Seven Landscaping Tips that Offer the Best Return for Your Dollar

CNNMoney lists seven landscaping tips that offer the best return for your dollar as follows. They break the list down into two groups -- a set of suggestions if you're going to sell your house in a year or less and another if you're improving for the long-term. Let's start with the "less than a year" suggestions:

• Edge the beds
• Nourish the grass
• Scatter color throughout

Keys to these ideas: they aren't that expensive, so it's easy to see a good return on them.

Since our house could be on the market at any point (if we buy a new house), I've been taking a lot of extra time to make sure the outside looks good. The grass has been fertilized and edged, the roses are coming in nicely, our trees have been trimmed to best reflect upon the home, and my wife has planted flowers in the front. It's looking so good, we may not want to move! ;-)

As for longer-term pay-outs, here's the list from CNNMoney:

• Cut back the jungle
• Add drama with foliage
• Consider new angles
• Cover your rear

We have the first and last one already covered. I regularly trim/prune our trees, bushes, and plants to make sure their growth doesn't get too wild. And we have woods in our backyard, so it's already "covered." As for the other two tips, I have made several changes over the past few years. The biggest was that we removed three huge stones that were overgrown with a juniper bush from our front yard and replaced it with a rose garden. Much better indeed!

What else am I doing? I'll water the grass (at least in the front yard) throughout the summer, though based on the rain we had a week or so ago, I may not need to water until September. I'll also keep an eye out for weeds. I've put down weed killer, but those devils have a way of sneaking in the yard anyway if you aren't careful. ;-)

Comments

[Mass Affluent]

Another tip that will up the return if you can sell to a 'greenie' like myself is an 'organic' lawn - no fertilizer, no weedkiller, no chemicals, just a lot of hard work. Little dollar investment, except in your chiropractic bills. Trying to create an organic lawn is not for the faint of heart. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal did a story on her personal experiences in creating an organic lawn last year, and it didn't sound fun, although the payoff was rewarding.

[Kelly]

Weed killer=$5-10 a bottle
Weeding by hand=$0
Keeping your garden green=PRICELESS