Improve Curb Appeal with Front Yard Landscaping

If you plan on selling your home any time soon, it is fair to say
that first impressions count for a lot when it comes to impressing
potential buyers. When you consider that the first thing buyers will see
when they roll up at your home is the front yard, it makes sense that a
spot of landscaping in that area could pay huge dividends in making
your home appear more desirable.

Planning the best landscaping approach for your front
yard requires that you get into the minds of buyers. Ideally, you want a
front yard that looks attractive and welcoming, which will plant in
buyers’ minds the idea that this could be their future home. On the
other hand, a landscaped front yard that is too elaborate might have a
negative effect by making some buyers fearful of the amount of work
required to maintain it.

By the same token, if the purpose of a
landscaping project is merely to sell your home, there can surely be
little point in expending a lot of time, effort, and expense on an
over-complicated front yard. The strategy, rather, should be minimum
effort and expense for maximum gain.

One great way of making
your front yard appear more attractive without doing any major work is
to tidy up your lawn borders. If you pay attention to trimming back
areas where your lawn has started to grow into the flower beds, you can
do a lot to make your front yard appear considerably more orderly to the
casual eye. Remember that it is all about first impressions, and your
buyers will soon be moving on to viewing the interior of your home. The
trick is to convey the impression of tidiness and order, and lawn edge
trimming is certainly vital in this regard.

Once you have tidied
up your lawn borders, it pays to keep them looking that way, and the
easy way to achieve this is to sprinkle a layer of wood chips along the
edges of the lawn, which will be an effective deterrent to the growth of
weeds.


When considering ways to maximize the impression of order and tidiness
in your front yard, another good tactic is to prune back shrubs that
have become too large and messy in appearance. However, you should
resist the urge to go at shrubs too eagerly, especially if you have
buyers scheduled to visit in the near future. Shrubs that have been
pruned over-zealously will make it much too obvious that gardening work
has been conducted recently in a sly bid to make a good impression.


In such cases where you have plants and shrubs growing near your house,
especially near windows, you should be at pains to carry out pruning.
This is particularly important where plant growth may be restricting
light from reaching the interior of the house. Few house buyers are
likely to be enamored of homes where rooms seem dark and dank.


There are lots of ways to improve the look of your front yard. For some
people, it may be a simple case of tidying, but other home owners may
need to carry out more drastic works if their yards are currently in a
poor state. Although landscaping work can be expensive, the ultimate
goal of selling your home may in some cases dictate that you bite the
bullet and engage the services of a professional landscape designer in
order to effect major improvements to your front yard.

5 Fall Landscaping Tips

With fall underway, TLC has quite a few landscaping recommendations
for your Brentwood lawn. Enjoy the changing leaves and make these small
changes to guarantee an even healthier lawn in the upcoming year.


Your Brentwood landscaping will look better than ever this spring if
you take a little time this fall to prepare. Enjoy the changing leaves
and cooler weather this fall while giving your lawn a little TLC!


Take advantage of your last chance to put the finishing touches on your
landscaping before it’s covered in frost. Just a few preparations for
winter can guarantee that your lawn will come back fresher than ever in
the spring. Your Nashville lawn will look better than ever this spring
with these changes!

Garden Privacy Screens – Backyard Landscaping Ideas

No matter where you live, there’s nothing better than relaxing outdoors on a warm summer night watching your backyard landscaping ideas come to life.

Unfortunately, re-landscaping your whole backyard throughout the course of one growing season could be back breaking, costly and requires major planning.

Even though you are landscaping simply one section of the lawn at a time, you still need an overall plan. Utilizing graph paper, sketch out the permanent structures on your property such as the house, out buildings, deck and trees.

Here are some suggestions you’ll dig:

Screening with Plants

If your lawn does not have a fence, you might want to think about planting a row of hawthorn, juniper, arborvitae, or a combination of these bushes to create privacy and offer a backdrop for future flower beds. A smartly placed evergreen screen will also give a windbreak from winter winds and drifting snow.

Planning a Border Flower Bed

The most difficult part of designing a border is choosing flowers that complement one another, both in color and height. The list of perennials I advise here is for a six foot wide bed in a primarily sunny situation. Wide, in this case, means outward from the plant screen or fence, not the length of the bed.

Use 3 or 5 plants for every kind of flower and allow 16″-18″ in between every plant. Allow 20″-22″ between the different plant groups. Planting an odd number of plants is much more visually appealing than an even number.

Permit sufficient space at the rear of the bed for access. This will also prevent choking off essential air and light from the plants in back.

Island Bed

An island bed, as the name suggests, is planted in the middle of the lawn surrounded by a sea of grass. It can differ in shape and size in accordance to your imagination and available space. Scale the plants from tallest in the center to shortest at the edges.

Preplanned Gardens

I understand all of this Latin mumbo jumbo can be challenging for first time gardeners, it was for me. If you want a ready made solution, Direct Gardening provides a wide assortment of preplanned gardens designed to take all the guess work out of plant selection and placement.

Water Feature

Imagine the reflective beauty of a pond or the soft splashing of a man made waterfall. How about a 100 foot high waterslide? Maybe next year.

Do Your Lawn a Favor

Before you buy any vegetation, visit a real garden center for advice on drainage and soil preparation. Also, bring a copy of your plan; a soil sample and an extra credit card just in case you can’t wait years to make your backyard landscaping ideas come true.

Inexpensive Landscaping Ideas To Improve Your Yard

Are you the one who has the yard all the neighbors talk about? Maybe
your yard stands out for all the wrong reasons? If that is true for
you, turn things around by sprucing up your yard. Here’s some great inexpensive landscaping ideas to improve your yard
to assist you in transforming your yard! Sketching out a design of what
you would like your final landscaping job to look like is a good cheap
landscaping ideas that you will benefit from. You’ll be able to get a
clear idea of the results and the materials needed to achieve those
results. It’s way easier to do a drawing than to actually get physically
started.

Use local plants when fixing your yard. Native plants
are a lot easier to care of because they are already comfortable in
your climate and soil.

A softly curving border can give just the
right bit of focus and eye appeal that your landscape needs. The look
of soft curves is more popular now than the look of straight lines and
sharp corners. It does not cost much to cut fresh edges, and doing so
can transform the look of your flower beds and lawn. Another inexpensive
landscaping ideas to improve your yard is to use local plants when
landscaping. Plants which are native to the area are simpler to maintain
because they have are already used to the climate and soil. This means
that they are low-maintenance. Your local gardening store will be able
to advise you about the types of plants that will thrive in the area
that you live.

Test the pH and composition of your soil before
gardening or starting a landscaping project. This will enable you to
have happier plants as well as having a beautiful garden.


Select plants wisely, because that could seriously affect the result of
your overall landscaping project. It’s no good to wind up with plants
that thrive on sunlight tucked away in the shadiest part of your yard.
Don’t plant a tree in an area where it can’t grow to its full capacity.
The time taken to plan correctly will mean less time fixing mistakes
later. Landscaping encompasses a whole lot more than just planting
trees. To add distinctive beauty with texture, try using different
woods, cement or even wrought iron pieces. Interesting buildings and
structures such as archways, bird baths, gazebos and Pergolas are nice
additions. These things come in various price ranges that can fit
anyone’s budget.

Make the most of your yard look beautiful all
year by growing a garden suitable for many seasons. Select a wide
variety of plants, autumn, according to the region in which you live.


Knowing how to time your purchases at the right time can save you a lot
of money. The best time to buy lumber is during the winter. Buy organic
materials, like shrubs and mulch during the later part of the season.
When new plants become available, wait several years before purchasing
them so that the price is not so high. Landscaping isn’t limited to
experts anymore. Any do-it-yourself homeowner can easily make their yard
look fantastic with some work along with some inexpensive landscaping ideas to improve your yard
front and back. When you are all finished, your neighbors will indeed
be jealous of your new found skills. And isn’t that the result you are
after?

Landscape Lighting Ideas – Bring Out The Best In Your Landscaping

Many Design Options To Consider

When it comes to illuminating your landscape at night, there are so many different options available that it can be difficult to focus on just the most basic landscape lighting ideas. Indeed, with so many different things that can be lit in the landscape, you may not want to stop with only a few. Here are some landscape lighting ideas that will help you get started on your way towards a beautifully lit landscape.

Don’t Think Two Dimensionally

Most people that are looking to illuminate their landscape are really only thinking in two dimensional directions. You can throw light in any direction in order to enhance the landscaping and to really bring out a lot of dramatic effects in the outdoor environment.

Downlighting

Throwing the light onto the ground from low-voltage landscape lighting is an excellent way to dress up an area, but it is not the only thing that you should really be considering.

Up Lighting

Shining light up onto feature objects in the landscape is an excellent way to really make an impression. For example, arbors, trees or anything else that stands above the general landscaping can usually benefit from a little bit of lighting.

Wall Lighting

Along with that, you might try throwing a splash of light against any architectural features that are in the garden area, including the side of the house. Keep in mind, it is not always necessary for you to stick with white lighting although this is preferred by many people. Various colored light filters can bring out hidden characteristics of lighted object that may not be seen with white light.

Submersible Lighting

Do you have a pool or pond in your landscape area? You should try using some submersible lighting in order to add an interesting feature to this area as well. This is a good place for you to try out different colors and lights, and you can even get rotating lights that will continuously change the look of the underwater environment. It is important for you to make sure that these are installed by a qualified electrician however, and that you have everything hooked up properly to avoid shock hazard.

Focus Your Light

Finally, keep in mind that whenever you are looking for landscape lighting ideas that you do not focus on the source of the light but rather, on what it is illuminating. It is far better if you hide the source of the lighting and do not make it a feature in itself. Simply use it to make the outdoor environment more inviting and to create some dramatic effects by spreading the light around and illuminating feature points within the landscape area. Keep light focused on the areas you want to highlight and you will be pleasantly surprised at the result, and at how many other landscape lighting ideas will come to mind.