17 Inspiring New Driveway Landscaping Ideas [2022]

Ever look at houses in magazines and wonder how they get their impressive curb appeal?

Many homeowners believe that picture-perfect houses require major editing to look beautiful. In actuality, anyone can make their driveway look gorgeous by applying new landscaping design ideas.

There are several easy-to-install, low-space features that give a driveway eye-catching appeal.

With that in mind, here are 17 inspiring new landscaping driveway ideas to spice up your home!

1. Marble Fountains

Nothing catches an eye like a water feature. Marble fountains are one of the oldest landscape features for driveway curb appeal.

A classic marble fountain gives your driveway a tranquil, classic aesthetic that’s reminiscent of old, grand homes from another era. Meanwhile, modernized marble fountains are geometric, giving your garden an artsy, contemporary feel.

Driveway Fountain Tips

Deciding where to place your marble fountain is one of the most important parts of the process. Ideally, you should have a specific location in mind before deciding where you’ll put your fountain and choose or customize it based on the surrounding area.

Common placements include:

• The center of your circular driveway
• Against a garden wall
• In a leveled spot on the front lawn

These can also be great compliments to already-existing water features, such as fish or frog ponds.

2. Seating

Nothing says home like having a place to sit down, so why not include it in the front of your house?

Too often, we reserve seating for the back of a property, missing out on the creative driveway landscaping ideas and opportunities to make your home look warm and inviting from the front. Plus, having a space to sit, such as a nice marble bench, gives you the opportunity to interact more with nature and your family.

Driveway Seating Must-Knows

If you have a large enough front porch, consider placing a cozy rocking chair or two by the doorway. Alternatively, furniture surrounded by greenery in the garden will give your sitting area a relaxing, natural feel.

Be sure to add fun pillows and accessories to your sitting area that complement the main colors of your house!

3. Stone Pathway

The art of visual design relies on a set of elements, and one of the most fundamental of the bunch is the element of line. A stone pathway makes use of this element by directing the eyes towards a desired point, giving your front yard a sense of structure and direction.

Things to Consider For Driveway Stone Pathways

Picking the right stone is crucial. If you’re going for a winding, wavy pathway that snakes through a garden or around the driveway, consider complementing it with round, circular-cut stones. This gives room for a lot of interesting, circle-based driveway landscaping ideas.

Alternatively, sharp-cut square and rectangular stones give homes a simplified, clean look. Paired with a straight-line path and strong color choices, your stone pathway can be a key statement feature in your landscaping design as a low maintenance option.

4. Marble Statues For Your Driveway

Much like fountains, marble statues can be great tools to enforce the ‘feel’ of the home and push its look more strongly in the classic or modern style of your choice. When paired with the right home color and driveway landscape design, a marble statue can be the extra ‘wow’ factor on top of your home’s already beautiful design.

Driveway Statue Tips

Classic marble statues depict serenity by capturing the likeness of people with flowing clothes or hair, so consider adding one to the center of an understated stone garden or driveway to give it extra visual appeal.

You can also place a marble statue in the center of a green garden. Just make sure that the surrounding plants aren’t too high and look well-maintained, so the statue adds class to your curb, not clutter.

5. Redoing Roses

Everyone has seen the retro white picket fence and roses design of classic American suburbia, but why stop there? Roses come in a variety of colors and sizes, so use these beautiful flowers to your advantage in your next landscaping project!

Must-Knows

Instead of keeping these beautiful plants confined to neat bushes bordering your home, try putting them on the fences to give the borders of your driveway a splash of color.

A rose arch across the entrance to your home can give the entrance to your house a delightfully natural, garden-like look.

Care:

Roses are sun-loving plants that require maintenance, so be sure to plant them in areas of your driveway or garden that give them the best chances of success. Keep up with your watering schedule and be sure to prune them when they start to overgrow to avoid the risks of accidental prickling.

6. Topiary Tree Tie-ins

Topiary trees have become one of the most popular DIY design ideas in the past few years for a reason. These plants bring simple shape and organization to your house without the extra work of ripping up areas of the lawn or installing major metal structures.

Just find two appropriately sized pots for your yard, gravel driveway, or porch, and the topiary trees will give you plenty of ways to implement creative driveway landscaping ideas in your front yard.

Topiary Tree Tips

It’s important to consider where topiaries will go before buying. Many homeowners make the mistake of thinking that because these trees are potted, they can just place them on the lawn and move them around at random. While true, the optimal size and cut of your topiary will depend greatly on where you decide to place them.

When installing topiaries, be sure to get them in pairs. The genius of these trees lies in their symmetry and ability to create balance in a front yard and it’s overall design. Whether you buy two or ten, be sure to get them in even numbers.

7. Cactus Borders

Live in a dry climate? Or, are you looking for ways to spice up your front yard and garden without the touch-and-go seasonal worries of planting flowers? Lovely, low maintenance cacti have come to help.

You can lay out a cacti border the exact same way you’d lay out a seasonal flower border, but replace the flowers with small, green succulents. In between each installment, feel free to add rocks or colorful succulents for a cleaner finish.

Things to Consider

If you have the space for it, you can even add a cactus border to an already existing garden beside your driveway, giving it a desert-like edge that spills into the beautiful greenery of your choice.

Just be sure that the rainfall in your area won’t over-hydrate and damage the succulent plants. Follow local planting guidelines for more details.

8. Add A Kitchen Garden

Recently, trends in home design have moved from the typical requirements of beautiful looks at any cost to focus on sustainability.

While gigantic, green lawns always have an impressive look, many homebuyers are looking to put their space to use, and one of the best ways to do that is by creating a kitchen garden.

Must-Knows

Kitchen Gardens give you a lot of creative freedom in your landscaping design. You can focus on big, bountiful fruits and vegetables like tomatoes and watermelon, or simply create an herb garden.

Whatever foods you choose to install, make sure they comply with your homeowner’s association rules.

9. Driveway Lighting

If you’ve ever gone light-seeing during the holidays, you understand how lighting can turn a regular front yard into a visual treasure.

While we don’t suggest keeping your blow-up reindeer and twinkle lights up all year round, some tasteful lighting can give a front yard some much-needed visual appeal at night.

Driveway Lighting Tips

A lot of driveway landscaping ideas include lighting. Small, square lights sticking up from the ground can give your home a modern edge.

Miniature lantern-style lights can give it a warm and welcoming feel.

10. Divine Vines

Vines have been a part of driveway landscaping for centuries, and it’s easy to understand why. These plants’ colors can give any front yard or driveway landscape a more natural, luscious look. Combined with their vertical capabilities, a few well-placed vines can drastically shift the look of a home.

Must-Knows

Place a vine or two around any column or pillar flanking the entrance to your house. Place hanging vines at the edges of your garden to give it a musical, magical appeal.

Even adding them to the entrance to your backyard will make the entire house pop.

11. Stone Curb Borders

Have you driven over your sprinkler head twice this week? Ruined part of your lawn or garden by pulling out too far in the driveway? If so, it’s definitely time to embrace some new ideas and install a stone curb border.

These structures serve a double function of making your home look neater by sectioning off the area between your driveway and lawn, while also giving you a gentle border to stop any potential accidents.

Helpful Tips

A new stone border can be evenly cut and raised like a curb, adding to the organized look of your space.

It’s also fairly easy to install regular stone borders in your front yard, which serve the same purpose but in a slightly more natural style.

Consider the outlook of your home to decide which one works best for you.

12. Color Pop Plants For Your Driveway

If you live in an apartment or subdivision with cookie-cutter houses, it can be difficult to find ways to individualize that fit the area management’s standards. Thankfully, most buildings and neighborhoods allow some types of flowers in the front yard, and they can be a great addition to any home.

Much like the basic design elements, principles of design help focus the eye and simplify the image into easily perceivable points. Brightly colored plants take advantage of Contrast, the most noticeable of the design principal ideas.

Things to Consider

You can apply color-popping plants to your living space in one of two ways.

First, you could decide on a single, bright contrast color, and plant flowers in that shade across the garden, leaving the rest in the dominant color; usually green or black.

You can also pick a single section of your garden that you want people to focus on and plant a lot of different, bright-colored flowers and plants there, then leave the rest in more basic colors.

13. Embrace the Power of Pebbles

Small stones are incredible tools for driveway landscaping. If you’ve never seen a front yard with a rock garden before, they have an impeccable ability to look clean and contained in a way that many plant-filled gardens just can’t.

Replacing green plants of your landscaping design means that you get the benefit of an uncluttered home design with a fraction of the upkeep. This saves water while following current trends. In fact, many popular Mediterranean design ideas tend to use stones for this purpose.

Must-Knows 

When choosing pebbles for your front yard or driveway design, choose ones that complement the color of your home. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is having a rock garden that looks fantastic in isolation but feels like it belongs to an entirely different driveway thanks to its color choice.

Be sure to have the design ideas for your rock garden laid out before you start putting it together. Draw out the shapes and colors you want to use before laying them out to keep things looking clean.

14. Bin Stores Galore

One thing you almost never see in magazine house photos are trash bins. They look cheap and stick out, but you’ll have them in front of your house at least one day every week, and longer if you recycle (or forget).

Modern design ideas include nice-looking trash bin storage in your yard that matches your house’s wood or stone finish to keep these sore sights from damaging your driveway’s overall look.

15. Pave the Apron

Last but not least, consider paving the apron of your driveway to truly give it a new, refinished look. An asphalt or gravel driveway can be fine on its own, but if you really want to give your curb a makeover, this will make it look completely new.

Helpful Insights

Apron paving complements other driveway landscaping design ideas, so choose something that ties your normal driveway design ideas in with the rest of your home!

Final Thoughts

Getting a magazine-ready driveway doesn’t have to involve editing magic. Just adding a few creative ideas to your landscaping can give it a new look that brightens your home.

Consider using any of these landscaping ideas to spice up your driveway!