I’m a big proponent of decorating for the seasons, and while that looks different this year during some construction projects, I’m still so glad I spent the time to create a little French garden oasis on our front kitchen porch!

If you love to watch along as I share the progress on my YouTube channel, you can click below for all the details!

Construction is still underway on our front & side wrap around porch, so I’m here to offer you a few pieces of encouragement if you’re also living in the middle of a work zone!

• Don’t give up on cleaning entirely! I know it can be so tempting to become so overwhelmed with the mess and chaos of work being performed, but my encouragement to you is to keep cleaning up the places you can! That means especially things like dishes and laundry. Staying on top of them will give you a sense of normalcy and productivity, even when other projects take longer to see results!
• Find the pockets that can still be styled & enjoyed! For me, that was the kitchen porch, which you’re going to see below.
• Invite people over! Even when you have a lot going on, you can still invite family & friends over to spend time with them. We invited my sister & her family for the fourth of July and had such a lovely visit!

Now, let’s dive in to the elements that make up my French Garden style front porch for this summer!

*This post contains affiliate links to products I know &/or love.

French Garden Front Porch Inspiration

Foundational Furniture Pieces

After giving this porch a good cleaning, I started by adding in my largest foundational pieces. For this year, that included my large garden supply cabinet and my thrifted wicker rocker.

Normally I wouldn’t put a larger furniture piece in front of the window, but the visual weight looked really unbalanced having it pushed to the outer edge of the porch.

The window it’s blocking is our downstairs bathroom, and it does make it a little darker in that room, but it’s something we can tolerate for the season!

I style inside the cabinet with a mix of garden theme decor, and practical pieces that I actually use while working out in my yard.

I love this wood-look desk organizer that I thrifted. It’s the perfect spot to hold my pretty seed packets from Halden Garden.

I was gifted this little matching set of honey jars from a friend years ago, and love to also display them.

You can find similar jars on Etsy!

The wicker basket holds my gardening gloves, and the “potted meat” crock is actually a DIY reproduction of the vintage crocks you can sometimes find thrifting. I created this a few years back with a lovely stamp set from Iron Orchid Designs (IOD).

I use it to store popsicle sticks and a permanent marker for labeling plants.

The wicker chair was a find I thrifted in Snohomish, Washington a few years back and reupholstered. This year, with 2 very active and dusty dogs, I was especially glad I had made the covers removable so they can be easily washed.

Our little puppy has been loving this spot and is often found sitting there, sometimes even rocking herself back and forth.

I used some blue floral material that I’ve had for a long time to make a quick accent pillow for the rocker.

Pillow covers are actually one of the easiest DIY sewing projects I know of, so even if you’re a beginner – you can make your own, too! I have a few blog posts you might enjoy if you’re wanting to learn how to sew your own pillow covers.

• Simple Ticking Lumbar Pillow with Ruffles
• Add a Zipper to a Pillow in 10 Minutes

Smaller Furniture Pieces & Decorations

Once the larger pieces are placed, I moved on to the smaller porch decorations.

Beside the rocking chair I added in my wooden bistro table from IKEA, and on top of that added a few potted plants (a mixture of faux and real).

The herbs I had grown for Spring were going wild in my urns, so I harvested everything and dried them to preserve them. In their place I added two sweet ferns.

We thrifted our pair of urns years ago, but you can find similar fiberglass options on Wayfair!

Window Box

We added this window box to this exterior window outside of our staircase years ago, and I always like to refresh the flowers for the seasons.

Refreshing usually also includes a good scrub and a fresh coat of paint.

For this summer’s plants, I added tall white cosmos (I love that we can see them from inside), and variegated ivy to cascade over the sides.

Garden Bed

The front garden bed between our front porch & kitchen porch also got a little refreshing.

I had received some hydrangeas from my mom before she passed away, and had added some of my own in, but the spacing was no longer correct after one was damaged by our dogs digging in the corner of the garden bed.

While our contractors were excavating some soil from under the house, they also found quite a large stack of big rocks. I asked them to save them for me, and we laid them down in the corner where the dogs were doing their digging. It seems to have done it’s job taking away the satisfaction of digging in that exact spot, and the rocks are well hidden by the boxwood bushes.

The boxwoods were purchased years ago as small plants for just $7 each! I highly recommend buying smaller, more inexpensive plants when you can afford to be patient as they grow & fill in!

I did the same thing this year by purchasing as many small blue star creeper plants as I could and spacing them around this bed. Once they’ve had some time to get established they’ll be a full ground cover helping to protect against weeds and filling the empty spots of this bed with dainty blue white flowers.

We also moved two of our French Garden Tuteurs from another part of the yard to give this garden bed some height for the season.

If you’d like to build your own tuteur (or two…or three), I have the free printable plans for you HERE.

Related Blog Posts:

• How to Make French Tuteur’s for your Garden
• DIY Self Watering Window Box
• Summer on the Farm
• How to Make Faux Concrete Pots & Planters
• Designing & Styling an Elegant Front Porch | Summer 2023
• Farmhouse Summer Porch Decor

Don’t forget your free French Tuteur Garden Plans!

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