Xeriscape Front Yard Design Tool

See it on a real yard

Your front yard, painted grown

Boulder scale is the thing nobody gets right on paper — a three-foot stone that looks enormous in the yard looks like a pebble from the street, and eight tons is not a delivery you re-do. Painted Acre starts from a photo of your actual house, paints it as a watercolor, and sets the rock and the gravel bands exactly where you place them, at true mature plant sizes — so you can see whether it reads as designed or as a parking lot before the truck backs up the driveway.

This is the starting photo. Upload one of your own and the studio paints it the same way.

Paint my yard

A photo of the front yard today: a thin, patchy, sun-burnt lawn running to the sidewalk

Today — the starting photo

The studio paints this photo, then you draw the basin on the painting.

The dry-garden designer

Set the rock, then the plants

Upload a photo of your front yard, place the boulder groups and gravel bands first, mass the silvers against them, then drag the timeline and see which year the stone stops being the main event.

studio render · the sample plan, year by year

Year 1 20

Year 1 · Rock and bands

studio · set the bones

Set the bones

Drop the boulder groups and drag the gravel bands before a single plant goes in — the studio paints them buried, not perched.

studio · tag the years

Tag the years

Every mass carries the year it goes in — the rock and the anchor sage now, the entry lavender next spring, the juniper carpet when the budget recovers.

studio · check it at mature size

Check it at mature size

Drag the slider to year three and see whether nine russian sage covers the ground or leaves you a gravel lot, then print the plan and the rock order.

Real screenshots of the studio, working on the same sample plan you see on this page.

Open the studio

Year one is rock. Year three is a garden.

A xeriscape runs the opposite way round from a perennial border: it looks most finished the week it is built, then goes quiet while eight tons of gravel slowly gets covered up. Every frame below is the same sample plan rendered by the studio.

Year 1watercolor · rock does the work The rock does the work. The plants are one-gallon dots in a wide gravel field. It already looks finished, and that is the whole reason to buy the boulders first.

Year 2watercolor · last summer with a hose The last summer with a hose. Second and final establishment summer — deep weekly soaks, then the hose is coiled up for good and the catmint doubles.

Year 3watercolor · the masses touch The masses touch. Russian sage hits four feet and the catmint drifts close ranks. This is the year the design reads at full strength — and nothing has been watered since spring.

Year 5watercolor · the gravel disappears The gravel disappears. The juniper carpet has run out over the stone and sedum has filled the boulder joints. First hard shear on the catmint; the flopped middles come back tight.

Year 20watercolor · Lichen on the boulders. Twenty years, one March cutback a season, and a water bill that never noticed the front yard existed.

Structure first: rock, then paths, then plants

Set the boulders and gravel geometry before any plant enters the plan, they are the bones the design hangs on. Odd-numbered boulder groups, partially buried so they look geological, and a gravel palette that picks up your roof color. When the hard structure is right, even a young sparse planting looks intentional.

Mass the silvers and blues

Low-water plants tend to silver, blue, and gray foliage. Mass them the same way you would perennials, in drifts of five or more, and let each mass breathe against the gravel. Russian sage, lavender, catmint, and creeping juniper give four different heights of the same drought-proof palette.

Water only what earns it

A true xeriscape still has one or two moments of luxury, a small high-impact bed near the door on drip irrigation. Zone the yard by water need: the entry bed gets drip, the masses get establishment watering for two summers, the gravel gets nothing, ever.

The rock is the bill. The water is the payback.

This one is front-loaded and there is no honest way around it: killing the lawn and landing the stone is most of the money, and it all lands before anything grows — the plants are the cheap part, and one-gallon pots catch a five-gallon within two seasons anyway. What you buy with it is a front yard with no mower, no sprinkler zone, and no replanting, which is why the conversion generally squares up in three to six years in a dry-summer market. If the whole number is too big, split the yard at the walk and do one side this year; the boulders are set in groups, so half a plan still reads as a plan. A year-by-year sheet with the rock order and the plant counts, ready to hand a stone yard, is exactly what the printable Painted Acre report gives you.

The xeriscape plan · Zone 7a · 620 sq ft front yard

Year 1

Sod out, rock in

Boulders × 72–3 ft · three groups, buried a third

3/4 in gravel · 8 tons620 sq ft at 3 in · delivered

Russian Sage × 91 gal · the anchor mass at the house

Walker's Low Catmint × 211 gal · repeated along the walk

To do this year

Cut the sod and set the grade BEFORE the rock lands — it is a one-way step

Fabric under the gravel bands only, never under the planting masses

Set the boulders with the truck still on site; they are not a wheelbarrow job

Year 2

The one thing that gets water

Lavender × 7 in the 8 × 4 entry bed, on one drip line

John Creech sedum into the boulder joints — plugs, no soil prep

Second and last establishment summer: deep soak weekly, then stop

Year 3

The carpet

Creeping juniper × 6 across the slope face to the sidewalk

Cut everything back to 6 inches each March — the only chore left

By year 5: the juniper covers the stone and the weeding ends

From the sample plan's printable report — the rock in year one, the one watered bed in year two, the carpet in year three.

The dry palette, painted

Silver, blue, and structural, and none of it asks for a sprinkler once established. Every plant is painted at every age, and your ZIP filters the palette to your zone.

Russian Sage

A 4 ft silver-blue anchor mass that shrugs off drought and heat.

Zones 4–94 ft

Lavender

Entry-bed luxury on a water budget; fragrance at the front door.

Zones 5–92 ft

Walker's Low Catmint

Silver-blue mounds that repeat beautifully along a gravel band.

Zones 4–82 ft

John Creech Sedum

A pink-flowered groundcover mat between boulders, zero water once rooted.

Zones 3–81 ft

Creeping Juniper

The evergreen carpet that holds the design together in winter.

Zones 3–90 ft

Boulder

Buried a third deep, in odd-numbered groups. The bones of the whole design.

Zones 1–132 ft

What to expect, honestly: Year 1: the structure carries it, plants are small but the boulders and gravel already look finished. Year 3: masses touch and the design reads at full strength. Year 10: essentially maintenance-free, and the water bill never noticed.

Questions people ask

▸Can I design a xeriscape front yard before tearing out the lawn?

Yes, and that is the sensible order. Upload a photo of the front of your house, draw the gravel bands and boulder groups, mass the planting, then drag the years forward. You can try it on a sample yard first, and no account is needed.

▸Can I see it on my actual house?

That is the product. A photo of your own frontage is painted into the watercolor canvas, so every decision happens against your real facade, driveway and street line rather than a generic template.

▸Can I draw the gravel and the boulders, not just the plants?

Yes. Gravel areas, boulder groups and paths are drawn on the canvas alongside the planting, which matters here because the hardscape is most of what a xeriscape front yard actually looks like.

▸Will the plants suit my climate?

Enter your ZIP and the palette filters to your USDA hardiness zone. Xeriscape principles apply well outside the desert, and the palette shifts to the dry-tolerant plants that survive your winters rather than someone else's.

▸What do I get at the end?

A watercolor of the designed frontage, the growth view from year one to year twenty, and a printable report with a to-scale plan view from above, a year-by-year plan and a shopping list with price estimates.

A dry front yard that still looks designed

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