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Best Plants for Driveways

Best Plants for Driveways

Choosing the right plants for your driveway can transform it from a simple utilitarian space into an inviting, beautiful feature of your home. The key is selecting plants that help you achieve your garden goals, suit the conditions around your driveway, and complement your property’s style. From shrubs and hedges to hardy ground covers, and everything between, in this article we’ll explore the best plants that can greatly enhance your driveway’s appearance while offering practicality and charm.

Straight and Narrow

A shrub with a naturally tall, columnar shape is perect for tight spaces, such as along driveways. Straight and Narrow™ Syzygium.

Why Plants Are Ideal for Driveways

  1. Curb Appeal
    Driveway plants provide an instant lift to any property’s exterior. Carefully chosen species frame the path beautifully, creating a polished and welcoming aesthetic that enhances the overall design of your home.
  2. Seasonal Interest
    Many plants suitable for driveways offer seasonal blooms, changing foliage colours, or year-round greenery. This ensures your driveway remains visually captivating no matter the time of year.
  3. Low Maintenance
    For busy homeowners and landscape projects with shoestring maintenance budgets, many driveway plants are naturally hardy and drought-tolerant, requiring minimal care once established. Slow-growing plants and those trained for natural shape require far less pruning than fast-growing topiary hedges.
  4. Practical Benefits
    Driveway plants can subtly define boundaries, soften hardscape edges, and even shield driveways from visibility, wind, dust, or noise.

Little Ruby

Low-growing shrubs and groundcovers can be used to add texture, shape and colour contrasts with taller plants behind. Little Ruby™ Alternanthera.

Tall Shrubs, Hedges and Screens

Taller shrubs can be manicured as hedges, or left in their natural shape (particularly columnar varieties that grow tall rather than wide). Denser varieties provide better screening for privacy and wind breaks.

Shorter Shrubs

Shorter shrubs are perfect for defining the borders of a driveway, offering structure and colour. They can also be layered in front of taller screens for contrasting colours, shapes and textures.

Purple Pixie

Purple Pixie™ Loropetalum has deep burgundy foliage with an improved compact growth habit, perfect for along driveways.

Ground Covers

Ground covers are highly useful for covering bare areas and preventing soil erosion along the edges of driveways. They form attractive carpets of greenery or flowers and handle foot or tyre traffic well if needed.

Aussie Rambler

Aussie Rambler™ Carpobrotus has a trailing habit, so it’ll need a hard prune now and then to keep it from overtaking the driveway. But its naturally trailing shape is beautiful, so cut it harder than it needs so it needs pruning less often, keeping that natural shape for longer between cuts.

Ornamental Grasses and Strappy Plants

Ornamental grasses are a fantastic way to bring both texture and movement to your driveway landscaping while staying low maintenance.

Tasred

Tasred® Dianella has beautiful, weeping strappy leaves that soften hard lines.

Climbing or Trailing Plants

Climbing or trailing plants are excellent for adding vertical elements along driveways or softening retaining walls.

All Seasons Pink

All Seasons Pink™ Mandevilla has an improved growth habit and frost tolerance compared with common forms.

Tips for a Successful Driveway Planting

  • Consider Micro Climate
    Choose plants that suit the environment around your driveway. Hot, sunny driveways with minimal substrates require drought-tolerant, heat-tolerant varieties, while shadier, wetter spots will benefit from flood-tolerant shade-lovers. Remember that the sun is further north in winter, and closer to the middle of the sky in summer as we’re in the southern hemisphere.
  • Limit Overgrowth
    Select plants with growth habits that won’t spill into the driveway or require constant pruning to keep them in check. Unless, of course, you want to! You can use secateurs, shears or a hedge trimmer to prune them neatly back to the concrete edge, or follow the permaculture principle “value the marginal” and embrace
  • Think About Scale
    Match plant size to your driveway’s dimensions, ensuring the space feels balanced. Choose compact plants for smaller driveways and more dramatic options for grander entrances. Remember the horticultural golden rule: right plant, right place.
  • Seasonal Maintenance
    Keep an eye on invasive species or plants that will drop excessive leaves, flowers, or fruit. Selecting hardy, low-maintenance plants saves time and effort (if that’s what you’re into).

Final Thoughts

Plants are more than just decorative features—they add lush vibes, practicality, and a touch of nature to your driveway. By selecting the right varieties for the space, you can create a visually stunning and inviting entryway that also demands minimal care. Whether you prefer fragrant shrubs like mock orange, dynamic texture from native grasses, or a splash of colour from seasonal flowers, the best plants for driveways can refresh and elevate your entire property’s look.

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