Ideas For Plants Outside Front Door

Your front door area and porch layout leave a critical first impression on visitors, and the curb appeal can even be seen from across the street. Still, placing some potted plants to beautify it further can make it even more attractive.

Options range from getting a hanging planter, to annuals and perennials and even some small trees. You can’t go wrong with evergreen plants outside the front door either, so let us be your guide through the selection. We’ll tell you exactly what plants to have in mind, and what factors are crucial to determine the exact plant type that’s perfect for your porch.

Things To Look For In Front Porch Plants

There are several things to have in mind when going through the choice of the best plants to enhance the appeal of your front door and household entry. To get that unique and eye-catching front porch, these are the things to keep in mind:

1. Sun Exposure – For the best choice in a front porch plant, you should consider the sun exposure and the amount of light that reaches your front door. Based on this, you can decide whether to go for full-sun plants, part-sun plants, or partial shade plants. While you will need at least six hours of sunlight per day to support full-sun annuals, you will need half of that amount or even less for other plants that thrive even in shade.
2. Baskets or Pots – The type of plant you choose based on sun exposure can also determine the containers where you’ll keep them. From hanging baskets to flowering plants that can be placed in small pots, you have lots of options for your front door area plants. Sometimes even flower beds can work in case you can find smaller ones so you can fit several types of flowers with matching care conditions.
3. Size of the Plant – Depending on how big of an impression you want to leave, you can choose between tall trees and evergreens, or tiny but beautiful petunias and other flowers. Front door flower pots are perhaps the simplest, yet the easiest option for you when it comes to maintenance. But if you can dedicate some space to growing a bigger plant, your house’s curb appeal can change completely.

The Best Front Porch Plants

The best plants for the front porch are those that can make a real difference in the appeal of your home’s entrance without you having to overdo it with care conditions. Over the years, we’ve seen a fair share of large outdoor pots standing by people’s front doors with all kinds of plants in them.

To give you some ideas, we’ll take a look at some favorite plants of homeowners to place in front of your home entrance:

• Petunias

• Ferns

• Shrub Roses

• Umbrella Tree

• English Ivy

• Citrus Tree

• Evergreen Shrubs

• Cactus 

• Marigold

• Sweet Alyssum

Front Door Plant Types

Based on the factors we’ve mentioned and the most popular plants outside your front door, we’ll go through the different types of plants. This way, you’ll have an overview of the best flowers and plants to make your entryway distinctive and unique all-season long.

Hanging Plants

With hanging plants, you can place tiny flowers in proper hanging planters and get the most appeal for minimum effort. Just like with flower pots, you’ll need to pay attention when choosing the best-looking hanging planters as it can make a real difference. 

It’s a great thing that you can improvise with hanging baskets and even use a metal bucket instead. Also, different hanging plants that blend right in with your front porch curb appeal vary from small flowers to English Ivy and even Boston ferns.

English Ivy

As one of the easiest hanging plants to care for, English Ivy fits right into your hanging planters to enhance the appearance of your porch. It grows and develops even in part shade and makes an excellent choice for drier soil and areas where sunlight doesn’t reach your entryway fully.

This green addition to your front entry only requires a fertilizer mix about once a month, along with frequent watering. However, you should let the top layer of the soil in its hanging basket dry completely before watering it again. So, if you are looking for a partial drought-tolerant plant that doesn’t need much attention to thrive, English Ivy is a great choice.

Spider Plant

Like English Ivy, the Spider plant doesn’t require much attention if you treat it right from the start. This includes keeping moist soil and the watering cycles should be kept weekly, and this plant can even thrive in winter by keeping the soil a bit drier before watering.

It also won’t suffer too much damage from the first frost, so it can be a valuable addition to your front porch through the entire year. Placing it in hanging baskets might result in offspring plantlets that can be separated from the main plant, and you can even plant them in smaller baskets on their own.

Morning Glory

One plant that’s quite easy to care for and would still make a maximum impact on your front porch is Morning Glory. It’s a beautiful vining plant that thrives from the seed in just a few months and will keep climbing around your front door walls by simple regular watering.

If you want its blue or purple varieties to grow more flowers, you can simply take off the older flowers that could produce seedpods. They like full sun, and would make a beautiful hanging planter addition for your front door area.

Ferns

Fern plants like the popular Boston fern can be a great idea for your front porch as they can be grown as potted plants, and as hanging plants. Some of the best ones to add to the appeal of your front entry include Kimberly Queen Fern, Tiger Fern, and Boston Fern.

They make a great choice because of their growth even in full shade and require only a bit of additional watering in winter. Ferns are also great for their fast development, and you’ll quickly notice the growth making them climb out of the hanging basket.

Flower Pots For Front Door Area

One of the best ideas for your porch is to add front door flower pots. They are colorful, easy to care for in most cases, and include vast varieties of annuals and perennial flowers. Depending on the number of seasons you wish to keep your front door beautified, you can choose between these two kinds of flowers.

Petunias

Caring for petunias in containers or pots might be a bit more exhausting than with some of the hanging plants mentioned. You will need to provide at least 6 sunny hours per day, so if your front door area doesn’t get that much light, you shouldn’t go with these flower pots.

If you can place them where there will be enough sun for petunias to grow, you’ll need to apply a liquid fertilizer once a week until they fully develop. They also require constant watering, but it’s all worth it in the end result. Your porch and the whole area around the front door will be much more pleasant to look at, and you can cut the old flowers to entice more flowering to create a colorful scene.

Shrub Roses

Another flower that thrives in full light like petunias is a shrub rose. Shrub roses are great for spring and summertime because they not only make a beautiful scene but also provide a charming scent.

Some shrubs can even take a slight amount of shade, and these can be planted in pots or a container. Their colors range from pink, red, white, and burnt orange depending on the exact species. It’s easy to care for them with a little fertilizer and some watering. 

Marigolds

In our opinion, the most beautiful flower pots you can add to your front door scenery are Marigolds. These flowers bloom all summer long and this is the period when your front door will get the nicest look.

You can also settle for a variety of Marigold species like the French marigold, African marigold and Poet’s marigold. They all come in slightly different orange variants and perhaps the African marigold can put up the nicest appearance due to its well-spread soft leaves.

They need full sun and dry conditions to thrive, and some species can even bloom for more than just a couple of summertime months.

Wax Begonias

Wax Begonias are frequently planted as annuals, but they can also be considered perennials that bloom in spring and don’t need as much light as marigolds and petunias. Green-leaved species don’t take bright sun so well, so you can even use them in case your front door area receives a bit of shade.

You can place them in flower pots and containers, with the addition of some mulch to keep the soil moisturized. With a combination of wax begonias that bloom in the spring and flower pots like marigolds and petunias blooming in summer, you can get a nice curb appeal all year long.

Sweet Alyssum

While Sweet Alyssum might be a bit harder to care for, it pays off due to its beautiful pink, purple, or white flowers. They need soil that drains well, but that’s still moist enough to entice their growth. 

Frequent watering with at least one inch of water is required to maintain a healthy plant, and you can get an addition to your porch that blooms the entire summer, and even all the way into October. If you fit Sweet Alyssum in larger flower pots, you can even combine it with petunias for a colorful sight.

Large Front Door Plants

Along with flower pots and hanging plants, you can make your entrance stand out with larger front door plants. Options are numerous – from cactus plants to citrus trees and evergreen shrubs. Most can still fit into containers or a larger pot that you can place at your entryway to make your porch unique.

Umbrella Tree

Apart from seasonal plants and flower pots we’ve discussed, you can also utilize large plants that are easy to care for like Umbrella Tree. This plant has some large leaves and can grow to reach heights of around 8 to 10 feet tall.

Therefore, it makes it into the best ideas for outside front door plants, especially if you want to leave an impression with a large plant. These are best placed in a pot with a drainage section and they prefer dry soil between the waterings.

Citrus Tree

Yet another small tree that fits into your entryway is the Citrus tree and it makes a great choice especially when accompanied by some ornamental grass in smaller pots besides. It’s a bit more complex front door plant to maintain, as it takes 3 years just to spread its roots.

During that time, you should fertilize the soil and pick the fruits as they appear to encourage it to grow further and develop roots. Citrus leaves are known for their appealing scent that completes your new entryway image along with the exotic looks.

Cactus

Cactus is one more large plant that goes well with ornamental grass additions and you don’t need anything else in combination for some front door appeal. Most cactus species are easy in terms of maintenance and you only need to water them once every two weeks in the spring and summer.

During the winter, they will be undergoing dormancy and only require watering once every three or four weeks. Cactus kinds like Mammillaria bloom flowers to make a captivating scene in your front door area. They can be planted in pots or containers, and you can even go for tiny cacti species to combine several of them in different sizes and shapes.

Evergreen Shrubs

One of the unexpectedly pleasant plants for your entryway is an evergreen shrub. They need full sun in the summer, and can stand shade during the winter. So, if your front door porch catches at least some sun rays, these shrubs make a beautiful addition.

Plus, they seem equally attractive in both summer and winter periods, and you can even pair them with some faux topiaries. You can place a few shrubs in a container right in the front door area and move them into the shade during wintertime.

Final Thoughts

Your entryway can get a whole new appearance with the plants that enrich it both for observers and your family. Hopefully, our list can help shed some light into the best ideas for front door plants.

Some species are best for bright sunlight access, while others thrive even in full shade so you can have a complete picture of the best options for your own porch. We recommend going with the hanging plants and colorful annual and perennial flowers..

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):