Landscape Gardening: Revalue Your Home

Did you know attractive foliage and landscaping will increase the value of your home and make it more inviting? Spring, late summer and fall are ideal times of the year to upgrade your home, especially the landscape and gardens. Hopefully, the following ideas will add to your list of possibilities, or perhaps lead you to some creative answers of your own.

One easy way to begin is by a trip to the local garden centers in your area. Potted plants, bushes and shrubs are at peak sale in the summer and many are on sale during the oncoming fall. Buying a plant, shrub or vine in growth at the garden center and bringing it home to plant is a form of transplanting that requires daily attention, ideally water in the morning and evening on hot days, mid-day causes evaporation before the roots receive water. Mulching is best for protecting the base and roots of plants over the winter and can be applied in October or November, or just before winter frosts begin. Removal should be in early spring to avoid rotting underneath from spring rains. For a better success rate, seeded flowering plants may be started indoors in small pots. Any plants brought indoors for the winter should be done gradually, or acclimated slowly. Bring outdoors several hours each day, and indoors overnight. Continue this adjustment process for several weeks to give plants a chance to get established. Observant people who grow plants indoors usually realize how moving an adjusted plant from one room to another or changing its lighting is enough to weaken it. The same regimen is required in the spring for adjustment from indoors to outdoors, and it must be gradual.