12 Ideas for Landscaping Without Grass

The terrace garden of an English-inspired cottage offers a number of distinctive design ideas. Missy Madden & H. Todd Yeager of Bellweather Landscape Architects created a parterre using low-growing plants - blue star creeper and dwarf mondo grass - for its Cotswold-style courtyard and garden. Ferns and lamb's ears are among plantings beyond the gravel pathway. Emerald arborvitae screen the property, in Georgia's Serenbe community.

The courtyard of a California beach home lacked a strong connection to the entryway. For an update that maintained the modern look, Jeffrey Gordon Smith Landscape Architecture created a unique area with a narrow, staggered pavers and pebbles in gray tones, plus a custom water feature and tall planters.

Circles are repeated using different materials and textured in the "Sun and Moon Garden" planned by Miriam's River House Designs, based in Ohio. The garden is pattered after the solar system, with the "sun and moon being closely related as the two bodies that constantly reflect light upon earth," as described by designers Nancy and Cliff Drobnick.

A urn-shaped fountain centers the courtyard of a country-style manor home in Atlanta. Landscape architect Alec Michaelides of Land Plus Associates extended the covered outdoor spaces into the garden, using materials such as stone and rock, and planting 'Annabelle' hydrangeas and boxwoods.