Your landscape design is critical to creating a visually appealing and welcoming outdoor space. If you are considering selling your home, the landscape can make the difference between winning or losing a potential buyer because it creates your home’s first impression. Unfortunately, landscaping is not easy. Even when you are a novice landscaper or gardener, you could make mistakes that leave you with unsightly outdoor living space or cost a lot of cash to rectify the errors. To help you avoid costly landscaping errors, we have put together four common mistakes most homeowners make and how you can prevent them.

Failing to Create a Budget Beforehand

Creating an oasis in your backyard that you, your family, and your guests can enjoy is costly. Even the most minor landscaping costs tens of thousands, so before you begin any landscaping project, you should determine how much you would be willing to spend. This amount influences any decisions or changes you will make to your backyard.

If you do not set a budget in advance, you could spend more than you intended or start securing unplanned lender financing. You could also stop the landscaping in the middle if you deplete cash and cannot afford to complete the project. Setting a realistic budget that sees the landscaping project from start to finish can be challenging. Contact an experienced landscaper like Malone’s Landscape for a detailed cost estimate of your project to avoid issues when landscaping your yard.

Overlooking the Climate

One of the most significant mistakes most new homeowners make is failing to consider the soil conditions and climate before taking on a landscaping project. This results in costly errors, including landscaping their homes with plants that cannot survive the specific environment. For this reason, familiarize yourself with your location before landscaping and determine the landscaping options in your climate region.

Planting Too Many Shrubs and Trees

While planting trees and shrubs in your landscape has numerous benefits, including reducing energy bills, improving your outdoor space air quality, and increasing the value of your home,  investing in too many of them is a mistake. Too many plants and shrubs in your landscape results in landscaping problems such as insect infestations, disease, and weeds. They also compete for nutrients and water, causing the growth of weak and unhealthy plants.

If you plant many plants and shrubs close together, they limit other landscaping choices and options you might have for your landscape. For this reason, consider your property’s size, landscape ideas, and design when deciding the number of plants and shrubs to incorporate into your backyard.

Not Considering Maintenance Requirements

It is easy to get caught up in turning your vision for your landscape into a reality that you fail to consider the maintenance requirements. However, you should remember that any design choice you make during the installation phase will significantly impact the time and money required to maintain your landscape in the future.

For instance, choosing natural grass for your lawn will require spending a lot of time and money aerating, weeding, edging, and applying pesticides and fertilizers. However, artificial grass requires minimal maintenance because you do not need to aerate, mow, weed, or edge the turf. Ensure you make informed choices during the design and installation phase to keep the landscape maintenance cost and time minimum. 

EndNote

Landscaping is essential to making your home more attractive and comfortable, so you cannot afford to make any mistakes.  Be sure to set a budget in advance, consider the climate and your property’s size when deciding how many plants to add to your landscape, and keep maintenance requirements in mind before landscaping to avoid costly mistakes. Alternatively, partner with an experienced, reliable, and reputable professional landscaper to create your dream backyard.