1. Fit garden and verge design to style of house
The best way to get an excellent return on investment with landscaping is to make sure it fits with the style of your home. In this instance, you’re much better off with a country or cottage-style landscape that blends in with the old-fashioned formality of your home. The same holds true for more modern home styles. If your home falls into one of these categories, you’ll want to stay away from square, formal gardens or a profusion of airy blooms. Instead, create a more modern landscape by relying on plenty of greenery and natural-looking beds that fit the contours of your property.
2. Choose a simple design
You’ll need to have a good design. That means you shouldn’t clutter the entire garden with various high-maintenance plantings, but you also shouldn’t have plain grass with no landscaping. Select a simple plan with some diversity among your plantings without taking it too far. The ideal landscape has a good mixture of shrubs and perennials, but it doesn’t have one of every kind of plant that you can find at the nursery. Instead, it has a uniform look with just enough diversity to make it interesting, but not so little that it becomes boring. Avoid a design so complex that the thought of maintenance will chase away potential buyers.
3. Achieve Seasonal Balance
A profusion of spring blooms won’t interest potential buyers who look at your home during other parts of the year. Think about ways to make your landscape attractive all year —pots or selected areas of blooming bulbs for spring, annual beds around the house during the summer, shrubs with brightly coloured leaves in the autumn, and evergreens and carefully planted up pots for the winter. Even though most buyers will be looking at your home during one season, they’ll notice the balance you’ve created and they’ll think about how beautiful the home will be as the seasons change. Small, neat vegetable and fruit kitchen gardens are currently highly popular and underline the care you take of your property and family.
4. Plant Trees
A few simple trees can make an enormous difference to the sale price of your home. In studies in the USA, simply living on a tree-lined street added between 10 to 15 percent to the sale price compared to neighbourhoods with fewer trees. So why are trees worth so much? Trees remove carbon dioxide and pollution from the air, so people view them as an eco-friendly option. The shade helps keep neighbourhoods and homes cooler and more pleasant, which in turn cuts air conditioning costs. Trees are also a stress reliever — people enjoy relaxing in their shade or gazing at the leafy view. Just be careful to find out about selected trees rooting habits and growth potential to ensure you choose trees suitable for suburban gardens.
5. Maintain your garden and hard landscaping
Neatly edged healthy lawns give a great first impression It shows prospective buyers how meticulous you have been concerning the property’s upkeep. They’ll know that if you’re willing to keep the garden, braai area, tool shed and garden ornaments freshly painted and clean, generally looking nice, the rest of the property is likely in pristine condition, too.
6. Waterwise gardening
We in South Africa are having to accept our country has a water scarcity. We are under water restrictions across the whole country. Choose indigenous plants and succulents which are drought hardy and also very colourful in your garden design. Also consider using hard landscaping including rocks, pebbles, gravel and driftwood which can add so much character.
7. Share plants
In these times of economic challenge, try to share plants as much as you can with your neighbours. JOIN OUR GARDENING CLUB – our members have awesome gardens simply teeming with beautiful indigenous plants that we are happy to share!
By Francesca Beattie with thanks to the contribution of Rick Ryan who is the president and owner of All Valley Landscaping