For many sellers, the idea of curb appeal is a growing and even more ever-present part of getting a home in optimal condition to sell. There are some rule-of-thumb tips and tricks to improving curb appeal, but have you considered how much a backyard garden can improve the value of your listing?
Gardens are a great way both to boost curb appeal and to add to your personal sense of homeownership worth, but doing so in a way that won’t detract from your home’s value is crucial. Here are some ways backyard gardens can grow the value of your listing.
Curb Appeal
We’ve already mentioned it, but home gardens add massive curb appeal. Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer. What do you see when you first pull up to a home or first survey the property? Maybe you see a beautifully painted house with an inviting front door, but in all likelihood, you see the manicured yard or garden (or lack thereof).
Having a backyard garden is just another way of bolstering that curb appeal and giving yourself an opportunity to showcase the potential of your listing and allow your potential buyer to explore their own imagination. Backyard gardens that are flourishing, green, and reasonably kept can significantly boost your home’s value, especially if that garden can be maintained by future owners.
Back to the Basics
Having a backyard garden doesn’t necessarily mean planting hard-to-grow beautiful plants or flowers. It can be far simpler and, for many, it’s just a matter of normal maintenance. That maintenance can be as simple as mowing regularly, weeding, edging, and maintaining a green, lush yard. Note that you don’t necessarily need your lawn to look like Augusta National, but it helps to have a green lawn instead of a brown one.
Additionally, you can spend a little more time and money by placing pavers along highly trafficked areas of your lawn which will both give natural paths to parts of your yard while also adding a bit of “garden flare” and curb appeal. You can also accent your lawn with some perennial herbs and flowers and even use the age-old in-ground pots trick to trade out seasonal plants as needed.
Keep Your Style On Point
An easy way to actually detract from your home’s value is to create a garden environment or landscaping that doesn’t necessarily match the architecture of your home. In other words, refrain from matching a Southwestern style home with an English garden style. Not only do the two clash, but maintaining one style over the other could be both conflicting and challenging.
Instead, focus on matching your home’s architecture and marrying it with your gardening style. You don’t necessarily need to go all-out in matching style-for-style, but make sure the two don’t clash. Additionally, ensure that whatever garden style you go for can both be maintained by potential buyers as well as yourself while the listing is active. The last thing you want is an ornate garden that you can barely maintain passing along to someone who certainly can’t maintain it.
Money Matters
When it comes to lining out the right kind of garden for your home, money talks. You don’t necessarily need to break the bank, but in some instances, it’s well worth employing an experienced landscaper, architect, or lawn company to do the work for you and make sure that the money you’re putting in will add value to your or your client’s home.
