6 Tips for Complementing Your House Exterior With Your Landscaping

No matter how beautiful a painting is, a shabby frame will diminish its beauty. Your home is no different. The landscaping surrounding your house will make as significant a first impression as your home itself. There’s little point to investing in beautiful exterior details if your landscaping isn’t up to par. Here are six tips for complementing your house exterior with landscaping.

1. Keep It Fresh

Much like in architecture, fashion, and art, there are distinct trends in landscape design. If you doubt this, take a walk around your neighborhood and observe neighbors’ yards. Newer homes feature gardens with cut limestone or steel retaining walls and hardy native plants. Older homes may have fussy shrubs that need constant shaping and high-maintenance roses. Updating your landscape can give your property a fresh, new look and feel.

2. Color Coordinate

If the exterior of your home has had a recent facelift, you may want to slip a few features into the landscape to match. If your exterior is brick, large planters at the entrance can add a subtle match. For bold moves, say a red door, you can add seasonal blooms in a similar shade. But, if what you want is a consistent theme, pick one bold color as your base. Repeat it throughout the landscape in different flowers, shrubs, and trees.

3. Use Layers

A great landscape features layered plantings: ground covers, ornamental plants, shrubs, and trees. Layering creates visual interest with a variety of textures and colors to direct focus to various parts of your home’s exterior. Having layers in the landscape also creates a great sense of fullness in flower beds, even if there are only a few varieties of plants.

4. Update the Deck and Hardscapes

Retaining walls, walkways, patios, and decks are all essential parts of the landscape. If your deck is old and worn, it may also be unsafe. It may just need a facelift to make it look like new again.  Hardscapes add character, create pedestrian circulation, and offer areas for outdoor gatherings. After all, you want a place for people to enjoy your landscape.

5. Maintain Meticulously

A landscape is only as good-looking as its maintenance schedule keeps it. Staying on top of lawn mowing, hedge trimming, winter cutbacks, and other upkeep will help your landscape look its best year-round.  Regular lawn maintenance will keep your grass lush and healthy, while seasonal touch-ups on the rest of your landscape ensure that your property always looks well-kept.  Hiring a lawn care professional is fairly affordable, depending on the size of your lawn.  

6. Watch Your Water

The key to maintaining healthy landscape plants is watering the right amount at the right times. This varies, of course, throughout the year. The “cool-season” grass types common in the Northeast need regular watering from spring through fall, with the most water needed in the summer heat. Program your irrigation system to give the lawn and flower beds a deep drink before dawn for optimum health.

Keep in mind, people will judge a book by its cover. Make sure the grass and flower beds that cover your landscape are in novel shape.

About The Author: Francesca Singer is a former farmer & landscape architect who is passionate about plants, DIY home restoration, and travel. When not writing, she can be found working in the garden, wrangling her toddler, or wielding power tools in Texas or rural France.