Getting The Best Price For Your Home Includes Landscaping For
By Michael J. McGroarty, Fri Dec 9th
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If you own a home, then sooner or later you are going to beready to sell that home. Maybe you've already sold a home ortwo. People tend to move more often than our parents did.
There are a lot of things that go into getting the best possibleprice for your home, but the very first thing your home needs iscurb appeal. When a prospective buyer, or a realtor for thatmatter, pulls up in front of your home, they immediately form anopinion about your house. Fair or not, that's what people do.You can have the most beautiful home in the city, but ifprospective buyers don't get a super positive feeling about yourhouse the minute they lay eyes on it, they are going to enterand 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 thingsthey see. A house, and the landscaping in front of that house.If the landscaping is unattractive, the house will appear to beunattractive. Landscaping for curb appeal does not cost a lot ofmoney, it's simply a matter of making sure the landscaping isneat, with well defined edges, and colorful. But whenlandscaping for curb appeal, the most important thing you needto do is to raise the beds with topsoil. Of course you have todo this before you plant.
Plants do much better in raised beds, and the plants in the bedsreally stand out. In order to raise the beds around your houseyou do not have to buy expensive stones and build retainingwalls. Just establish the outline of the planting beds, cut anedge into the soil with a spade, and fill the planting beds withapproximately ten inches of good rich topsoil. You'd be amazedat how much you can raise a planting bed without any type ofretention.
Here are two more things you don't need:
Plastic edging. It's expensive, a lot of work to install, and itnever stays in place. You can cut an edge with a spade and yourlandscape will actually look better. Then you can make the bed alittle larger any time you need to.
The other thing you definitely do not need is weed controlfabric. The stuff just doesn't work. The weeds grow right on topof the fabric, then root through the fabric making it evenharder to keep your beds weed free. You'll find a really goodarticle on weed control on my website.
When landscaping for curb appeal, plant placement and selectionis very important. In a corner bed you need a centerpiece. Ilike Canadian Hemlock because they are evergreen and provide anexcellent background for more colorful plants. In front of theHemlock you can use a bright colored evergreen like Gold ThreadCypress, but don't use too many. Usually three is all you want.Around the backside of the same bed you can use a darkerevergreen like Taxus or even a flowering shrub that you keeptrimmed down low like Weigela. Lots of colors are
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