A Superb Front Yard Pond Design

This front yard pond design functions well in several garden design ways. The first is to draw your attention to the front door. The second is to create a ton of interest in your garden along the way providing multiple views and points of interest.

To the very top of the picture, you can see some pink flowers and if you look closely, you’ll see the steps are large rocks and appear to be part of the garden design. You’re walking up within the rock work and landscape itself. You’re being part of the landscape rather than just viewing it from a distance.

At one point, you’re even asked to step over the flowing water to continue your journey.

Limitations

The thing you have to realize about this kind of walkway is that while it’s amazingly gorgeous, it has some limitations.

The first is that this kind of rock gets very slippery in the winter.

The second is that people with unsteady footing (due to age or injury) will balk at using this kind of stairway without railings and with somewhat uncertain footing. You’re going to have to design for them as well in an alternate (and equally interesting) entrance.

Plants and Flowers

This is a new planting and construction so it hadn’t matured at the time the garden picture was taken.

In the very foreground, you’ll see grasses have been planted. Low spreading plants to ease the transition from the driveway to the walkway without blocking the view in this front yard pond design.

Evergreens – still small – have been planted on the right; low creeping Chamaecyparis (if memory and small pictures serve me)

A dwarf Alberta Spruce hugs the corner of the building on the left with Heuchera right behind that. The other evergreens are a bit difficult to identify from this picture. The important point is they are weeping forms that will lie down, covering the rock work to allow the flowing water to continue to play the starring role in this unique pond design.

Garden Lighting

Let me also draw your attention to the garden lighting installed along the pathways and under trees to illuminate the walking areas but also to highlight the landscape. This kind of lighting can be solar or 12-volt lighting but this is definitely 12-volt (not the least reason is because it will be shaded part of the day stopping the solar cells from recharging the batteries.

SummaryThis is a very intriguing front yard pond design that’s both gorgeous and functional but presents some accessibility issues for those of us “of a certain age”.