Wellesley Cottage Garden Traditional Landscape, Boston

3. What’s your home’s style? The next step is to evaluate your home’s architecture. Look at its style and palette of colors. For fencing you usually want to stay within a home’s theme. Nilsen says the best designs take the home’s style and carry the notion through.Nilsen also sticks with an easy design formula. She says, “Simple home, simple fence; ornate home, ornate fence.” It sounds elementary, but it works.Shown: This white picket fence complements the traditional style of the wood-shingled Cape Cod. Find your home’s style

7. A kitchen garden. More often seen at the rear of a house, a kitchen garden here is proudly displayed in front. While the picket fence is an expected touch in this Cape Cod’s front yard, raised planters add a more contemporary twist. Containers: Naturalyards

Making Even More of the Great OutdoorsAlfresco entertaining and bringing nature inside have been hugely popular ideas in the past year, for obvious reasons. How do designers see this trend, ahem, taking root?“Front gardens!” was the answer from both landscape designer Charlotte Harris, of Harris Bugg Studio, and Nick Searl, from developer Argent, which was responsible for turning London’s King’s Cross into a series of sociable outdoor spaces. “Back gardens are not communal,” Searl said. “We’ve lost our front gardens — by concreting over them — but as soon as we put green space back, the street becomes a community.”Harris said she sees any outdoor space, especially in high-density areas, being turned into something more useful or enjoyable.“This time we’re experiencing now will have a deep and lasting impact,” Harris said, adding that while residential landscaping has previously been seen as a luxury, people are starting to understand its value.Other emerging trends include the use of sustainable and ethical materials, an awareness of wildlife, an emphasis on views, the addition of sheltered areas to keep spaces usable in the rain and an appreciation of quiet seclusion.

Would it be less labor to build this way

Look is fine but gardening in front with all the sun is an interesting idea