How to Upgrade Your Home’s Exterior Landscaping

Upgrading your home’s exterior landscaping is a brilliant way of overhauling your house with minimal effort. It will not only make your home more appealing but also make your house more energy efficient in the long run. It is for these reasons that home improvement scammers often get your hopes up to get you to pay for exterior landscape upgrades, but there are some simple things you can do without them, which will vastly improve the look and feel of your home. Here are ways to upgrade your home’s exterior landscaping.

1. Create a Welcoming Front Porch

The appearance of a house is often set by how welcoming its front door looks, and making your home look welcoming is easy. Add a coat of paint, remove excess clutter and ensure your plants are well-kept. Having an inviting porch can also increase your home’s safety if you live in a neighborhood with criminals lurking around. A front porch is both an aesthetically appealing upgrade and a safety feature.

2. Trim Trees Near Your Roof

Trees are beautiful but can be very dangerous if they grow too close to your house. It may not seem like much when you have a tree 10 feet away from your roof, but leaves and branches falling off the tree are common during springtime when trees are in full bloom. However, if you trim the branches away from your roof, the chances of damage to your house become slim to none.

3. Add a Water Feature to Your Front Yard

The same concept of adding a water feature to your backyard is also a great idea for your front yard, but it will be more expensive. However, unlike your backyard, an outdoor water feature in your front yard will be visible to everyone who enters your neighborhood. It’s also worth adding one if you want to increase the safety of your home. Breaking into someone’s home without being noticed is much harder when you have a water fountain on the front lawn.

Proper grading and yard maintenance can prevent water from draining toward your foundation, leading to hydrostatic pressure, bowing walls, leaks, and structural cracks. This pressure forms when groundwater builds up in the soil around your foundation and has nowhere to go, causing it to force itself against your basement walls.

4. Switch Your House’s Siding

Your exterior landscaping is only as good as the materials it’s made of, and your house’s siding is an important part of its look. If you want to upgrade your home’s exterior landscaping, don’t just put new siding on your house, but switch to a different material like metal or brick. This will give your home a unique look while making it more energy efficient.

5. Add the Right Lighting

Since upgrading your home’s exterior landscaping is so affordable, you’re able to choose to add the right type of lighting to improve the look of your home. Lights are also a great way for you to control how much sunlight comes in and how bright it is. This can be beneficial for anyone with asthma or other breathing conditions, but for those without this issue, lights can make their homes look more attractive by adding some beauty to the exterior.

6. Install an Artificial Turf

If you have grass in your backyard, you likely spend a lot of time on it during summer. However, doing so can be very damaging to your grass. Artificial turf, which is affordable and easier to maintain than natural grass, is a great way to keep your grass healthy and attractive. One downside is that artificial turf can add up to costs over time. For example, if you live in Georgia, looking into having professionals that specialize in artificial turf installation in Atlanta come out to your home to do the installation can add more than just a new look to your home, it can also save you money in the long run.

7. Change Your Landscaping Seasonally

By changing how you landscape your exterior largely based on the seasons, you can create an appealing and appealing look for your home all year round. Not only does it look good during the spring and summer, but it’s also beautiful during the dead of winter when it’s covered in snow. Seasonal landscaping enables your home to look good at any point of the year.

8. Add Interest to Your Fences

Simple changes can also improve your backyard, including dressing up your fences. Adding extra material like rope or vine lighting to your fence is an easy way to make it appear more attractive and appealing. This can be especially helpful for those looking for an easy way to add more privacy in their backyards, making it harder for people outside to see what you’re doing inside your home. This is a great way to increase the safety of your home.

9. Add Landscaping Around Your Driveway

You can also make your driveway more beautiful by adding landscaping around it. This can be as simple as planting flowers or shrubs, but it will also make your driveway more aesthetically appealing. The most important part about adding landscaping around your driveway is removing that ugly curb on the sides. This can be hard to do, but it’s worth the effort.

10. Add a Backyard Fire Pit to Your Backyard

The final thing you can do to make your backyard more beautiful is to add a fire pit. This is beneficial for anyone who likes throwing parties or having guests over, and it’s associated with many outdoor activities like entertaining or spending time with friends and family outdoors. However, you should ensure that no one throws their cigarette ends in the fire pit. A fire pit also adds some much-needed flare to your backyard.

11. Plant the Right Flowers

There are plenty of flowers that are great for your home, but there are also several flowers and plants that aren’t recommended due to how they can affect your home’s exterior over time. Jasmine, for example, is a beautiful-smelling plant that attracts many insects; however, the plant’s roots dig deep into the ground and can cause damage to your foundation. Flowers like spider mums, ivy, and blackberry are other plants that are not recommended due to these issues.

12. Choose the Right Foliage

This same idea can apply to your foliage as well. Oak trees are beautiful but need a lot of water and excessive fertilizer. Azaleas and rhododendrons require a lot of water as well. Both plants are beautiful and can add beauty to your home’s exterior, but they may not be the best choice due to how much maintenance they require, which may cause damage to other parts of your home over time. Foliage makes your home look more attractive, but too much foliage can attract too many insects.

13. Choose the Right Plants

On the other hand, there are plenty of plants that are beautiful and popular, but they don’t require a lot of maintenance. For example, blue hydrangeas do not require as much water as other plants, making them an easy way to increase your home’s exterior. Another simple but beautiful plant is spider mums. Blue spider mums can be used for a natural flower arrangement, but the blooms are very small, and the plant has many sharp thorns. The blue spidermum flowers are also a natural alternative to artificial turf.

Conclusion

Upgrading your home’s exterior landscaping doesn’t take much time or money. It only takes some simple steps and changes to make your home look more beautiful and appealing. While not all of the ideas listed here will be useful for everyone, it’s worth trying a few out to see how you can enhance the look of your home.