Landscaping Curb appeal
A cheaper way to landscape and create curb appeal. You can use these tips for selling your home or just to create a nicer looking front yard.
If you are thinking of putting your home on the market this spring, there is an inexpensive way to add more curb appeal. You can take advantage of the discounts and sales at your local nursery. Now that most people of bought there perennials and annuals, most plant stores are trying to clear out all their stock for the fall cool season and winter. Look for ornamental trees like flowering cherry and crab apple. Shrubs like junipers and azaleas that were expensive to buy in the spring will probably be reduced in price.
When you are selling your home color and texture is everything when someone is driving by just to look. Real estate agents always try to get a lot of color into the picture of your home.
1. If you have a post, lamp posts work the best you can make it into a floral column. Simply by planting a climbing vine like a clematis. They like full sun, but should still have some type of ground cover, at the base to keep the roots cool. Low growing evergreens or junipers work well for this.
To grow evenly around the post you should place thin fencing wire or netting all around and to a height just below the top. If you can't find a clematis plant on sale a climbing rose would work also.
2. Nothing is uglier than a bare or grass border down a driveway, it is not very inviting. It is simple enough to turn this area into a color spectacle. You do need to control the color and when flowers are in bloom they should compliment the color of your home.
An example of this would be, if your siding is white, you only need a few white flowers along the driveway. Too much white blooms will make it look washed out. Add a few purple blooms like flowering catmint, a few yellow daisies and maybe a few clumps of ornamental grass, black and silver. Make sure nothing grows too tall, you are trying to create contrast. Short flowers near the front with the larger ones closer to the grass.
3. For the front entrance containers are best because they can be moved around for different effects. Unless your home is a greek style try to stay with the round smooth urns.
Most of the time you will want annuals in these planters, but you should still have one or two with a perennial planted in it. Boxwood is a very hardy plant that you can grow in a pot that stays green all year round. You can also grow Japanese maples in pots if they are watered on a regular basis.
4. You can dress up your porch and patio area with tall hydrangeas on the corners and boxwood along the edges. Big leaf hostas hide railings really well. If you have full sun on your patio, climbing roses with tulips, crocus and daffodils, will give you color at different times of the year.
