The Best Ways To Improve Your Front Yard

Like wrapping a present in shiny gift wrappers or putting a cover on a book, improving your home’s curb appeal is all about enticing people to look further. After all, your home’s exterior sets the stage for what’s inside. To increase the curb appeal you should be aware of the best ways to improve your front yard.

But you can refresh and repair the outside of your home and still watch potential homebuyers pass by without giving your house a second glance, especially if your front yard is overgrown, dying, or just plain ugly. Is there anything you can do?

It’s simple: landscaping.

Whether you choose to spruce up the garden with new flowers or hiring professional tree removers, fixing up your yard enhances its look, as well as impresses your neighbors and potential homebuyers in the future.

Some homeowners, however, are hesitant to start a landscaping project, thinking that it’s a time-consuming and expensive process. It is, but all of these projects are worth it if you’re improving your home’s functionality through a better front yard or planning to sell your home in the future. Plus, you can do many landscaping projects over the weekend without compromising your budget.

Consider the following landscaping ideas that improve your front yard.

Add Some Lighting to Your Front Yard

Lighting enhances the look of your garden and the best thing is, most lighting models are inexpensive. Some lights cost $20 or less, plus most of them are solar-powered. All you have to do is choose the light colors that you want, install them along your walkway, or border a flowerbed and let them light up and improve your front yard, especially at night.

You can also add lighting features like lanterns or fake rocks with integrated lights that blend into your backyard.

Add Rock Features

Even if you don’t use rocks for the bed border of your yard, adding more stones or rocks gives your landscape a more natural accent. Apart from the aesthetic purposes, rocks can also improve your garden’s functionality. For example, improve your rain gutters by installing a rock spillway to keep your yard from getting too muddy. You can also add pea gravel borders to your walkway or break up a garden bed with stones. All of these elements will improve your front yard.

Plant More Ground Cover to Hide Unsightly Areas

As much as you want your garden to be symmetrical, not all gardens are flat or have grass growing all over the place. Add greenery and color to areas where slopes or shade make it difficult for grass to grow by using a ground cover. Regular maintenance ensures your ground cover looks clean and professional without shadowing parts of the yard where grass grows.

Upgrade Bed Borders To Improve Your Front Yard

Spruce up your flowerbeds by refreshing or upgrading their flowerbeds. Doing so changes the look of the flowers, plants and features of the flowerbed. Pre-made blocks, pavers and natural stone retained with a lawn edge kit can help you achieve this job and improve your front yard.

Rethink Your Foundation Plants

Avoid treating your foundation plants as if they are soldiers that line your home’s perimeters. If you’re not careful, you could have plants blocking your windows in a few years. If you live in a two-story home, all plants should extend at least eight feet from your home. Also, when choosing which planting shrubs to plant, consider how they will look in five years.

Add a Buffer of Plants to Create Privacy

If you want to improve your home’s privacy in style, and still improve the front yard look, a buffer of shrubs does the trick. The buffer includes a variety of plants and flowers at different heights to accomplish the function of a fence or a solid hedge. You can also block the view from a specific part of the front yard or room by planting shrubs or a couple of trees with strategic precision.

Refresh Your Yard by Hauling Out Old Mulch

If your garden has mulch, it’s time to refresh it. Mulch dries out, which can leave your garden beds looking worse for wear. Refresh your landscaping and improve your front yard with dark-colored mulch that contrasts the colors of the flowers and shrubbery. Once you’re done, treat yourself to an expensive Starbucks drink.

Plant a Shade Tree or an Ornamental Colored Tree

With either brilliant fall colors or bright spring blossoms, a hardwood tree planted in your garden promotes years of beautiful greenery to your landscape. While some tree varieties are expensive and require more care, most trees are resilient, hardy and budget-friendly.

If you want to add a pop of color and improve your front yard, plant an ornamental tree. Colorful trees, like the Japanese maple, give your yard a bright focal point. Japanese maples can be expensive so ask your local tree expert for affordable ornamental trees.