Modern side yard garden design — xeriscape boulders, dry creek bed

Modern Xeriscape Side Yard with Boulders & Dry Creek Bed

Modern Side Yardxeriscape bouldersdry creek bed2025-08-03

Modern xeriscape side yard featuring a white siding farmhouse, large boulders, drought-tolerant grasses, dry creek bed, mulched borders, dwarf conifers, lavender, and a path of decomposed granite.

This is one of 9 modern garden designs in the AI Garden Design library and one of 6 side yard designs. Browse the full gallery or jump straight to more modern designs.

What defines a modern garden

Clean lines, restrained planting, and a strong horizontal geometry define the modern garden. Concrete, steel, basalt, and large-format pavers carry most of the visual weight, with plants used as accents rather than the main event. Negative space is treated as a feature.

Palette

concrete grey, charcoal, warm white, oxidised steel, deep green

Materials

concrete pavers, corten steel, basalt, smooth render, ipe wood

How to recreate this modern side yard

Start with a flat, geometric hardscape: large pavers laid in a grid, a single material running edge-to-edge. Limit your plant palette to three or four species, repeated in mass. Add one architectural focal point, a feature tree, a steel planter, or a black water feature. Lighting should wash walls and uplight specimen plants, not spotlight everything.

Designing a side yard

Side yards are the most overlooked space in most properties. Done well they become a useful passage with planted interest; done badly they collect bins, hoses, and dead grass.

Decide first whether the space is a path, a garden, or storage, and commit to one. For a path, a permeable surface (gravel, stepping stones, decomposed granite) works better than turf. For a garden, treat the narrow proportions as a feature: a single line of espalier trees, a long mixed border, or a runnel of water down the middle. Storage zones should be screened with a slatted panel, not pretended to be planting.

Plants that work in modern gardens

A reliable starting palette for this style — full growing guides on each.

Ornamental Grasses

Various genera

Movement, texture, and year-round interest. Ornamental grasses add a naturalistic, modern element to any garden with minimal care required.

Boxwood

Buxus

The foundation of formal garden design. Boxwood provides year-round evergreen structure, takes shaping beautifully, and defines spaces with elegant precision.

Japanese Maple

Acer palmatum

The most elegant small tree for any garden. Japanese maples offer stunning leaf shapes, spectacular fall color, and graceful architectural form.

Succulents

Various genera

Living sculptures for modern gardens. Succulents store water in fleshy leaves, creating geometric, colorful arrangements that thrive on neglect.

Bamboo

Bambusoideae

The fastest-growing privacy screen in nature. Clumping bamboo creates dense, elegant screening with an Asian-inspired aesthetic and year-round green.

Want this style for your garden?

Upload a photo of your side yard and get a photorealistic modern redesign in under two minutes.

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Frequently asked questions

How much does a modern side yard like this cost?

Real-world modern side yard builds vary enormously by region and finish level — budget jobs land around $5,000 to $15,000, mid-range builds with quality hardscape and mature plants sit between $20,000 and $50,000, and full luxury builds with premium materials, lighting, and water features can exceed $100,000. The AI Garden Design redesign itself takes minutes and costs nothing to preview before you commit to a build.

Can I recreate this modern design in my own side yard?

Yes. Upload a photo of your current side yard and pick the Modern style, or use this exact image as a style reference. The AI keeps the structural elements of your space — house, fence, hardscape — and reimagines the planting, furniture, and finishes in the chosen style. You get a photorealistic redesign in under two minutes that you can share with a landscape contractor.

What plants work best in a modern garden?

Modern gardens lean on a tight, repeated plant palette. The plants suggested on this page — paired with the design tips above — are the reliable starting set. Choose three to five and repeat them in mass rather than mixing many varieties; this is what separates a designed modern garden from a busy collector's plot.