DIY Landscaping: Help Your Home Sell
DIY Landscaping Ideas to Boost the Value of Your Home
Good landscaping makes a huge difference in a home’s appearance, and plays a role in a buyer’s decision to make an offer on a house. Professional landscaping often proves expensive, but there’s no reason a homeowner with a bit of a green thumb can’t employ some effective DIY landscaping ideas.
Trimming and Pruning
Before getting started with landscaping, take a good look at your current situation and see if there are bushes or trees requiring removal. After getting rid of dead or dying plants, trim and prune any overgrown varieties. If you aren’t sure how to trim or prune a particular tree or bush, you can likely find a video with instructions on YouTube.
Choose Native Plants
Whatever your landscape plans, choose native Hawaiian plants to fulfil. Not only are native plants suitable for local soils, but they also provide food and shelter for native wildlife. The right native plants for your property are also easier to maintain than non-native species. Native landscaping favorites include:
- Acacia koa
- Beach vitex
- Hawaiian soapberry
- Hawaiian tree fern
- Heliotropium anomalum (hina hina)
- Hibiscus
- Kou
- Ohi’a
- Pandanus
Make you decision on which plants to include in your landscape not only on aesthetics, but also on the right growing conditions for each species. For example, a shady area near your house won’t support plants requiring full-day sun, but plants enjoying full or partial shade should thrive.
Get Creative with Paving
Landscaping is about more than plants. Paving also plays a major role in landscaping. While you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars for paving when you are planning to sell your home, a few hundred dollars’ worth of pavers in a style you feel appropriate for the setting is a good DIY investment for an afternoon’s worth of work. While it’s fun to get create with paving, don’t overdo it. That’s because when you are selling your home, you want conservative landscaping appealing to every demographic.
The Back Yard
While curb appeal rests primarily on your front yard and the section of your house facing the street, don’t neglect the back yard landscaping. In Hawaii, the back yard so often become a home’s outdoor room that warm, welcoming landscaping is absolutely essential to entice buyers. If you have a pool, add containers full of flowering plants to add color and complement the blue water and green grass. Palms and banana trees in containers give the pool area a cool, relaxing feel.
Again, using native plants in the back yard can aid in creating a natural, low-maintenance landscape. For the DIYer, another advantage of native plants is that you don’t need to install an extensive – and expensive – hardscape with these plants, as you do with plantings requiring strict beds to look their best.
Contact Us
If you’re looking to buy or sell a home or find a rental property, you need a knowledgeable, experienced realtor familiar with all aspects of the Hawaiian real estate market. Contact Island Realty Group LLC at 808-689-7407 or IslandRealtyGroup@irghi.com.
