Veronica Berg
These 15 tips will help you improve your home’s curb appeal and save money in the process. When we bought our home in 2001, the shrubs in our front yard were original to the house–it was built in 1969! Our front yard landscaping deserved an update, but we didn’t want to break the bank.
We considered hiring someone to help us design and install our front yard landscaping, but we typically are do-it-yourselfers and my husband was the one that convinced me that, “we can do it!”. Whether you are creating a foundation, entry planting or a border, I hope our lessons learned will help you improve your curb appeal and save you a buck or two. Front Yard Landscaping: 15 Tips to Help You DIY and Save Money too!
Take ‘before’ and ’empty’ photos of the area that you want to landscape from different angles and through out the season. With the grid paper, you can draw it out to scale, which will be very helpful when placing plants.
Some areas get morning sun and afternoon shade and vice versa.
Your local garden nursery is likely to only have the plants compatible with your zone, but if you buy through a catalog or online, you will want to know this number.
Here is a Plant Hardiness Zone Map or you can ask someone at your local garden center. Walk or drive around different neighborhoods for visual ideas of design and plants.
We drove through an upscale neighborhood, thinking we would be ‘wowed’ by the landscaping, but I was disappointed with the lack of originality of the designs. Head to the library for landscaping books and magazines to get ideas for plants and design. Visit multiple and local garden nurseries to look around for ideas and plant suggestions. Usually the nurseries are set up in sections by sun, shade, perennial, shrubs, evergreens, etc.
When we were designing our front yard, we visited 3 different garden centers and I asked a lot of questions. We consider the bay window the front, center and focal point of ours and were disappointed with the results of our first choice.
To create more color, I want to add annual flowers for more summer blooming. When your landscaping is finished, people might ask you what the name of a particular plant or shrub is and you will be able to tell them with pride, ‘that is a silversword azalea’.
Laurels for our front landscaping, a PA native and our state flower.
Any good garden center will have this information ready to give you when you check out and pay for your plants.
Your garden center might also offer a warranty for a plant that died, but was clearly taken care of properly. We saved $15 recently on our new shrubs from coupons that were printed in the newspaper and bonus book.
The process of designing, preparing, and installing your landscape area might take you several months. That is okay because curb appeal is important to the overall beauty of your home and its resale potential.
Landscaping can also be a costly project, but if you’re up for the task you will save a lot of money by doing some or all of it yourself.
By carefully planning out your area, you will most likely design a beautiful space to be very proud of.
