cabin on a hillside features large boulders as well as smooth pebble landscaping that blend seamlessly with the natural surroundings.

Natural Landscaping

In the Southwest part of the US, the natural landscaping speaks for itself. This home is surrounded by beautiful, natural stone, from the mound in the backyard to the front yard landscaping.

A Variety of Textures

You see many textures and materials in this home's front exterior, from brick to concrete to lush greenery. For even more texture, landscaping rocks extend beyond the front pathway to help make the small yard feel larger.

A DIY Walkway

Rocks aren't just for gardens and plant beds—they make a great minimalistic front pathway too. Add simple concrete stepping stones to create an easy, budget-friendly home entrance.

Succulents and Landscaping Rocks

Succulents and landscaping rocks go together like peanut butter and jelly. Landscaping rocks and succulents are great options in a desert climate where many plants can't grow.

Simple Landscape

Take advantage of your surroundings if you live in a beautiful climate. This home's backyard steals the show, so the front yard is kept minimal with some succulents, ladnscaping rocks and a large concrete front pathway.

Easy Curb Appeal

A nontraditional front yard should have a nontraditional garden. This rock garden in front of this home's gate is a maintenance-free way to add curb appeal to your home.

What is the cheapest rock for landscaping?

Pea gravel is one of the cheapest types of landscaping rock available. It costs around $10 per 25 cubic inches. It's a great alternative to mulch because it lasts longer and comes in a variety of colors. It's also a popular option for driveways and high traffic areas because of its smooth texture that's easy to walk or drive on.

Is it better to use mulch or landscaping rocks?

Both mulch and landscaping rocks have their advantages and disadvantages. Landscaping rocks last for years, as opposed to mulch that needs to be replaced every year, which saves money in the long run. Landscaping rocks also come in a variety of shapes, sizes and color, so they can add a lot of curb appeal. They also don't attract pests like mulch does. However, rocks aren't an organic material like mulch, so they don't aid in plant growth, and rocks can overheat your plants and require more watering.

Do you need to put anything under landscaping rocks?

Before laying rocks down, add a layer of landscaping fabric or newspaper. This prevents weeds from growing between the rocks, and it's easier to lift the fabric to remove the rocks than dig them up.

Bay Area Landscape Architect Aims To 'get People Outdoors,' Create Spaces For Gathering

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way we look at outdoor spaces. No longer simple amenities, they have become essential as people gather more outdoors for work, school and leisure.

Casey Case, a longtime landscape architect and president of Walnut Creek's Gates & Associates, has always felt that way. Her firm's mission is simple: "to get people outside."

"Especially in California, there's all this square footage that we don't always take advantage of," she said. "When we work with a school campus, or even a corporate campus, one of the first things we ask is 'What's some of the programming that happens inside that you might be able to do outside?' "

Case said her firm, which has designed a wide range of projects throughout the Bay Area, aims to "pull people outside" and nourish their connection to nature while considering the user's needs and the space itself. That includes at corporate campuses where some conference rooms are moving outside, and schools, which have expanded their outdoor spaces for learning. "We really like expanding that footprint of usable space," she said.

The 25-member firm specializes in urban design, landscape architecture, master planning and place-making, working for public agencies and private businesses as well as developers.

We caught up with Case recently to talk about how landscape architecture has changed, how she approaches her work, what projects she is working on and more. The answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Have you always been interested in landscape architecture?

A: Gates & Associates was founded by my parents in 1977. I majored in landscape design and minored in horticulture at UC Davis. I was really interested, not only in design and how humans experience space, but also in the trees and plants – how do you bring these plants into a design setting or something that's maybe a little more urban? I was interested in urban canopy and ornamental plants and what's their relationship with natives and how they can work together.

Q: What was your first job and why did you later join your parents' firm? 

A: I wanted people to know I'm not only here because of growing up in the business, I'm also qualified to be a professional elsewhere. And ultimately, I'm so glad that I did first work at HLA Group because I got to see the way another business ran and was exposed to their design style — and it's also where I met my husband.

Q: How did the pandemic change the way we look at outdoor spaces?

A: Habits have changed. I think our relationships with outdoor spaces have changed. There was so much more emphasis on using community outdoor spaces, and probably because we're all working from our living rooms or dining room tables, we needed to have somewhere else to go. … There have always been people walking and using parks, but it felt like this need to be outside of our home was really intensified. I think people were refocusing their energy on some of our outdoor amenities. It's incredible because they're an extension of what we have; we should be using them to their fullest and make sure that they are well-maintained and safe. We're working with Palo Alto, which is doing several studies of their downtown, but the one we're participating in is a feasibility study for different treatments of University Avenue. …They want to make sure that they're adapting and continuing to give it the best environment for their community.

Q: How do you energize a space?

A: It's with people, so can you give them something to do — that might be drinking coffee, that might be doing an exercise class. Whatever it is, the people are theater.

Q: What changes came out of the pandemic for your business?

A: The awesome thing that came out of it was suddenly, this profession that I've known about — and obviously being so involved in forever — is now something people know about. And for us, our recruiting was impacted by people needing to live in a more immediate proximity (to work). By moving to Walnut Creek, it allowed us some accessibility via BART.

Q: How do you approach a project?

A: I think where we start off is just a lot of listening. We want to understand what's the problem we're trying to solve. What is something we're trying to make better? We really like to think of ourselves as problem-solvers. One of the things that I think is really cool about Gates is because we do streetscapes and schools and planning and multifamily common spaces, I think they really inform each other and allow us to approach the design portion or the solution portion with a lot of ideas. So that's when we come in and say here are some creative ways we think we can do it, and we're not just like throwing spaghetti at a wall. We're being really thoughtful, based on what we've heard from the community. It's this opportunity for us to balance our design expertise and our project experience with what I like to think of as the end user. So it's not necessarily just our client, because our client might be the developer, but the end user is the person who's going to live in that space or the teacher who's using that school.

Q: Do you have a certain style in your designs?

A: I think what's cool is we don't necessarily have a style, because it's so important for us to be that valued member of the team and to be really responsive to what the project needs to be. We're not going to take our look and feel and plop it on something and force that. For example, Stoneridge Creek (a retirement community in Pleasanton), which was just very intricate and detailed and cool and a little bit fussy because we had found from our conversations with the community and some of the clients that they want it to feel like their garden. So, tea roses and koi ponds, and that's not something we might typically do in a commercial setting.

Q: What are some other projects you have worked on?

A: We are working with Pittsburg to create a new skatepark and pump track at City Park, and also on the Railroad Avenue Beautification Project, which includes gateway signage, creating pedestrian-friendly spaces, and on the Frontage Road Living Green Trail Project to create a multi-use trail with many amenities. San Leandro has a waterfront project that we have been working on for them for quite some time. They have property that's an existing marina and they want to decommission that and reprogram that space to provide more park amenities. It's really cool because it brings in new conversations about connections to nature, integrating education into a space so it can be a destination where in the future schools could take field trips there and learn about oyster beds or whatever might be uniquely happening there. In Walnut Creek, we worked on a multifamily housing development that is right downtown a few blocks from our office at 130 N. California Blvd. They (the developer) took an old McDonald's drive-thru site and for this high, vertical multifamily element that's a block off of what's the downtown core. It's really playing up this opportunity to have more higher-density living. It has a roof deck element and a (raised) courtyard podium that's about halfway up the building structure.

Q: Will outdoor spaces continue to remain important?

A: I do think that outdoor spaces will remain important. … (Because of the pandemic) our relationships with outdoor spaces changed to the point where we care and we feel more informed about what they could be and what they should be.

"I think what we'll continue to see is just more thoughtfulness on making sure we're integrating plants and trees and more natural processes into our like manmade landscapes. I think that there are more trends like pushing toward permaculture or celebrating some of these stormwater treatment things as opposed to putting them underground and hidden. It's to really understand that we exist here with these natural processes, not in spite of them.

CASEY CASEAge: 36Job title: president of Gates & AssociatesResidence: Walnut CreekHometown: Danville

5 FUN FACTS ABOUT CASEY CASE1. She has chickens, two dogs and a newt.2. She's obsessed with houseplants. "We're slowly being taken over by plants."3. She loves to sing.4. She is married with two daughters, 5 and 8, who have also "caught the singing bug."5. Case said she tries to be "thoughtful in everything I do, and pay attention to what I'm doing."

Sustainable Landscape Rating System To Be Tested

The University of California, Merced, will be one of the first landscapes to participate in the Sustainable Sites Initiative, taking part in a pilot program to test the nation's first rating system for green landscape design, construction and maintenance.

UC Merced will join more than 150 other projects from 34 states as well as Canada, Iceland and Spain as part of the international pilot project program, which will evaluate the new rating system for sustainable landscapes both with and without buildings.

"We are honored to have UC Merced participate in the pilot program of what is sure to become a valuable resource in determining the effectiveness of sustainability efforts in landscaping," said Thomas Lollini, FAIA, associate vice chancellor for physical planning, design and construction. "The university has set new standards for sustainability in building design and construction and will remain dedicated to preserving our environmental resources in any way we can."

Sustainable landscapes can clean water, reduce pollution and restore habitats, while providing significant economic and social benefits to land owners and municipalities. For example, shade provided by landscaping can be used to cool buildings during warmer months, reducing the amount of energy needed for cooling.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative — founded in 2005 as a partnership of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and the United States Botanic Garden — selected UC Merced based on its extensive environmentally friendly elements.

For example, UC Merced is the only university in the country to have all of its buildings LEED-certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, and it has set a minimum standard of LEED Gold or better for all new buildings. In addition, UC Merced has made the ambitious "Triple Zero Commitment" to produce as much energy as is used, eliminate landfill waste and produce zero net greenhouse gas emissions, all by 2020.

UC Merced will use its planned Science and Engineering 2 building as the template for the pilot project. Like the other pilot projects, the site will help officials evaluate how practical and effective a tool the point system is for determining different levels of site sustainability. The 250-point scale evaluates landscaping in terms of site selection, water use, soil and vegetation, choice of materials and other factors in accordance with the group's Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009.

In the pilot program, UC Merced joins landscaping projects like the Smithsonian Institution's African American History and Culture museum and a New Orleans project to absorb storm water on the streets of the Lower Ninth Ward that were flooded during Hurricane Katrina. The program also includes corporate campuses, public parks with hundreds of acres, transportation corridors, and private residences of less than 1 acre.

The initiative will use feedback from UC Merced and the other selected projects during the pilot phase, which runs through June 2012, to revise the final rating system and reference guide by early 2013. The U.S. Green Building Council, a stakeholder in the Sustainable Sites Initiative, anticipates incorporating the guidelines and performance benchmarks into future iterations of its LEED Green Building Rating System.

UC Merced opened Sept. 5, 2005, as the 10th campus in the University of California system and the first American research university of the 21st century. The campus significantly expands access to the UC system for students throughout the state, with a special mission to increase college-going rates among students in the San Joaquin Valley. It also serves as a major base of advanced research and as a stimulus to economic growth and diversification throughout the region. Situated near Yosemite National Park, the university is expected to grow rapidly, topping out at about 25,000 students within 30 years.

Provided by University of California, Merced

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