A big thank you to our friends at Vandenberg’s Landscape Design for being our Guest Contributors to our blog this month! They are a full service landscape company who do everything from design, irrigation, turf, maintenance and more! At Kenorah we partner with them for many of our projects.
Gardening for Curb Appeal
How the front of the house shows from the street helps to create that initial wow factor, becoming a first impression for anyone coming to visit. Also, if you’re planning on selling your home, it can have a big impact for your potential buyers. Use foundation gardens to anchor the house to the property and give it the feeling that it was designed with the surrounding nature in mind and not just placed on a lot.
Below are a few tips to create that effect, and keep your home looking great year round!
Soften the edges of your home
Whenever possible, try not to end the gardens at the corners of the house; This can further accentuate the borders of your home and define those edges. Instead, wrap the gardens around and passed the corners of the house to draw less attention to them and frame a view to the entryway. Don’t forget to plant with winter in mind! Keep at least 30% of those front gardens as strategic evergreen planting so the house is still accessorized during the colder months. This photo is an excellent example of how these gardens should soften those edges, and highlight the house rather than overpower it.
Create a simple garden
Not everyone has the time or interest to maintain an extravagant show garden. Without the proper care, a garden comprised of a wide variety of plantings can look busy and overgrown. Try to use repetition in plantings and create a unifying theme in your landscape. Six to seven varieties of plant in a front yard (not including your feature trees) are enough to build a beautiful low maintenance garden. Take each variety and place in large groupings. As the plants naturalize and grow together, it will create masses of colour flowing through the garden instead of single sporadic plants. When placed strategically, the dominant and repetitive colours in the garden can help draw your eye to specific features in the landscape.
The vibrant yellow Rudbeckia in this photo is offset on either side of the stream, and assists in leading your eye either up to the stone bridge, or down to the zen garden pond.
Be sure to check out Vandenberg’s Landscaping’s website and follow them on Facebook to see more of their work. Thank you to Matt and Trent for sharing some of your knowledge. Keep your eyes peeled for more blog posts from them in the future!
