If you’re planning to sell your house, how important is it to spruce up the landscaping out front?
Put down that paint brush and grab your gardening gloves instead.
Does landscaping increase home value? It absolutely does.
Virginia Tech research says a well-landscaped home has a 5.5% to 12.7% price advantage over a home with no landscaping.
And landscape economists say good landscaping can add up to 28% to a home’s overall value.
Want more proof? The American Society of Landscape Architects claims professional landscaping can increase a home’s price tag 15% to 20% more at the time of resale.
Great landscaping improves a property’s appearance almost immediately.
Get ready to learn more about:
- Fertilizing
- Zapping Weeds
- Wise Watering
- Mowing Tall
- Aeration
- Quality Grass Seed
- Giving Grubs the Boot
- Plant Health Care
Landscaping for home value starts with improving your lawn’s health. A thriving green carpet of green out front is the best welcome mat. (That one you have with the llama on it is cool, too.)
Start with Fertilizer: Food for Your Hungry Lawn
Life gets busy. Some days you can forget to feed yourself, much less your lawn.
But landscaping for resale value requires a green and healthy lawn, and that means you need regular fertilizing. Here’s a handy schedule:
- Mid-to-Late April, once the soil temperature reaches 55 degrees.
- Three times during the summer growing season: mid-May, around the end of June, and in early to mid-August.
- Fall. Don’t skip this one —it’s important. The final fertilizer treatment in fall includes important slow-release granular fertilizer that feeds your hungry lawn for the winter and gives it a great quick start in the spring.
Don’t cheap out on fertilizer. Quality matters.
Buy lawn fertilizer at a local garden center or fertilizer supplier rather than a big box store. Better yet, hire a lawn care service with pro-level products.
Zap Those Weeds for Curb Appeal Landscaping
Nobody pulls up to an open house on a Sunday afternoon and admires the weedy front lawn.
Get on board with professional weed control that includes pre-emergent weed treatment in the spring, to battle weeds before they sprout; broadleaf applications to hit dandelions and clover; and spot treatments when annoying intruders sneak in.
Meanwhile, weeds hate a thick, healthy lawn. Dense grass crowds out weeds and blocks the sunlight their seeds need to sprout.
So beat weeds by keeping your grass thick, lush, and healthy with a lawn care service annual maintenance program for healthy, strong roots.
Water Wisely
Landscaping for resale value means having healthy grass that gets enough water, but not too much. Be strategic about watering.
Early morning is the best time — it’s still cool, so all that valuable water won’t evaporate in the hot sun.
Resist the urge to water every day. If you water too often, it encourages shallow, needy roots. Water less often but deeply, and roots will grow deeper and healthier.
Mow Tall
When you’re trying to keep things tidy outside for potential home buyers, it’s tempting to mow your grass short, so it stays looking nice for longer. Short grass is best for curb appeal landscaping, right?
Common mistake.
Cutting your grass too short stresses the grass, and makes it more susceptible to damage from insects and disease. Never cut off more than a third of the grass blade at any one time.
That way, the grass will develop a deeper root system to support the longer blades and need less water. That leads to a fuller, greener, more impressive lawn — and better landscaping home value.
Patchy Grass? Consider Aeration
Does your lawn still seem to struggle, even though you think you’re doing everything right? Or, let’s be honest, mostly right?
Is it patchy instead of thick and lush? It might be gasping for breath.
When your soil becomes compacted, your lawn can't breathe. Its roots can't take in water or nutrients, which weakens your turf and opens the door for disease and weeds.
Aeration uses a machine to pull out tiny cores of soil from your lawn, allowing water and oxygen to get to the roots.
Then, time for seed…
Quality Grass Seed Matters
All those little holes created by aeration are perfect cozy homes for new grass seed to revitalize your lawn for the best curb appeal landscaping.
Choose the best grass seed for Idaho — a mix of 80 percent Kentucky bluegrass and 20 percent perennial ryegrass.
Unlike a single-variety grass seed, blends give you the benefits of more than one variety or species. Blends are also more likely to withstand diseases than single-species lawns, because of their genetic diversity.
That's all a super-sciencey way of saying quality grass seed is a factor when you want to improve your lawn for landscaping resale value.
Get Rid of Grubs
Nothing can wreck a lawn fast like grubs.
The slimy beetle babies feed on grass roots and organic matter in the soil, causing sections of grass to turn brown, dry, and wilted. And it can happen fast — like the week before your open house.
The trick is to kill grubs before they hatch and start to chow down, so opt for professional preventive lawn grub control in the spring to nip them in the bud.
Timing is everything, and you don’t need the hassle.
How Do Your Plants, Trees and Shrubs Look?
Your lawn isn’t the only thing out front that can either impress potential buyers or make them keep driving.
Your plants, trees and shrubs are the foundation of your landscaping, and they need to be healthy and thriving for the best curb appeal landscaping.
They go through a lot out there.
Bugs munch on them. Diseases strike. And they're probably starving.
Plant health care pros can swoop in with fertilizer, bug control, disease treatments and the skills and training to use them, giving your landscaping a boost that improves their health and appearance, from strong roots to glossy leaves to plentiful, pretty flowers.
Need to Spruce Up for Curb Appeal Landscaping? Trust Lawn Buddies
Impressive curb appeal landscaping involves a lot of different elements. Tidy up those front yard shrubs. Plop some big planters of pretty flowers on the porch.
But a healthy green lawn plays a huge part.
Potential home buyers want to see your front yard and envision themselves out there, tossing a ball around with their kids on a soft carpet of grass and welcoming visitors to their housewarming party who say, “Wow, nice lawn.”
Does a good lawn increase home value? You bet.
But a healthy lawn takes a lot of work, and the right knowledge. You have better things to do than toil in your yard every weekend, right? You have a house to sell.
Why not leave it to the pros?
If you want simple, hassle-free lawn care in Idaho Falls or Boise, ID that offers quality core lawn care services for a healthy, impressive lawn, it doesn’t get easier than Lawn Buddies.
No stressing about which complicated combination of lawn care services will get you beautiful, healthy grass.
You don’t have time to fuss with all that. Give yourself a break.
Welcome to one premium, six-visit lawn care program that includes everything your lawn needs to grow healthy and green.
Fertilizer, weed treatments, and grub control, all wrapped up in six visits, each perfectly timed throughout the season, so your grass is green and strong and resists weeds. Add on plant health care services to keep the rest of your landscaping buyer ready.
We’ve got your back.
Got a few minutes? That’s all you need to get started. Just fill out the form on this page, call us at (208) 656-9131 or read more about our services. Then you can kick back and relax in your healthy, thriving yard.
