Curb Appeal Part 2: The Landscaping

Beautiful landscaping can add a lot to the curb appeal of your home. With spring finally here, now is a great time to start thinking about the natural decoration of the exterior of your home.
I'm by no means an expert in this area, but here's some basic tips I've learned:


*Note:* Design elements and principles apply as much outside your home as they do inside. Keep these rules in mind when considering your landscaping.


1) When designing a flower bed consider the lines and shapes of your house.
if your house has a lot of straight lines and boxy shapes (as most houses do), try using curved lines when designing your flower beds to incorporate more interest and variety.




3) Use shrubs /small trees to form the skeletal structure of your garden.
Keeping principles of balance and symmetry in mind when creating the structure of your landscaping.




4) Place your larger/taller perennials in between your shrubs.
Perennials are plants that come back every year, and continue to become more big and beautiful with time. Invest in perennials! Use as many of them as you can, but remember to give them adequate space to grow and fill -out over time. Plant your perennials in clusters as opposed to planting them in rows. Cluster-planting will in my opinion, bring a more impressive result.



5) Fill empty spaces with annuals.
Especially while your garden is young and your perennials immature (first 3 years), you will want to fill in your empty spaces with annuals. Annuals are plants and flowers that only last for one growing season, and need to be replaced every year.


*General Planting Tip:*
Keep principles of variety and repetition in mind when choosing where to place all of your plants. Consider height, size, shape, and colour of foliage and blooms, as well as timing of blooms when placing plants next to each other. Try to create as much harmony as possible throughout the growing season.
6) Add levels:
Adding levels to your landscaping brings more interest and variety. Some of this can be done with the plants themselves, otherwise you can raise flower-beds, or tier sections of your property. Incorporate different pots, boxes, and hanging baskets as well to add more levels to your landscaping.


*Low Maintenance Land-Scaping:*
If you don't have much of an interest in gardening, and want a more low-maintenance landscaping scheme, you may want to choose inanimate exterior decorations such as rocks, and ground covers of various varieties. Plan things carefully, draw them out if you need to. Keep design elements and principles in mind with a goal to create as much harmony as possible, and it will be lovely and effective as well.