A Spectacular Spring

4 Landscaping Trends To Consider When Updating Your Home In 2017

8 February 2017 by Terri Holmes

If you want to invest in your home, landscaping is a great place to start. Not only will a healthy lawn, lush shrubbery, shady trees, and colorful flowers improve your home's curb appeal, but they can also increase its overall value. While surprising for most people to learn, good landscape design can increase your home's value by up to 28 percent. Unfortunately, you may not know where to begin when updating your landscaping. With one or more of these landscaping trends to consider in 2017, you can easily improve your home's look and value.

Full Outdoor Living Spaces

Most homes are built with a small deck or patio, allowing owners to create a seating and grilling area outdoors. While suitable for some, these small areas do not provide adequate space for entertaining. Creating larger outdoor living spaces is a great way to update your landscaping while increasing your home's value.

If you already have a deck, consider screening it in. If you have a patio, consider enlarging it using stamped concrete or paver stones. Make sure your space has enough room to add a large table with chairs for dining. Or, opt for a lounging space that includes relaxing chairs surrounding a fire pit. An outdoor kitchen featuring a grill, refrigerator, and sink may be costly, but you will enjoy the added appeal and value.

Water-Efficient Irrigation

Your lawn, shrubs, trees, and flowers will require water to grow and thrive. Unfortunately, watering your lawn and plants during the warmer seasons is not only time-consuming, but also expensive if you have a monthly water bill. To update your home's appeal and value in an efficient manner, consider installing a drip irrigation system.

A traditional sprinkler system throws larger volumes of water across your landscape. In most cases, this is excessive and wasteful. A drip irrigation system allows smaller amounts of water to trickle onto your lawn and landscaping beds slowly, ensuring it soaks into the soil in an even and effective manner.

Applying water slowly over a period of time is not only a healthier option for your lawn, shrubs, trees, and plants, but it also an eco-friendly option. Drip irrigation systems use between 30 and 50 percent less water when compared to traditional sprinkler systems.

Edible Gardens

Adding beauty to your landscape with plants that you can actually eat is a win-win situation, so it is easy to see why edible gardens are becoming popular.

Consider creating a vegetable garden in one area of your backyard. Plant different varieties of delicious and colorful vegetables and fruits, such as cabbage, cucumbers, squash, or strawberries.

Secure a trellis on one area of your home's exterior and hang multiple pots to create a vertical garden. Plant your favorite herbs in these pots. Oregano, rosemary, mint, chives, parsley, and thyme are favorite herbs that you can use for cooking and medicinal purposes. In addition to their function, these herbs are also attractive plants that will enhance your landscape.

Reduced Lawn

Watering, fertilizing, controlling weeds, and mowing are all tasks necessary to maintain a healthy lawn. If you have a larger lawn, these tasks can become overwhelming over time. Thankfully, one of the hottest trends in landscaping is reducing the size of your lawn.

To reduce lawn maintenance, consider reducing your lawn size by replacing sections of grass with decorative landscaping pebbles, pine straw, mulch, or hardscapes. These areas do not require the constant watering, mowing, and miscellaneous care that a large plot of grass needs.

By reducing the amount of grass your yard contains, you can conserve energy, water, and money while still having an attractive landscape.

From added living space and an increased home value to enhancing your home's style, landscaping is truly important. By using one or all of these trends, you will have a functional, appealing, and valuable landscape. Talk to a professional, such as Boyer WH, for more ideas. 

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