Increase Your Home's Value with Curb Appeal

Clumsy, neglected, and hodgepodge landscaping not only hurts your home’s curb appeal, it can cut the value of your property and make it harder to sell. Real estate appraisers say bad landscaping is a buyer turnoff that can increase the number of days a property languishes on the market, which also hurts prices. “I’ve been with clients who won’t even go into a house because of the bad landscaping    outside,” says Mack Strickland, a Chester, Va., REALTOR® and appraiser. Even more important,bad landscaping is a downer that hurts the way you see and enjoy your home. Don’t let bad landscaping happen to you.  Here are the seven landscaping mistakes that bust, rather than boost, your home’s curb appeal.

 

1. Planting Without A Plan
Some landscaping choices, such as a line of begonias, will last a season; others, like trees, can last a lifetime. So, take time to plan and plot a yard that gives you maximum enjoyment and curb appeal.
For the design challenged, landscape architects are worth the investment ($300-$2,500 depending on yard size). They will render elevations of your future yard, and provide plant lists so you can install landscaping yourself.

2. Too Much Togetherness
Yes, planting in clusters looks way better than installing single plants, soldier-like, throughout your yard. But make sure your groups of perennials, shrubs, and trees have plenty of room to spread, or they’ll look choked and overgrown. Also, over-crowded landscaping competes with itself for food and water, putting the clusters at risk, especially during drought.
Google how high and wide the mature plant will be, and then combine that info with the spacing suggestions on planting labels. At first, garden beds of young plants will look too airy and prairie-like. But within three years, your beds will fill in with room to grow.
Remember: First year it sleeps, second it creeps, third it leaps.

3. Zoning Out
Don’t be seduced by catalog plants that look gorgeous on paper but aren’t suited to your hardiness zone. You’ll wind up with plants that die prematurely, or demand winter covers, daily watering, and other intensive efforts to keep them alive and well.
Check plant labels to see which hardiness zones are best for your plants.

4. More of the Same
Resist the design temptation to carpet-bomb your yard with your favorite plant or shrub, which will create a boring, monochromatic landscape. Worse, your yard will look great when your fave flowers bloom, then will look drab the rest of the year.
Mix things up and strive for four-season color. For example, combine spring-blooming azaleas with summer-blooming roses and autumn-blazing shrubs — such as burning bushes (Euonymus alatus). For winter color, try the red osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera), a hardy shrub that sports bright-red branches in winter.

5. Refusing to Bury Your Dead
Nothing wrecks curb appeal faster than rows of dead or dying shrubs and perennials. So quickly remove your dearly departed landscaping from your front and side yards.
Spent plants that lived their natural lives are good candidates for a compost pile — if you grind them first, they’ll decompose faster. But if your landscaping succumbed to disease or infestation, it’s best to inter them in black plastic bags, then add to the trash.

6. Weeds Gone Wild
Weeds not only wreck the look of your landscaping, they compete with pricey vegetation for water and food. Weeds also can shorten the life of brick, stone, and pavers by growing in mortar cracks.
The best way to stop weeds is to spread a pre-emergent about three weeks before weed seeds typically germinate. If you can’t stop weeds from growing, at least get rid of them before they flower and send a zillion weed seeds throughout your yard.

7. Contain Those Critters
Deer, rabbits, and other backyard pests think your landscaping is an all-you-can eat buffet, leaving you with denuded branches and topless perennials.
If you’ve got a critter problem:

• Plant deer- or rabbit-resistant varieties. Your local extension agent can provide a list of green things critters won’t eat in your area.

• Install an electric fence around landscaping you want to protect.

• Spray plants with critter repellent. After a hard rain, spray again.

Source:7 Landscaping Mistakes That Wreck Curb Appeal - by Lisa Kaplan Gordon
Read more: http://www.houselogic.com/home-advice/landscaping-gardening/landscaping-mistakes-wreck-curb-appeal/#ixzz2h3Rq5UJj Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

 

Refreshing Your Garden and Your Curb Appeal

The gardening season is coming to a close, but it’s not entirely over yet. If you’re an avid green thumb, you can still squeeze a little more out of the growing season. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of the end of the year and how to get your garden set up for next year.

Plant Bulbs For Spring Flowers
Fall is the perfect time to plant bulbs like tulips, irises and crocuses, which need a winter freeze to start their growing process. By getting them in the ground now, you will ensure a colorful garden by early spring. For best results, plant bulbs once temperatures are in forties and fifties, but several weeks before the ground completely freezes.

Look for Discounts
Get a jump on next year’s garden by buying gardening equipment, seeds and plants at discounted prices. Many garden centers slash prices in the fall months to move unsold stock. Store seed packets in the freezer to keep them fresh, and keep discount seedlings going indoors until you can replant them next spring.

Repot Overgrown Plants
If a summer’s worth of growth has caused your plants to outgrow their homes, take some time this fall to replant them in larger containers. Dense or compacted soil, poor drainage, or roots creeping out of the bottom of a pot are sure signs that plants are root bound and struggling for more space.

Winter-Loving Plants
Depending on what region you live in, winter doesn’t have to be a dead season. Some hearty plants like kale, lettuce, broccoli and chard thrive in colder temperatures and can even tolerate the occasional frost. As long as snow stays off the ground and the temperatures don’t dip below freezing for too long, these plants will continue to grow, allowing you to garden into the winter months.

Plant Some Quick Growers
September isn’t too late to grow a final crop. Many vegetables can go from seed to table in as little as four to six weeks, giving you vegetables by late October or early November. Radishes can be grown in around 25 days, and some leafy greens like spinach take as little as 40 days to grow, so get in a final few vegetables before the frost sets in.

Plant Shrubs and Saplings
If you plan on adding trees and shrubs to your yard, fall is the best time to do it. By planting these plants in the fall, you’ll give their roots a chance to get established and avoid the withering effects of the summer sun. You’ll want to plant trees and shrubs in the ground a few weeks before the first frost, and if you live in an area with colder temperatures and heavy snows, wrap their  branches and leaves in burlap to protect them from their first winter.

Trim Perennials
Once your garden has gone to seed and perennial plants have run through their life cycle, it’s time to trim them back. Not only will it clean up an overgrown garden, but it will give the plants more energy next year, and limit potential garden problems like powdery mildew or insect infestations.
Fertilize the Lawn

While it might look like your lawn has shut down for the season, a little lawn care in the fall months will guarantee a lush, green garden next spring. Growth slows above the surface in autumn, but beneath the soil, your lawn is still hard at work establishing strong roots. Help it out this fall with a good mix of phosphorus-rich fertilizer, which helps strengthen roots.

Source: Adam Vermymeren (Around the House)

Tips to Increase Your Home's Curb Appeal

Have you been wanting to change the look of your house but aren't sure what you can do to increase your curb appeal? Handyman Connection, one of the largest networks of home repair and remodeling contractors in North America, has released a few home improvement ideas to help you enhance the street view of your home. The front door is the gateway to your home and can often be an easy and inexpensive way to add a different dimension to your home's curb appeal. You can paint your door a different color to accent the exterior paint on your house or you can get an entirely new door. Pick a color that stands out from the rest of your house but a color that also meshes well with the rest of your color scheme. Painting or re-painting your house is a great way to drastically alter your home's curb appeal and it may be the perfect option if you want to give your house a brand new look. Give your exterior walls some flair by picking a color different than what was previously on your house and accentuate it by finding a nice color for the trim as well. Don't wait too long to paint your house because that could make the job much more difficult; you should paint before the previous coat begins to show signs of wear and tear. Fencing around your yard is a great way to increase your home's appeal. A small white-picket fence is a simple way to give your house a nice, cozy look. Putting up a fence on the sides of your yard is a practical way to increase your privacy and your curb appeal at the same time. Adding a deck or a wing to your deck could be perfect if you like to spend time outside and also want to increase your home's curb appeal. Adding a wing to your deck is easier than enlarging it and gives you two areas to gather instead of one. Painting or staining your deck is crucial to adding the curb appeal you seek, so dedicate a weekend or two every other year where you or a professional handyman can make your deck look good as new. Source: www.handymanconnection.com