Stand in front of your house or drive by it. What’s the first thing you notice? If it’s a garbage can, an unsightly fence or an air conditioning unit, subtract some points for curb appeal, which is an important consideration for any homeowner.
The goal of the front yard is to make your home look fantastic, and landscaping is one of the key tools you use to accomplish that. But landscaping shouldn’t be the star. Your home is the star, and your front door should be the superstar.
Don’t create a landscape that’s more dramatic than your home. You want people to say, “What a beautiful home!” Then they can say, “I love your landscaping too!”
To enhance your home’s curb appeal, focus on three words: “conceal,” “reveal” and “simplify.”
Conceal things that aren’t attractive. Don’t use bright plants, like Pampas grass, beside a power box because they scream “Look at me!” Don’t use a Knock-Out Rose to hide a trash can because it will draw your eye to the thing you’re trying to conceal. Use a green, medium-textured plant that seems to recede into the background.
Next, think about what you want to reveal. A home’s architecture is designed to be viewed a certain way. For example, you usually don’t want plants to grow higher than the bottom of your windows.
There are beautiful low-flowering trees, like Japanese Maples, that you can prune to create some holes you can see through. They appear almost transparent or translucent.
The goal is to open up the front door and draw your eye to it. One way to do that is by using brightly colored plants by the front door. That’s like lipstick.
If there are nice architectural features you want to highlight, use dramatic plants near them. Position a bench off to one side with a couple of pots of beautiful flowers.
To create the look you want, you may need to remove some plants or trim lower tree limbs. If you have a 12-foot bush underneath a three-foot window, replace it with something that will mature at the height you want. Since there will be less shearing, the plant will appear more graceful and elegant.
Outdoor lighting can be especially nice. Since a lot of the unsightly day-time views will disappear when the sun goes down, focus on the best elements of your home. Have some interesting-shaped trees in your yard? Illuminate them.
And then finally it’s just simplify. Simplifying your landscape will draw attention back to the home and not compete with the architecture.
It’s easier to design when you limit the number of plants. The more colors, textures, shapes and sizes you have, the more difficult it becomes to pull off a harmonious esthetically-pleasing landscape.
Use plants that do their jobs with very little care on your part. A well-designed landscape should be lower maintenance as it ages. Bushes will fill in, and ground covers will choke out weeds.
