How To Improve Landscaping for Higher House Value

Improving the landscape is without a doubt one of the most effective ways to increase your home value quickly and significantly. The percentage varies from case to case, but the results are inevitable - the price goes up. Another good side of landscaping is an extremely wide range of options for improving your home’s look, so there is always something you can work on. Here are some tips and advice on how to make your house more appealing for the potential buyers. Just be careful not to over-do it, you could get cold feet about the selling.

Match the styles

Every change in your landscape should roughly match the style of the house. There are no strict rules, but there is a general principle of what looks good. For example, if you have super - modern, minimalist house, maybe rustic benches and lanterns aren’t a perfect fit for you, no matter how good they look in the catalogue. Try implementing things that fit naturally with your home and don’t go to the extreme when it comes to style. If you are not careful, you can end up with untasteful, cheap look, instead of increasing the value of your home.

Tidy up the garden

When it comes to gardening, many people have no idea how to organize a garden. You can always opt for hiring a professional landscaping designer to sort things out for you. But you can try doing it yourself. The secret is finding a balance between too plain and too crowded. In this case, less IS more. You don’t want to clutter your garden with as many plants possible, all different in color, maintenance rules and life cycle. Some basic steps of arranging the garden would be the following:

1.    Pick a dominant color

Color is one of the first things we notice about the garden. And by choosing a color, we create a mood. Choosing warm colors such as red, yellow and orange will give your garden a vibrant look. By going with colder tones, such as dark purple and various greens, you will get more of a peaceful impression.

2.    Pick plants that vary in height

Having plants of different heights creates a visual excitement. Make sure to have high, medium and small plants for the complete effect.

3.    Employ repetition

To make your landscape seem cohesive, pick plants in different colors and plant them throughout the yard. This way you will bring some order and piece into your garden.

The rest refers to playing with different shades, textures and foliage shapes. And, of course, the practical work, which seems too complicated for many people. How hard can it be to plant a flower?  Shove it into the ground and pour some water. That’s it.

Take care of your lawn

Whether you have a garden full of flowers or not, the nice green grass is an essential part of every landscape. It’s a trophy you can admire every day. And if you always thought that the grass is, somehow, always greener on someone else's lawn, it’s probably because of your lack of nourishment. Taking proper care is essential. The most basic steps of maintaining the lawn are watering and mowing. Your lawn needs about 1-1.5 inches of water weekly in order to stay green and vigorous. It should be divided in two times of 0.5 inches per week, leaving a couple of days in between for the soil to dry out and have plenty of oxygen. Setting the timer on your sprinkler system for lawn watering will make sure you don’t forget about this important step. As for the mowing, you should only start cutting when the grass hits around 5 inches, and never cut more than one-third of the height.

Upgrade the driveway

With the right kind of design and pavement, your driveway can boost your landscape look quite a lot. Having an old plain blacktop or concrete slab is fine, but if you want more, you have to get creative. Even renovating your existing driveway will improve the landscape significantly, but if you are having all the work done, you might as well change something. For example, brick or cobblestone driveways can bring an old-fashioned look to your home. If you are up to something fancier, think about a gravel driveway with a border on it.

Create an outdoor room

Creating a dining area outside or upgrading your terrace to an outdoor living room can raise the value of your home by almost 13 percent. Depending on how fancy you want to get, you can improve your backyard from $12 to 50$ per foot. First of all, you need to start on a level ground. If you already have a terrace or a balcony, this is your starter. If not, cover existing grass with a weed barrier fabric to create a base. Next thing, lay a floor. Natural materials like gravel or stone pavers will blend easily with the yard. For an outdoor room, you won’t be needing real walls. You can make fake walls to create boundaries, or use an existing wall or a balcony railing.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to improve your landscape, and every each and one of them will increase your property value a bit. So take your time, choose the things you want to change and, step by step, put a bigger price on your home.