Landscape Planning with a Purpose: Seven Reasons to Renovate |

Landscape Planning with a Purpose: Seven Reasons to Renovate

| By Roy Rasmussen | Category: Outdoor

Landscape improvements can enhance the look of your lawn and garden, but they can also serve a variety of practical purposes. Redesigning your property’s landscape can make it easier for you to sell your home, make it easier for you to make full use of your home while you’re living there, and protect your home from the elements. Here are seven practical reasons why you might consider giving your yard a landscape makeover.

1. Add Curb Appeal

When it comes time to sell your home, a big key to attracting potential buyers will be the curb appeal of the view visitors see when they first get a glimpse of your property in a photograph or a live visit. There are a number of ways you can improve the curb appeal of your property:

Select a mailbox that matches the look of your home and makes it stand out from other properties. On some properties the mailbox may be the first thing people see when they approach. The lettering on your mailbox is like your property’s signature.
Enhance your driveway and walkway. Fill in any cracks. Consider upgrading asphalt to stone or brick. Add decorative border trim by using brick, stone, fencing, or vegetation.
Maintain your lawn. Keep it trimmed, weeded, and raked. If you are inclined to invest more time in lawn, take additional improvement measures, such as optimizing your watering and nutrient procedures, periodic aeration, and composting.
Plant decorative vegetation.
Maintain and repair your roof.
Repaint your exterior, especially the shutters, trim, and railings.
Get a better front door. Studies have found that improving the look of the front door can increase the perceived value of a home by several thousand dollars.
Improve the look of your door decorations, such as handles, light fixtures, house numbers, and doormats.
Balance the symmetry of light fixtures and decorations flanking your front door.
Improve your front porch. Wide bungalow-style front porches are particularly popular.
Decorate your windows.
Get a better garage door.
Add weather-resistant outdoor decorations, such as wind chimes, sculptures, birdbaths, or sundial garden accessories.
Install outdoor lighting and accent lighting. Lighting brightens the mood of your property, and can bring out colors and decorative elements.

2. Make Your Home and Yard More Accessible

Landscape redesign can help make your home and yard more accessible. Accessibility can be limited by factors such as obstructed walkways or driveways, vegetation blocking passage around the sides of the house, lack of pathways in backyard and garden areas, and depressions that cause precipitation to collect. Additionally, some areas may be accessible for some people but inaccessible for the elderly or handicapped.

Such issues can be addressed by measures such as:

Repairing, improving, and adding paths.
Adding ramps and automated gates.
Clearing obstructive vegetation.
Making gardening areas require less kneeling by installing raised beds, pots and baskets, and hanging baskets.
Improving drainage in areas prone to collect precipitation.

3. Add Outdoor Living Space

Another excellent reason to consider landscape renovation is to add outdoor living space. You can expand your outdoor living space by:

Expanding or adding a porch.
Extending or building a deck.
Adding a court.
Creating an outdoor room.
Clearing vegetation or cultivating it into a garden.
Installing a swimming pool.
Building a basketball court.

4. Give Yourself More Privacy

Landscape changes can also give you more privacy. Privacy can be enhanced by measures such as:

Building fences.
Planting hedges to visually emphasize property lines.
Growing trees to create visual barriers around private areas.

5. Adjust Light and Shade

Trees and other vegetation can also help you adjust light and shade conditions in your yard and around your windows. Plant vegetation to add shade, or trim it to add light.

6. Shield Your Home from the Wind

Likewise, trees can help shield your home from wind. Over time or during strong weather, wind can potentially damage your roof, walls, and paint. Trees can help blunt the erosive impact of wind on your home.

7. Avoid Drainage Problems

Most major landscaping projects will require you to take steps to avoid drainage problems, which is a beneficial landscaping project in its own right. Drainage problems can damage the foundation of your home, as well as harming your lawn and garden and limiting your ability to use your yard.

To address drainage problems, you should investigate both surface and subsurface water patterns and analyze how these patterns are affecting your home’s foundation.

To investigate surface water patterns, wait for a rainstorm. Look to see where the water travels and accumulates. Also pay attention to erosion patterns. Basic surface drainage issues can be addressed by either reshaping the ground to divert the flow or adding a pipe. Larger drainage issues may demand stronger measures like catch basins, drainage chimneys, dry wells, and irrigating.
To analyze subsurface water patterns, do a test for soil porosity. Dig a two-foot hole and fill it with water. If the water disappears within 24 hours, the soil porosity is too high. If the water remains after 48 hours, the soil density is too high. If the water level gradually rises, the water table level is too high. Subsurface drainage problems can usually be addressed by correcting surface drainage issues, but some problems may require measures that go below the surface, like adjusting the soil or laying underground drainage systems.