30 Unique Garden Design Ideas You’ll Love

Having a beautiful garden space is such a luxury! It’s a spot that really celebrates nature, feels so calming, and can get all your creative ideas flowing.

I love looking at public gardens for inspiration, but trying to plan one for your own home? It can feel totally overwhelming with all the choices.

Don’t worry! Today, I’m sharing some of my absolute favourite answers. We’ve gathered the best landscaping ideas and unique features to help you create a space that’s filled with nature and really makes an impression.

Garden Pathways

Boxwood Borders

Here’s another way to outline your garden path: using hedges! Boxwood is such a hardy plant and a fantastic choice for a border. But you don’t have to just make straight lines with the walkways.

I love the idea of cultivating them to open up into wider resting areas, just like you see in the picture. The boxwood can then curve to follow that shape, which creates some really lovely geometric interest in the space.

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Grid Path

Pathways are so important for creating movement in the garden. Taking a little time to make these walkways beautiful, not just functional, can really enhance your whole outdoor space.

One idea I love is instead of placing concrete tiles right next to each other, you leave some room between the stones. You can see it below. This gives you a cool grid effect, and it looks so lush when grass fills in the gaps.

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Footpath as Flowerbed

What if you framed your garden paths with as much purpose as your flowerbeds? Creating borders for a walkway really makes attractive tiles pop, especially when the stone is dark and you surround it with white pebbles.

And the best part? You don’t have to mow or fertilize these pathways! That’s a huge win in my book.

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Plant and Stone Pathways

If your stepping stones are leading people through dirt instead of grass, you could try filling the space between them with low-lying plants. It looks so visually stunning even if they spill over onto the stones a bit.

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But plants aren’t your only option for fillers. You can add some rocks to the mix! Pebbles can give off a really modern look. I think this works especially well when you combine them with rectangular tiles and some sprout-like grasses.

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Water Features

Birdbaths and Fountains

You’ve got to remember that water features don’t need to be super fancy to make a big impact. Birdbaths and fountains are just lovely garden additions, especially when you give them prominent placement. For example, a simple layer of polished stones can create the perfect bed for a ground fountain.

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Square Koi Pond

You can reinforce the shape of your pond by planting a delicate boxwood border right around the perimeter. And for an extra special touch, why not add a birdbath or another statuesque piece right in the middle of the water feature? You can see how great that looks in the koi pond image here.

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Tropical Pond

Water features just have such a calming presence in a garden. Figuring out where and how to install one can take a lot of thought and careful planning.

You need to consider the space itself, what kind of plants will be around it, and what’s practical for your budget and time. Below, you can see how a rectangular, contemporary pond looks amazing complementing those lush tropical plants.

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Boxed Pond on a Green

There’s just something so powerfully simple about a boxy pond. I especially love it when it’s surrounded by manicured hedges and a totally flawless green lawn. It’s such a clean, elegant look.

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Garden Greenery

Greenery Meets Color

Here’s a fantastic way to add surprise to a garden: through contrast! Choose some red-leafed plants for variety. Then, surround them with greenery, which will really make their color pop.

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A Garden Green

Lots of yards have at least a little patch of lawn, but only a few elegantly frame the space to call attention to the grass itself.

In this image, a low border of bricks and plants beautifully surrounds the lawn, creating a real “green.” A garden sculpture becomes a stately showpiece in a setting like this.

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Cascading Vegetation

If you’re looking for texture and length, you should add “Silver Falls” dichondra to your garden. It doesn’t just serve as a silvery ground cover; it looks simply irresistible hanging from a tall perch. Who ever said a glittering waterfall had to be liquid?

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Sculpted Shrubs

Trimmed hedges just evoke the magic of an English garden for me. For a little twist on this classic technique, try planting shrubs inside your flowerbeds. Then, you can tame them into sphere-like forms, which gives a contemporary look that is still so full of charm.

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Eye-Catching Trellises

Oh, the beauty of a trellis just filled with vines! While it might be covered with flowers for part of the year, this garden focal point is most often pure green.

You can enhance its verdant appearance by strategically planting a mix of grasses and shrubs in the space around it. The result is a total natural paradise, filled with all kinds of different shades of green!

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Container Gardening

Cinder Block Wall

This DIY project below has to be one of the most unique uses for cinder blocks I’ve ever seen! Stacking these everyday items to make a wall of modern planters results in a total architectural masterpiece.

And filling the holes in the blocks with succulents? That’s just the icing on the cake!

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Rooftop Gardening

We’re ending with the wonder of a rooftop garden! The simplest containers are really effective in a space like this.

For an added touch, you can display your pots and watering cans. These practical details are totally garden-worthy, but they don’t require any weeding or tending!

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Indoor Container Gardening

If a garden in the yard just isn’t possible, don’t forget about indoor plant options! An assortment of attractive container choices and styles makes indoor gardening a total reality.

Interesting vegetation, like the silvery Tillandsia “air plant” you see below, turns potted plants into real conversation pieces.

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If the container is your canvas and the plants are the paints, remember to add variety to your composition! Choose vegetation of different colors and heights.

You can even include nonliving elements like rocks to turn empty pots into interesting plantscapes.

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Matching Containers

The repetition of matching containers can really unify a garden of potted selections. You can choose similar colors and styles for your plants, or for a more minimalist yet powerful approach, go for multiples of the exact same pot.

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Modern Meets Traditional Gardening

Another way to create compelling potted plant arrangements is by mixing the modern with the traditional. For example, you could fill contemporary concrete planters with feminine flowers, like in the container on the left here.

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A reverse of that concept is just as striking! Instead of filling modern pots with conventional blooms, try filling traditional containers, like urns, with modern succulents. It creates such a surprising contrast.

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Garden Seating

Curved Benches

While a bench made from stacked stone is an ideal resting spot, it’s the unique curved shape that really commands attention here.

The surrounding spaces can be just as important as the seating itself, especially when a geometrically pleasing sanctuary like this takes center stage.

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Outdoor Dining

Sometimes seating involves eating! You can make outdoor dining spaces so appealing with clean, flat surfaces, like the slatted furnishings below.

Add some privacy with tall bamboo, and don’t forget the intrigue of sculptural elements!

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Simple Seating

Gardens are such quiet places for contemplation, and nothing promotes that thoughtfulness like a welcoming spot to sit.

Don’t hesitate to keep it simple! A slab of concrete becomes a really modern bench in the image below.

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Tree Trunk Seating

Solid. Natural. Unexpected. There is such power in the sturdy statement of a tree trunk. I especially love this when they’re arranged around a wooden table for group seating options.

I used to have something similar when I went camping as a kid, and it’s just so charming.

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Flower Gardens

Log Border Flowerbed

We usually see stones, concrete, or horizontal wooden beams as flowerbed borders. But what about vertical logs?

Sometimes injecting a bit of the unexpected really delights the senses. The height of this border and the silver-white color of the wood are two eye-catching reasons to give this idea a try!

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Floral Containers

Don’t forget the power of an interesting container. The flowers you see below are an assortment of rich tones, but their careful arrangement is a true work of art.

Surprise yourself with some intentional planting and just watch as your floral sculpture comes to life.

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Remember to add height with tall plants and let some of that greenery spill over the edges. There can be so many levels of detail to your arrangement!

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A Rocky Flower Garden

Speaking of unexpected, the patchy garden pictured below combines low-lying blooms, lush vegetation, and substantial rocks. This creates such a feast for the eyes.

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Terraced Flowerbeds

Colorful blossoms are such a beautiful representation of new life. While planting flowers might seem like second nature, why cultivate a space that looks like every other garden?

You should try terraced flowerbeds, which offer amazing layers of landscaping options. Better yet, mix your blooms with interesting greenery for a modern effect, just like in the image below.

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