Front gardens: How opening up your garden can boost community and reduce loneliness

One of the most striking gardening trends to emerge in our increasingly urbanised world relates to what is often the smallest part of our gardens. It’s the front that is becoming the focus. It’s getting more open and welcoming. It’s letting its guard down.

While backyards keep their privacy, front gardens are forging more connections with the street. Walk around the residential suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney and, increasingly, you find front gardens that look like vibrant social spaces rather than purely ornamental ones.

As Melbourne landscape architect Emmaline Bowman puts it, these gardens don’t look like they are only for entering and leaving but as if they are “widely used extensions of the house”. They seem lived in and cared for. They seem like exactly the sort of thing you want f