Creating a beautiful landscape to increase your home’s curb appeal is a top priority for many garden enthusiasts. However, maximizing the best parts while minimizing the problem areas doesn’t have to be a challenging task reserved for those blessed with a green finger.
By following simple yet effective tips and having your trusty battery line trimmer on hand, you can dramatically transform your garden and increase your home’s overall value and appeal, ready to be enjoyed by friends, family and strangers alike.
Consider Your Home
When many people begin planning and designing their garden, they often overlook one of the most significant influencing factors; their actual home. While the size and shape of the garden and lawn are important in dictating what you can and can’t do, your home sets the theme you should follow in your landscaping decisions.
A country or farm-style home is best suited to a country-style landscape, with plenty of bright flowers filling the flower beds and towering trees creating inviting shade during summer. Alternatively, a modern home will be well-complemented by a minimalist garden with clean lines and minimal colour.
Adapt Through the Seasons
A landscape garden that disappears once winter rolls around is going to lose a lot of its appeal very quickly. A well-thought-out landscaping plan will include trees and shrubs that maintain their life and structure throughout the year, compensating for the lack of flowers out of season.
Include both deciduous and evergreen options around your garden to allow for contrast and variety as the seasons change. In addition, they will complement the blossoms that appear as the year progresses.
Perfect Proportions
If you have a large house with a flat front, small flowers planted alongside it will have little effect on the overall look. Instead, using plants or scrubs planted in repetition to create parallel lines that complement the size of the home will have a more significant impact and not get lost amongst the rest of the garden.
This strategy works best with foliage planted next to the home itself or paved walkways. The impact will be immediate and can create a natural border around these areas.
Go Big & Small
Most people view your garden from the street, either out of their car or walking by. To get the biggest impact in that short time, use larger trees, shapes and groups of flowers to create focal points that can be seen and appreciated from a distance.
These pieces will become the centre of your overall design and cohesively tie the entire garden together. Be sure not to block windows or doors with plants that will grow too big. Stick to three or four main focal points to allow them the opportunity to stand out and shine.
It will also prevent your garden from looking busy or cluttered, which can happen when too many areas compete with each other.
Use Hardscaping
If you are unsure how to highlight your garden and create focal points, use secondary hardscape items to provide the building blocks to which you can add. For example, a deep walkway offers the opportunity to border it with wide, dramatic flowerbeds, while a bench is an ideal spot to plant groups of blossoming flowers or small shrubs.
Evaluate your garden, highlight any hardscaping opportunities that already exist or are easy to include, and play around with ideas on how best to spotlight them.
Explore Color
The colour of your home will largely influence the colour you use in the garden. Understanding the colour wheel and how colours match and contrast one another will allow you to experiment with different combinations and varieties of flowers.
For example, a blue house will feel calm and relaxed, nicely complemented by pink, purple, yellow and white flowers, while a bold red trim will pop with bright yellows, oranges and reds. If your home is white or black, you have the perfect neutral background to explore many colour possibilities.
Low Maintenance is Best
Suppose you are an avid gardener and enjoy the upkeep of your different plants, trees and shrubs. In that case, it is essential to remember that if you plan to sell your home, an elaborate garden can be a potential negative to prospective buyers.
For those looking to buy a new home who are not enthusiastic about toiling away outside, large flowerbeds and plants that create a lot of natural litter are going to become a negative addition that they are unwilling to maintain. However, there are plenty of low-maintenance options to adorn your garden with that will keep your green thumbs busy while still remaining a realistic chore for future owners.
Create a Walkway
Landscaping in the front garden is ultimately about moving towards the front door in a visually appealing way. However, you can transform this fundamental task into something more natural and intuitive, making it clear to guests exactly where they are heading.
Use hedging to border a direct pebbled path from the street to the front door or line a curved walkway with adorned flowerbeds, keeping the door in sight.
