Whether you’re staying or preparing your home to be put on the market, landscaping can be a way to boost curb appeal and raise your property’s value. A welcoming and attractive garden in the front yard and a backyard designed for relaxing with family and entertaining friends will draw all the right kind of attention to your property. Here are some landscaping tips to increase your property’s value.
Low Maintenance Garden
First impressions are important. You want a front yard that will get noticed, but if it’s a high-maintenance landscape design, it can put off prospective buyers. And you probably don’t want to spend your summer weekends maintaining it. For a low maintenance garden:
- Create a landscape design that takes into account sun, shade, and water sources
- Select the place before the plant – you want to avoid putting a plant that will grow tall next to a window of a room that doesn’t get much light
- Select native plants and grasses – they will require less watering
- Add mulch to flowerbeds and around trees and shrubs – mulching slows the rate of water evaporation
- Use eco-friendly watering practices – drip irrigation watering kit, soaker hose, or garden hose in the morning
- Fill in open spaces – using grasses and other kinds of groundcover to fill in spaces helps discourage garden weeds
Keep it Tidy
Keeping the front yard tidy is definitely a curb appeal booster. Even if you just have large plant containers on either side of the front door and a few window boxes, a tidy lawn, a clean driveway, and well-maintained pathways and front steps will make your property look attractive and cared for.
Add Colour
The easiest way to increase a property’s value through landscape design is to add lots of plants. Select a variety that will provide colour to your garden at different times of the year. Create visual interest by choosing plants and flowering shrubs of varying sizes and unusual textures.
Add Borders or Edging
Borders or edging help define the different areas of your front yard, separating them visually and creating visual interest. Low-growing, low-maintenance shrubs on either side of a driveway defines the area. The same can be said for adding edging to flower beds. To make a flower bed a focal point of your landscaping, choose an edging material that complements the plants growing there.
Plant Trees
Trees help raise property values in a number of ways. They are an environmentally-friendly way to improve air quality; arrest soil erosion; provide shade; and boost curb appeal. To make the most of trees on your property select ones that are:
- Native to your region
- Low-maintenance
- The right height, shape, etc. for where they will be placed
- The right kind for the type of soil in your garden
- Not planted too close to the roof or gutters
Privacy Issues
If your house is too close to your neighbour’ home or your backyard is an open book, building a fence creates privacy for you and your family. It can also reduce unwanted background noise.
An alternative to standard fences is a living fence. A living fence is typically made of trees planted in a row, either straight or staggered depending on the type of tree and how it grows (vertically or spreads out).
Before building a standard fence check local bylaws for any restrictions pertaining to height or the type of fencing material that can or cannot be used.
Gutters can Help
Making your gutter system part of your landscape design can raise your property’s value and increase your curb appeal.
Rain Barrels: A rain barrel is an environmentally-friendly way to collect runoff exiting the gutter system through the downspouts. Use it to water flower beds, shrubs, trees, container gardens, and window boxes during water restrictions and mild droughts. Connect several rain barrels together to maximize the amount of runoff being collected.
Rain Chains: Using rain chains as an alternative to standard downspouts adds value to your property, increasing curb appeal and giving your landscaping a unique focal point. Like downspouts, rain chains are attached to the gutter outlet, but that’s where the similarities end. While downspouts channel water from the roof to the ground in closed pipes or tubes, rain chains, constructed of links or decorative cups linked together, have a charming visual appeal
Buried Downspouts: Burying the downspouts can greatly improve a home’s exterior and enhance your curb appeal. If downspouts in the past have drained too close, you might have installed a downspout extender to carry the water farther away from the foundation or exterior walls. Regardless of the type of extender (permanent, flexible, or hinged), they can be a visual distraction. Buried downspouts make your property look neater and lawn care easier.
Rain Gardens: A buried downspout or some other type of underground drainage system can help protect your landscaping from uncontrolled runoff when it’s directed toward a rain garden. Rain gardens can also be “watered” without a buried downspout if it is positioned in the path of the runoff in a shallow dip (man-made or natural). A rain garden can help increase your property’s value because it’s an environmentally-friendly way to prevent soil erosion and replenish groundwater. It’s good for your curb appeal too.
