Grow Your Home’s Value with These DIY Landscaping Tips
Ready for a new custom Florida home but need to sell your current home first?
Most of us do. You probably know that the interior of your existing home should be clean, uncluttered and attractively staged in order to sell, but so does the exterior. Both views matter for prospective buyers, and neglecting one at the expense of the other may cost you some critical time and offers.
The front of your home and whatever yard that encircles it, makes the biggest first impressions. You need those to be positive, not negative, and sometimes you just can’t solve them with a lawn mower and a hedge trimmer. Nor do you want to sink a ton of money into the transformation.
We get it. That’s why we’re here with do-it-yourself landscaping tips that don’t involve hiring a landscaper. Read on to discover how to “grow” your existing home’s value.
Fix the major issues if necessary
No one wants to pay for dead tree removal or to fix the sprinkler system. You may have to, either to avoid the reduction in your home’s selling price, or having to do it last-minute to satisfy a contract contingency. Unless you’re a contractor or builder — or, at the least, an accomplished DIY-er — it’s probably less time-consuming and thriftier in the long run to hire these jobs out.
If you know you have one or two major exterior repairs or renovations, take care of those first. Ask for recommendations, get several quotes and be done with it. Then you can tackle the doable, DIY projects yourself — and with even more motivation to keep those costs low.
Plant easy stuff
Do NOT go overboard and design a completely new landscaping plan for your existing yard, unless it’s truly something you want to do. Or, someone else volunteers a plan for free!
Non-gardening home sellers can get advice from employees at home-improvement stores’ garden centers (take some phone photos for show-and-tell). Gardening home sellers know the tried-and-true perennials and annuals that thrive in their area, so they’ll have a bit of a head start.
Regardless, stick with timeless plants and colors.
A neat, lovely bed of blooming pink petunias is far more pleasing than a hodgepodge of this and that because you thought a solitary color was boring. Bonus points if you select your plantings from the sales tables and clearance areas. Just steer clear of icky-looking plants (they’re marked down for a reason).
One more tip: consider the exterior style of your existing home before you go shopping. Planting vivid tropical shrubs around a staid Colonial house likely will look off-kilter.
Mulch everything
Mulch is your DIY secret weapon. Baled pine straw, or bagged cypress or pine bark, can hide a multitude of bare, unattractive ground under shrubbery, in flower beds and as delineation around tree trunks.
Plus, mulch helps plants retain water — which makes watering them more energy-efficient — and helps squelch weeds.
But don’t go mulch-crazy. You’ve probably seen the Florida cliche of an aged home fronted by a white-gravel yard— and maybe a birdbath. Just don’t.
prospective buyers, and neglecting one at the expense of the other may cost you some critical time and offers.
