Rock Flower Bed Design For the Front Yard

Rock garden makeovers can transform flower beds into easy to maintain, practical, beautiful outdoor spaces while adding curb appeal to the home. In this post, I share the makeover of our simple rock garden flower bed where the stones were repurposed and reused, how we built the rock garden, what we used, and the final result.

Now that the weather warmed up, we are able to get outside and clean up some of the yard. One part I decided to start with was a flower bed in front of the house. The flower bed faces east so it gets the morning sun but is protected from the hot afternoon heat. The soil was poor and needed to be replenished so we thought it was the perfect time to give it a makeover and turn it into a rock flower bed to make it easy to maintain, practical and beautiful. We also thought it would add a bit of curb appeal to the outdoor space of our home.

Before the makeover the flower bed was full of dead foliage and randomly placed rocks. Unfortunately, our dog likes to dig holes in the flower bed so over time, I’ve had to place rocks in it in order to keep him out. The rock garden redesign was the perfect way to also make it look beautiful.

We started by moving the rocks that were already there onto the lawn. We reused some of them for the new flower bed and re-purposed the rest elsewhere in the yard.

We didn’t have to buy rocks as we live in the country and could pick them ourselves. The flower bed measures 20 x 3 feet and the rock edging ended up being about 1 ft high so we needed about 100 medium stones for the finished product.

We cut back the dead growth on the plants while we were at it. Then, turned over the existing soil with a shovel before adding new topsoil and mixing it in. Around the plants we used a manure mixture for added nutrients.

We lined the rocks so that they fit together quite well and would maintain a relatively level top. We were trying to keep the color of the rocks consistent for the flower bed so it would contrast the color of the house. All of the rocks we used were dark grey or black.

After the edging rocks were in place, they were backfilled with topsoil to level out the flowerbed. The final touch was to add more rocks back on top of the flower bed to tie it all together before giving the plants a good watering!

If you loved this post, make sure to check out my post on how to design a spiral rock garden.