The Art of Curb Appeal Part Two: Landscaping Ideas

Landscaping might be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about curb appeal. Keeping your lawn well-manicured and your plants neatly trimmed are two obvious things to do to enhance the look of your home. Pat Noble Lumber wants to share some other landscaping ideas to help you bring out your home’s best.

Add Pops of Colour

Creating gardens or flower beds adds a little bit of everything to the curb appeal of your home, bringing colour, patterns and contour to your property – all three of which add to the visual appeal of your home.

Features like garden borders create separation between parts of your front lawn. Create a garden that follows the line of a driveway, pathway or patio to provide depth and enhance the straight lines of those features. Curved flower borders are popular as well, and their smooth contours add a flowing dimension to your gardens.

Once you have your gardens in place, carefully choose the plants you want to fill them. An important part of selecting the right plants is knowing which plants will work with the proportions of your home. Choose plants that won’t grow to overtake the spaces you plant them. Curb appeal is all about different parts of your home complementing each other, so an overgrown plant covering your new windows or fancy lighting will detract from the look you want to accomplish.

It’s easy to envision your gardens to have every colours of the rainbow. While that may look good in some circumstances, simply adding structure and patterns to your gardens may be more realistic. Place flowers with alternating colours to attract the eye in a front garden or along a driveway. Plant flowers that bloom at different heights to create a vertical pattern. Researching the features of the plants you have and learning how to maintain them on a regular basis will keep your gardens blooming beautifully.

Make Impact with Lighting

It’s not enough for your beautiful gardens and landscape features to shine all day. Your home can show its curb appeal through the night as well. Here are some ways to enhance the look of your home with light.

It’s important not to overdo landscape lighting – the focus should be on what is being lit, not on the lights themselves. Also, the colour temperature affects the intensity of the lights. For landscape lighting, a colour temperature on the warmer side of the spectrum, around 2700k, is ideal.

A popular outdoor lighting project could be on a pathway to your house. Solar lights are ideal for this, so no need to worry about wires. Instead of placing your lights directly across from each other on the path, stagger them one after the other from left to right, maintaining the best light coverage with a minimal number of lights.

Another idea is to shine a light on your favourite plants. If you have a beautiful tree in your front yard, consider lighting it as a focal point of your landscape. Flood lights are the best type of lighting for trees. The type of tree you have will dictate how you position your lights. If you have a pine tree, place two lights out from under the canopy and aim their light up the sides of the tree. If you have a deciduous tree, place the lights under the canopy and aim up at the leaves, just barely highlighting the top of the trunk.

Accents Are Your Friends

Adding hardscape features gives you another place to plant flowers and light up at night. Building a retaining wall adds structure and practicality to your front yard. Consider building up the area around a tree with ground and constructing a low wall underneath it. Then you can create a garden space within the wall around the tree.

Adding hardscaping elements to your gardens allows you to create a unique setup for your plants. A broken piece of pottery half buried in the soil makes a perfect hideout for plants that enjoy the shade. Small accents like a fountain can enhance the look of your gardens, but remember to pay attention to the proportions of your home. A fountain shouldn’t tower over the area, but also shouldn’t be hidden by nearby plants. Also, choose a colour and style that matches that of your home, be it modern or older.

Benches are another practical feature that you can add to boost your home’s curb appeal. If you’re building a large retaining wall, you could create a built-in bench as part of the wall. A bench placed on patio stones under a well-lit tree is another great focal point for your yard.

If you have any questions or need more information, feel free to visit Pat Noble Lumber for assistance. We would be happy to help you in any way we can.