Courtyard Garden Design Ideas and Photos for Townhouses

Small enclosed gardens that feel like rooms — light, reflection, green walls, one strong tree and lighting that makes them work at night. A townhouse courtyard is usually surrounded on three sides, overlooked from above and starved of direct sun for part of the day. Those constraints define the design. Rather than fighting for a lawn or a border, the successful approach treats the courtyard as an interior: a floor, walls, a ceiling of sky or canopy, and furniture arranged as it would be indoors. Light is the resource to manage. Pale paving, light rendered or painted walls and a mirror or polished surface on the darkest elevation bounce daylight into the space and into the rooms behind it. A pond or water bowl adds reflected movement across a shaded wall. Avoid dark paving in a shaded courtyard, because it absorbs the little light there is and makes the space feel like a well. Green has to work vertically. Espaliered citrus or ornamental pear on wires, climbers such as star jasmine or Boston ivy on a stainless mesh, a green wall panel with proper irrigation on the least useful wall, and generous planters rather than small pots that dry out...

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Home Designs

Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick and Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill

Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick, Vertical Cedar Screening and Zinc Roof Sheeting, Espaliered Trees, Box Hedging and Fine-Leaf. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com — Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick, Vertical Cedar Screening and Zinc Roof Sheeting, Espaliered Trees, Box Hedging and Fine-Leaf Groundcover, featuring a Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill Entertaining Area, complemented by Durable Weatherproof Finishes and Low-Maintenance Detailing

Visionary Custom Concept 21 is part of our Home Designs collection — one of 512 large-format widescreen concept visuals in this section. It is presented here at full size so you can study the layout, the planting, the surfaces and the way light falls across the design before you commit to building anything on your own block.

Front yards, backyards, side boundaries and complete house concepts, including the tiny home series. Use this concept as a starting point: note the proportions between built form and greenery, where shade and shelter sit, how paths and paved areas move people through the space, and which materials repeat to hold the whole scheme together.

Every visual on this site is a design idea created for Home Design Photos. Browse the rest of the Home Designs collection, or open the complete image catalogue to see every home, garden, pool, pergola, furniture, lighting and beach house concept in one place.

← Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render and Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace Modern House Design with Rendered White Walls and Shaded Deck, Long Dining Table →

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Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete and Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water

Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete, Spotted Gum Battens and Matte Black Steel Detailing, Mass-Planted Hedging, Feature Palms and Deep Mulched Garden Beds, featuring a Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water Bowl and Garage Screening

Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render and Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace

Low-Line Courtyard Home Design with Textured Off-White Render, Travertine Paving and Smoked Glass Balustrades, Layered Native Planting and a Clipped Buffalo Lawn, featuring a Covered Alfresco Dining Terrace and Built-In Outdoor Kitchen, finished with Sculptural Feature Planting and Inviting

Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete and Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water

Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick and Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill

Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick, Vertical Cedar Screening and Zinc Roof Sheeting, Espaliered Trees, Box Hedging and Fine-Leaf Groundcover, featuring a Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill Entertaining Area, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats and Relaxed

Contemporary Family Home Design with Board-Formed Concrete and Wide Front Entry Court, Feature Water

Architectural Home Design with Limestone Cladding and Poolside Cabana, Sun Deck and Evening Entertaining

Architectural Home Design with Limestone Cladding, Warm Oak Soffits and Slim Charcoal Aluminium Frames, Tropical Foliage, Frangipani and Screening Bamboo, featuring a Poolside Cabana, Sun Deck and Evening Entertaining Zone, balanced by Clean Sightlines, Shaded Retreats and Relaxed Family

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Lawn Alternatives and Ground Cover Design Ideas and Photos

What to use instead of thirsty turf — groundcovers, native grasses, gravel, stepping stone paths and where a small lawn is still worth keeping.

Lawn is the most demanding surface in most gardens: it wants water, feeding, mowing, edging and full sun, and it repays that effort only where people actually walk on it. The intelligent approach is not to abolish lawn but to shrink it to the shape and size that gets used, then replace the leftovers — the shaded strip, the awkward corner, the nature strip, the slope — with something better suited.

Groundcovers do the job where light foot traffic is occasional. Native violet in shade, dichondra for a soft green carpet, myoporum and grevillea prostrate forms on banks, thyme and chamomile in sunny pockets where crushing releases scent, and pigface or succulent mats in coastal heat. Planted at proper density with mulch between while they establish, they knit into a continuous surface within a season or two and need only an occasional trim.

Grasses and gravel handle the rest. Lomandra, dianella, poa and carex in blocks give movement and structure and never need mowing. Decomposed granite or crushed stone with steel edging makes a beautiful, permeable surface for courtyards and paths and drains after a storm in minutes. Stepping stones set into gravel or groundcover give a walkable route without paving the whole area, and they look considered in a way a concrete path rarely does.

Landscape Design design ideas photo from the Lawn Alternatives and Ground Cover Design Ideas and Photos feature. this image created by www.homedesign-photos.com

Keep lawn where it earns its keep — a clean shape for children and dogs, in full sun, with a defined edge and a route around it. Choose a warm season variety suited to the climate, water deeply and rarely, and mow high so roots go deep. A small, healthy, well shaped lawn surrounded by tough planting looks far better in February than a large struggling one, and it costs a fraction of the water and time.

House Design Photos is a HUGE Library Gallery and Directory of Home Design Photos

Courtyard Garden Design Ideas and Photos for Townhouses

Split-Level Modern Home Design with Recycled Brick and Spacious Rear Backyard and BBQ Grill

More Home Designs concepts

Lawn Alternatives and Ground Cover Design Ideas and Photos