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http://www.freeplants.com/resellers.htmIf you own a home, then sooner or later you are going to be
ready to sell that home. Maybe you've already sold a home or
two. People tend to move more often than our parents did.
There are a lot of things that go into getting the best possible
price for your home, but the very first thing your home needs is
curb appeal. When a prospective buyer, or a realtor for that
matter, pulls up in front of your home, they immediately form an
opinion about your house. Fair or not, that's what people do.
You can have the most beautiful home in the city, but if
prospective buyers don't get a super positive feeling about your
house the minute they lay eyes on it, they are going to enter
and view the rest of your house with a negative impression.
Fixing that problem is easy enough to do.
When people pull up in front of your house there are two things
they see. A house, and the landscaping in front of that house.
If the landscaping is unattractive, the house will appear to be
unattractive. Landscaping for curb appeal does not cost a lot of
money, it's simply a matter of making sure the landscaping is
neat, with well defined edges, and colorful. But when
landscaping for curb appeal, the most important thing you need
to do is to raise the beds with topsoil. Of course you have to
do this before you plant.
Plants do much better in raised beds, and the plants in the beds
really stand out. In order to raise the beds around your house
you do not have to buy expensive stones and build retaining
walls. Just establish the outline of the planting beds, cut an
edge into the soil with a spade, and fill the planting beds with
approximately ten inches of good rich topsoil. You'd be amazed
at how much you can raise a planting bed without any type of
retention.
Here are two more things you don't need:
Plastic edging. It's expensive, a lot of work to install, and it
never stays in place. You can cut an edge with a spade and your
landscape will actually look better. Then you can make the bed a
little larger any time you need to.
The other thing you definitely do not need is weed control
fabric. The stuff just doesn't work. The weeds grow right on top
of the fabric, then root through the fabric making it even
harder to keep your beds weed free. You'll find a really good
article on weed control on my website.
When landscaping for curb appeal, plant placement and selection
is very important. In a corner bed you need a centerpiece. I
like Canadian Hemlock because they are evergreen and provide an
excellent background for more colorful plants. In front of the
Hemlock you can use a bright colored evergreen like Gold Thread
Cypress, but don't use too many. Usually three is all you want.
Around the backside of the same bed you can use a darker
evergreen like Taxus or even a flowering shrub that you keep
trimmed down low like Weigela. Lots of colors are fine, but
don't stagger the colored plants in your landscape, use them in
groupings, and be careful not to use too many in any one
grouping. When you use more than three of any colored plant they
lose their effectiveness. You are adding them for contrast, and
when used sparingly they look much better.
There are lots of landscaping photos on my website that will
give you a lot of good ideas.
In front of a house I like to use an arc of medium height plants
like Blue Girl Holly, then put a couple of taller plants behind
the arc. When landscaping for curb appeal you want the landscape
to stair step toward the house. In other words, the lawn is the
bottom step, the raised bed is step two, low growing plants step
three and so on.
If you are re-landscaping an older home you probably should
start with a sledge hammer before you do anything else and bust
out the sidewalk to the front door. Builders put in the ugliest
sidewalks in the world, and they usually are hard to maneuver as
you walk toward the front door. Once you have the old sidewalk
removed, let your imagination run wild. Remember, you are
landscaping for curb appeal, and there is no better way to
establish ultimate curb appeal than with a beautiful curved walk
that gently winds its way to the front door. Once again, there
are photos of such sidewalks on my website, and you'll see what
wonderful landscaping opportunities they present.
The last step in landscaping for curb appeal is to create an
interesting shaped raised bed in the front yard. Fill this bed
with spring flowering bulbs, and annual flowers for the summer.
If your house is going to be on the market in the fall, add some
chrysanthemums for a burst of fall color.
So what's the best benefit of landscaping for curb appeal?
You'll gain great experience so you can make sure your new home
is landscaped just the way you want it!
Mike McGroarty, the author of this article, would like to give
you this Ebook: "The Gardener's Secret Handbook." Stop by his
http://www.freeplants.com website and get your copy right now.
It's his way of saying hello! Article provided by
http://gardening-articles.com
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